Our family routine permitted us every year to spend more than a month at the seaside. One of my uncles had a beautiful house in a small place on the Adriatic Riviera and we would have the privilege of spontaneously melting into the scenery every summer.

It happened often enough to call It a habit that I would wake up before anyone else. I would love to wander in the garden in the silence of the morning. The sun would be still mellow but already strong enough to invite the little lizards to join me on the stairs and stone pavements. It would be my time to play with them while the rest of the family was still asleep. They would be so friendly to me and come into the palm of my hands so I could pet them on their head. They would close their eyes and seemingly smile. That connection and fascination with little lizards that started when I was two years old never left. I was known in the family as a lizard whisperer.

Time was never passing for me in a linear way, and my age did not follow the expected curve of life. In my small years, I was able to offer mature reactions as they were asked of me and I felt as if a grown-up person was living inside of me. Maybe this is just in general one of the qualities of time, but sometimes the feeling I have is as if living life backwards, going forward in time and age to be born again, while shedding more and more layers off the child within me.

From time to time, there are moments where I get overwhelmed by triggers that make me think about my roots, belonging and passions as driving forces towards that youthful eternity, moments like when someone dear passes away, moments in which I feel the reality is shifting… 

I left my homeland when I was a young adult. As I was running, the ground of the country I was leaving behind was crumbling and dissolving into dust. Often since then, I felt like a visitor in my own life. 

I took off, not daring to look behind or ahead. As I felt my father’s hands lifting me on to the first step of the bus, which drove me away in the middle of the night into my future full of hope and worth living, my mind went into a state of a blank. I can't remember anything about that trip…