(09.07.2020) Dear Diary,

At this moment I feel the most horrible thing I’ve ever felt. Physically, it is a pain starting in my stomach and going up my spine and through my ribs, grabs my throat and my lungs. Mentally, I hit my head on the walls of the glass jar and they broke.

It’s not the first time I feel this, but this is the first time I understand what I feel and how to manage it. On the one hand, I’m writing now, on the other I am transforming this pain into motivation to accomplish my personal mission - to ‘change the world’ through youth work (those who know me, you know what I’m talking about, those who don’t know me, I have a few articles on the blog where I explain this and I will probably write again, but now I don’t have the energy to explain this too).

I felt this a lot in my preteen and teen years, starting around the age of 11. I used to live in my family’s world, in balance, nothing could have hurt me, I had lots of problems trying to integrate into society (arrogance, superiority complexes, no social skills) being an only child and with very few kids my age in the family or in their group of friends. And then I started making friends at school, I started connecting to the world around me and I hit my head on the walls of the glass jar and they broke.

Then, when the glass walls broke, I went through some very strange times that I wouldn’t understand. I could have talked to my parents, they would have been open to discussions, but I wasn’t open towards them. I was trying to get myself away from them so I could understand myself and explore what was outside the ‘house’. And I was confused for a few years until August 2016 when I took part for the first time in an event organised by an NGO with Youth Workers and I felt happy. I felt like myself because thanks to the Youth Workers there was a safe space, where no one would judge anyone, people respected each other and they collaborated.

Then I got to the Youth Centre and Bea, the confused teenager, started to understand things. Bea, the confused teenager, started talking to the Youth Worker. Don’t think I had any major problems, I would fight with a friend, I would fight with my parents, I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do in the future. Small stuff, but they were gathering inside me and wouldn’t let me grow and things I didn’t have who to talk to about. From my parents, I was trying to get away, my friends had the same problems as I did, I didn’t have any school counsellor at hand and I didn’t consider I needed a psychologist. I needed an adult person, with life experience, with whom I could talk and who could help me understand some things. And this I found in the Youth Worker.

I will tell you 3 things I understood with the Youth Worker by my side and I will finalise.

1. The relation with my parents. When I started getting away from them, they got closer to one another and I was feeling excluded from the family. Actually, they had a very healthy and admirable reaction, but I did not understand it. If I wouldn’t have been through this process with the Youth Worker, I would have continued to argue with my parents and snap whatever they told me because I was feeling betrayed.

2. Interhuman relations. I used to get too deep and too much into other people’s lives because that’s how I understood friendship. And it’s clear that often I would piss someone off and I didn’t understand how to solve the conflict either. It got so bad that whenever I argued with someone I would have panic attacks. After many long 1 to 1 talks with the Youth Worker, I started understanding how to manage conflicts, how to communicate, how to help and when to stop. Every time I messed up, I would go back to the Youth Worker, and the Youth Worker offered me the support I needed to understand something new and grow. If I wouldn’t have been through this process with the Youth Worker, I would have continued to break relations with people I cared about because I wouldn’t have known how to react.

3. The relation with myself. I had problems with self-esteem, together with my superiority complex. I was trying to look for examples around me, but I never managed to create a true me, with everything that defined me and with my own objectives and values. The Youth Worker noticed my passion (writing), offered me the opportunity to develop it and encouraged me when I needed it. What is more, they helped me identify some youth work competencies I ‘inherited’ from my mother. If I wouldn’t have been through this process with the Youth Worker, I would have continued to take pieces and try to make them fit inside me, I would have taken half-suitable decisions because I wouldn’t have understood what truly suits me.

I will keep writing about the Youth Worker, but not in this article. It doesn’t hurt as much as it did in the beginning, but it will keep hurting. And when it hurts a lot, I will write again.

(Representative picture taken from the internet)