Beginning of Studies

It’s March 2026, and at forty-three years old, I can still vividly remember many fragments of my childhood. A childhood that, while serene and full of attention on the family front, proved to be much more complex in terms of friendships.

At the age of six, my father bought an old vertical piano by Krauss. It was an instrument from the late 1800s: restored, of course, but still marked by time, so much so that the joints of the candlesticks that once illuminated the music stand were clearly visible. For two years, it sat there, almost invisible to my eyes. I didn’t really look at it until I was eight years old.

One day, I was at my aunt’s house, my mother’s sister. She had a record with some recordings of the great pianists of the time. She placed it on the turntable and slowly lowered the needle.
After a few seconds, the room was filled with the first notes of Chopin’s Fourth Ballade.
I was literally struck, to the point that this could be called a romantic story... At my piano diploma, which concluded my academic studies, I performed the Fourth Ballade.
I still remember perfectly the pianist who played it: Emanuel Ax.

It was on that day that I asked my father to send me for piano lessons.
We went to the Don Bosco Oratory, not far from my house, where a piano teacher used to give lessons. We set an appointment; I remember there were many other people at that meeting. Fabio Salustri (my first teacher) welcomed everyone with great kindness and availability but was also very clear: "The study of piano is a very intense and complex study; it requires discipline, commitment, dedication... and talent."
Thus began this long journey filled with immense emotions, satisfactions, and many challenges.

Beginning of Concerts and Competitions

At 13, I held my first solo concert in a theater in Viterbo. The theater was practically full, and an article had even come out in the Corriere di Viterbo. I still remember the dim lights of the stage and the emotion that coursed through my body as I began to play.
For me, it was a great achievement; it was an event that was propelling me toward a concert career. That same year, I also began participating in competitions, consistently achieving excellent results: a third place in my first competition, followed by first places in subsequent years. These successes gave me great confidence and pushed me to continue studying the piano with even more commitment. This was true until the day I encountered envy.
It didn’t happen to me personally; it happened to a boy who competed alongside me, who was told outright that "he wasn’t cut out for studying piano; it would be better for him to give it up and focus on something else."

These words were said to him in front of his parents by a music teacher.
I still remember the silence that followed.

A gesture that I consider reprehensible and that made me reflect deeply on how competition can degenerate into ruthless and destructive behaviors, especially towards the younger ones, and it was there that I decided never to participate in piano competitions again.

Beginning of Isolation

On the other side was school. In elementary school, everything went more or less well. When I started playing the piano, my classmates perceived me as a somewhat "special" person, perhaps different, because I preferred music to soccer, I was interested in culture rather than sports, but despite this, I was still invited to parties and spent time with them outside of school hours.

The real fracture came with the transition to middle school. It was during that time that a much more difficult phase of my life began: a progressive social isolation accompanied by episodes of psychological bullying that I had never known before and that deeply marked those years.

These episodes made me feel alone, misunderstood, and sometimes even threatened, pushing me further into an inner world made of music and books as the only escape from a reality that seemed hostile and unfair.

A Foolish Solution

At one point, I came to mistakenly convince myself that the only way to maintain relationships with others was to win their sympathy at all costs. It was then that I made a mistake that cost me time and mental resources: lowering my standards.

I began to adapt to others, trying to mold myself to their tastes and habits.
I tried to take an interest in things that I didn’t actually care about, participating in conversations and activities that didn’t feel like mine, with a single goal: to be accepted.
In hindsight, I believe that a bit of street life did me good character-wise, but because of this period, I literally lost years trying to please others not for who I am but by playing a part, wearing the clothes of a character that didn’t belong to me.

This attitude, however, led me to live in a constant inner tension that culminated at the age of 13 in a panic attack. The fear of being rejected and performance anxiety literally paralyzed me, leading me to avoid any situation that could test me or expose my true personality. I lived emulating the behaviors of others, even the worst ones, filled with verbal and physical violence, made of ranting and gratuitous malice.

The Attitude of Parents

I can’t say that my parents weren’t there for me. When I began to have my first panic attacks, they took me to see the best specialists, ruling out physical or neurological problems. My condition was psychological and required a completely different approach.

I’ve always had a very open relationship with my parents, but as the saying goes: "Every age has its problems"; it’s not easy to explain and make them understand how it feels to be excluded or to live a life with a personality that doesn’t belong to you.

