Inadequate

San Girolamo Lombardo (invented name) is a quiet provincial town, not too small and not too big. It is, we could say, the antithesis of the suburbs: an orderly, clean, quiet city, with good services, an active associative fabric and good schools.

It is surrounded by green hills, private fortifications (castles), bell towers and farms “to break the vast countryside”. Close to the center, near the old collegiate church, there is the Lyceum in Viale Parini and there is Marco's class: an average learning group, 3-4 insufficient, 15 with intermediate marks and 3 excellent. It is 10 am of a normal lesson time, when Marco is sitting in the center of the classroom, in the middle of the middle row, and during the chemistry hour he begins to uncover his arm, then he takes his pen and begins to write a letter along the inside of the arm, no one seems to notice. First an i, then n, a, d, e, g, u, a, t, o: inadequate. Carlotta observes him from behind and turns her gaze towards the other companions, then resumes following protons and neutrons. Marco stops writing and takes a thin object out of his pocket, a razor blade he found in his grandfather's box, with which he engraves the letters on his arm, wants to transform a wound into an indelible scar, because that inadequate word always reminds him who he is who he will be. .

Carlotta jerks off and locks Marco's wrist without giving him time to move on to the second letter, the blood flows on the counter and all the companions get around Marco. The professor also realizes what has happened and suspends the explanation of the last formula. Carlotta does not hold back her tears.

Marco is not bordeline, he has an attentive family with him, he has friends and professors who support him, but there is an autoimmune dragon that burns inside the heart and pushes into the his head that word: inadequate. Marco is the time to crush the dragon's head and greet him with a big and cordial v ********* because you are not inadequate, you are only in a growth phase, where you are tight and uncomfortable, without persistence or resistance, with a heart that knows how to hear more than you can, it is therefore time to rejoice because having a free heart is not a condemnation, but a prospect of real life.


Fabrizio Floris
NP June / July 2022