25 JUNE 2024 THE WONDERING WANDERING WRITER'S BIRTHDAY -

During this year, I learned that it's important to understand that dwelling on regrets and remorse won't alter what has already happened.

If I had had more faith in God, I would not have denounced the man I had decided to marry and with whom I wanted to form a happy family, even though he told me every single day that he couldn't wait to say goodbye. Believing in God, I would not have gotten pregnant as easily as I did the first few times, or maybe I would have experienced miscarriage, which I could have made up for with the love of Chikaima Maitea and Chimamanda Lavinia and factory work. He couldn't have hated me more because I wouldn't have harmed his reputation in any way, keeping the secret of what he was doing inside my heart and trying to forget through books, the carefree playtime with Maitea and Lavinia, the methodical work as a laundry worker.

Similarly, allowing anxiety and fear to consume us won't bring about positive changes in the future.

The biggest fear is that not only a false friend or my ex will think I am a bad mother, but also the people I ask for help. I try to give my daughters what they need and to understand what they want, and never have I realized more than this past year that tantrums always stem from a need for exclusive attention, rather than play per se: I've realized this by drawing and colouring together when they ask me to draw anything despite not being very good at it. I have anxiety and fear about the new path ahead of me as a student at the University of Glasgow. In particular, I am afraid of failing again and not being able (again) to work in the field I am studying for.

Instead, focusing on gratitude for what we currently have, and what we don't have, can empower us to make the improvements we desire.

I am grateful for the people who SHOW that they appreciate me, consider me an intelligent person, and a good friend and love me despite my countless flaws.

In the front row are my Godmother Laura and Aunt Ivana, who are true guardian angels for me, saving me from falling apart countless times, as I think my Grandma Pina and Grandpa Biagio did with my Dad. Uncle Enrico, who left too soon, and on the very first of April, a day on which we have goliardic pranks almost all over the world.

Then I will be eternally grateful for the country I live in, which grants me dignity as a human being, as a mother, and as a woman.

However, I am also grateful for my daughters' daddy, without whom the people I spend my days with, even when we are not together, would not be in the world. I thank him for what he is giving, even though it is not much, and I hope he can find a better woman than me and be loved better than I have shown that I love him. For June 25, I am going to restart from what I have now, trying to be as neat as possible, at home and in my head. I am getting rid of things we don't use (throwing them away if broken and giving them to others if they are not broken). I need to avoid buying more books and notebooks before I read the ones that are in the house. At this juncture, the blog and YouTube channel must help me, so that I can record in written and audiovisual format what I read, for myself and, when I am gone, for Maitea and Lavinia.

I need to close cycles more often: studies, books, and reports. Don't be afraid of not owning something (or someone) anymore: without grudges, think of having acted, or not having acted, always help others, to see them happy, and not just to get something from them. Sometimes I should have responded with silence, that same silence they used when I got into bigger problems than myself.

By the time I was in my twenties, I had taken the college route seriously, and I had made the decision not to look for a guy just to lose my virginity-I wanted to experience romantic love with one man, as my paternal grandmother had done, marry him and have children. I was not interested in having sex with as many men as possible, I had made the decision that I would do it only with one in my life, although I was curious and envied (good-naturedly) my friends who had already had so many experiences). I never considered anyone who slept with a guy negatively, though, and for that reason, when a very dear friend called me in the middle of the night to ask a huge favour that would cover her and her high-ranking family's good name, I did not back down. First of all because for once the world wouldn't fall apart and their reputation wouldn't have to be tarnished, secondly because I made the words my own: I don't approve of what you said/did, but I will defend the death your right to say it, and to find a solution so that you won't have bigger problems.

In the same vein as this personal episode in my life, I would also have voted for Salis in the European elections because, although I would never have gone to Hungary just to confront fascist demonstrations, I find that those who have found the courage and the financial means to do so are entitled to judicial treatment that does not harm their dignity as human beings. Precisely in the name of anti-fascism, which nowadays we talk about, often, in vain.

I got married and had two daughters believing a man who asked me for a son right away, and I gave everything I had to this man, with the hope that I could build a happy family, the one I have been longing for since I was a child. I've made mistakes, but the mistakes I'm dealing with right now in my life are the best I've made and I wouldn't trade them for all the gold and all the houses in the world. It makes me angry that the same person who fifteen years ago was in crisis, and made a similar mistake for which she asked for my help and was given it, in this last year has refused to give me her support, emotional, psychological and concrete, ending up expressing that I have neurological problems and that I am now a lost case, hopeless, that I no longer have any chance of success. That same person in a profession, teaching, in which one should instil confidence in oneself and one's abilities, especially after making a mistake.

I write this letter hoping to be able to let go of the disappointment, and the anger over relationships that ended permanently in the worst way, making me write at the end that people for whom I would have put my hand on the fire never really considered me a friend, a sister. I never deserved their love, and I for too many years considered them the same as sisters and brothers, the ones I longed for but life never gave me. At 37, I have to accept the fact that I am an only child, born to protect people rather than to be protected by someone other than the laws, or other than my dad and his family.

On June 25 I celebrate what I have: my daughters, citizens of the world, who with the curiosity of a child will learn about the different cultures of the world without being tied to one in particular but to all those traditions that allow the meeting and exchange of resources and a smile between people and animals.

My books, with which I fill the chasms of ignorance I still possess (who knew before my 36 years of age about the Yazidis? Alessia surely did not!)

The country I live in and the opportunities it gives me to raise my girls in a beautiful home (without a bidet, but sooner or later we'll have it installed, and we'll ask the British government for it, not just for the three of us, but for all Scottish citizens!)

The family I come from, the ones who always manage to support me and put up with me, especially when I talk about how lucky those who have brothers and sisters are, I'll even have them say it at my funeral!) and the one I have chosen for myself, formed by real friendships, the ones who are not afraid to say that they have only read a few excerpts of Calvino or that they too don't know who the Yazidis are (and maybe buy the book I recommend to them by Sara Lucaroni).

My Cosmopolitan Family publishing project, which is not just a book, but a life project, in which I will put the stories I share daily with my daughters, what we are learning together and the testament of this life, which for some will be that of a failed person, with no special qualities, no merit and no rights, not even the right to be heard and loved. Clik at the following link to purchase a copy of the first book: AuthorHouse