The Envy

During high school, envy began to weigh more and more. My successes in piano turned out to be a double-edged sword: on one hand, they represented a great satisfaction for me, while on the other, they fueled the jealousy of some classmates, ready to seize any opportunity to belittle me or downplay what I did.

As time went on, that situation became increasingly exhausting. I was tired, exasperated by certain attitudes. In the meantime, I had also reached a rather evident physical maturity; I was the tallest in the class, and at one point, I probably made the biggest mistake I could make: I used physical violence as a release for my repressed emotions.

The Breaking Point

This further distanced me from those who were already unwilling to understand me and brought me to a breaking point in my fifth year of high school. Perhaps one of the darkest periods of my life when I decided to stop going to school to take refuge in books. I didn’t skip school to go smoke in the town park; I went to the library every day, reading the books I was passionate about and studying what I liked.

This period of forced isolation was a paradoxical experience: on one hand, it allowed me to deepen my passions, while on the other, it further isolated me from the outside world and my peers.

Serpent Relatives

This saying is far from a cliché. If from the perspective of my relationships with my peers I lived an absolute disaster, things weren’t much better with my relatives. In my specific case, some of my family members were among the first to fuel envy. I’ve never understood why, honestly.

The Lifeline

One thing that still moves me when I remember it was the attitude of my Literature and Latin teacher: Professor Fabbri. One of those teachers who don’t just explain a subject but teach something much more important: the value of knowledge.

Not seeing me for weeks, she decided to call my house. My mother answered, but she had the intelligence not to speak with her, telling her that she hadn’t seen me in class for weeks; no, she asked to speak with me because she was perhaps the only one who truly understood me, and she knew that if she told my parents about my misdeeds, I would never be seen in that class again.

I remember she said to me: "Simone, what’s happening to you?".

I burst into tears, I told her everything, I opened my heart, I spoke to her about my state of mind, my isolation, the fact that I wasn’t understood and that I was the target of continuous criticism probably driven by envy and the malice of others. She listened patiently, never interrupted me, and with the same sweetness of a mother with a child, she said to me: "Simone, go back to school, sit in the front row next to me".

I remember she organized concerts at school to explain the Romantic period and tried to bring out and make clear the strengths I had, what made me different.

And so, thanks to her understanding and unconditional support, I was able to regain confidence in myself and rediscover joy.

University: The Turning Point

At university, I finally found my natural habitat; what others had seen as points of attack became my greatest strengths. I was good, I studied with dedication, and my university colleagues often joined me for help in preparing for exams. However, it wasn’t a relationship of convenience; it was finally a friendship, so much so that I still feel/see many of them today. This atmosphere of mutual respect and collaboration allowed me to grow both intellectually and personally, enabling me to clear away all the mental fog, and others saw me with respect for who I am, finally, without having to play parts. They even encouraged me to take the entrance test for Mensa. Perhaps age played a part too.

The fact is that with a clear mind, I finally saw clearly: I am like this; those who love me can follow me, and those who don’t can go to hell! You will forgive the language, but it’s a phrase that freed me from years of frustration and uncertainty. And for those wondering about relatives... The kinship is merely an administrative bond. They are your relatives because chance dictated that your father or mother were cousins, siblings, or uncles of other people. The ties of kinship do not exist! Only the bonds you build brick by brick with your choices and daily behavior exist, whether they are between cousins, uncles, or friends; and if you have done good, you should never worry about what others think.

A Final Piece of Advice

If you also feel misunderstood, if you have talents that, instead of valuing you, make you feel inferior due to a horde of idiots, remember that this probably happens because you are special.
Never allow anyone to distort your image or who you are, but always behave with integrity and humility, so as to remain untouchable.
Each of us knows our worth inside: you don’t need others to define you.
Learn first to live well alone and not depend on anyone. You cannot be well with others if you cannot first be well with yourself.
People speak out of envy because "the fox that cannot reach the grapes always says they are sour." But if you are well with yourself, you will have a shield, and you will be untouchable.

It’s just a matter of time: sooner or later, those who belittled you, if you truly have value, will need you, while you probably will never need them.
And it’s then that they will look at you with different eyes.
Envy will remain, but it will no longer be destructive: it will become a silent envy, now transformed into a tacit admiration for what you have managed to build on your own.
And if before they could attack you because you were weak, now they will simply have to remain silent because you will have become untouchable.

Conclusion

I know well that someone reading these lines might wonder who wrote them and with what presumption.
The answer is very simple: there is no presumption here, only forty-three years of lived life.
And if reality is bothersome... The answer is found a few paragraphs above.