Every morning at dawn, I go out into the forest.
A few years ago, I escaped the city like a solitary animal. In the wilderness, I found my primordial habitat, where I reconnect with my true nature. A simple life.
For so many years, I ignored it... How much self-destruction I caused within myself, on my skin, on my bones.
How much rubble I had to rebuild from each time...
In the forest, I breathe. My instincts finally emerge. I am part of a universe made of different but equally living creatures of every kind.
This is my home, my ancestral territory. My name is Guido, the custodian.

My father was bipolar and schizophrenic. He became violent and out of control. He tried to kill us, and himself as well. My childhood was an atrocious void, endlessly running away from him, abandoned to my own fate. I grew up sad and lonely, and I have no distant memories— they are all erased. Nevertheless, his name was Francesco, and he always dreamed of becoming a farmer. Then he got sick, went crazy, and was locked up. He died alone.

I was always scared of him. For many long years, we had no contact—a long silence. It lasted until I learned he was dying: the drugs ate away at his body, the lithium corroded his vital organs, and Parkinson's did the rest.

The only memory I have of him is when he took me to the woods next to his country house. He felt free there— strangely serene and happy, relieved of the burdens that plagued his fragile soul. Our trips in nature were an antidote to the illness that devoured him from within, away from a life to which he didn’t belong.

I’m going to my forest with the same dream now, hoping not to go mad like him.
I have a house in the forest nearby, where I live with the woman I love, embracing the longing to be a father, arising from the desire and need to give everything I missed or did not have.

The woods heal my pain; they are my rebirth, the possible future I have always dreamed of.
Dear forest, here I am.