Chapter 2

Oh, my child years.

It is nice to hear about things I used to do and characteristics I used to have when I was a kid. My parents compared me to a "torrent stick". Everyone I'd go, I'd talk to people. And I mean anyone. At the beach on the holidays it was crazy trying to keep track of my because I was always in other people's tends talking and making friends. My mom actually thought I would end up being kidnapped one day.

I would take part in all artistic presentations back at school, I was the kind of student every teacher would like because I was so nice, cute and needy. But then, for some reason, I started gaining weight. By the age of 11 I was so fat that my sister ended up calling me Uncle Fester, because the area around my eyes was so dark because of the fat and, of course, my build didn't help.

As a fat kid, I was bullied, of course, and it got to my nerves. Add to that the fact that I would always end up hanging out with weirdos or girls so I had some tags on me: Fat, Weird, Nerd, Gay. And even being treated like that - sometimes by my very best friends - I was a "people pleaser".

My place had the biggest television of the street and I had a good garage for parties so I'd invite everyone over, over and over again for parties or movies' sessions. People would always come, have a good time and leave the house for me - or better, my mom - to clean.

And for me, if I had friends that only cared about my things, I'd think "Well, at least I've got friends".

So I had these friends connected by interest and well, I guess I learned that once people are interested in getting something from you, they will be your friends, because I decided to be smart. I dedicated so much time studying and becoming a good student that eventually everything paid off. The most popular kid at school, Thiago, started to hang out with me after this very unusual day when I discovered anger, and how it could earn you respect.

Imagine we are at school, we've just got our marks and I'm extremly happy about it. People start  to bully me, I get angry, and this popular guy was among all these other ones bullying me - I guess that people get bothered by someone that doesn't look normal and still is smarter than you, I guess I'll never understand that. The point is that this popular guy came to me, calling fat, fag and everything and I felt this urge rising upon me and I just closed my eyes and started kicking and punching as hard as I could.

I don't know how hard I hit him, nor if I had actually hit him instead of just doing some air fighting but he actually saw me at that moment as a person he would like to have as a mate - I'm definetly not using the word friend here.

 After that, people stopped calling me fat gay guy and just turned to angry nerd, and you know what, it felt good. Even if people would say shit behind my back, when they faced me, there was respect and a little bit of fear for what I was capable of.

And that kept on going until I left my first school. So basically I learned that it didn't matter who I was, what mattered was the way people saw me. Of course, I didn't put here all the humilliation I had to go through during those years - but I think they might come up in the next chapters. The point is I learned a lot about friendship and anger. How to achieve them and manipulate them. How to get people to be by your side, how to become useful in a way people will give you the respect you deserve. And most of all, that respect shall never be given, it must be earned.