Presentation...

Well… After a few time trying to help people in the group, I think it’s time to tell you about my story…

Since I was a kid I’ve always been interested in Knowledge… I want to know/understand it all… I started reading when I was 2 years old, because I wanted my mum to read me every little sign we saw in the street. Soon I was reading “adult books and novels” (Tolkien, Verne, Kipling, Lovecraft, Bécquer the classical Greek writers, studying different Mythologies…) and found in books a place to “hide” from the people that usually surrounded me at school. I didn´t have any friends there, as I usually spent my free time reading hiding in a corner on my own, because I couldn’t find anybody interesting enough to share my thoughts. That made me grow up without understanding the normal “roles” and “habits” for socialization. My concepts of “Friendship” or “Love” were built following the examples I found in those classical books… so it made it extremely difficult for me to understand another people feelings, as they were not so “intense”. When I was 15, I found in games (Role Playing Games, Social Collectible Card Games…) a way to make friends, because the very first social interactions were “ruled” by common interests… and that made me feel “safe”. Most of my actual True Friends are gamers too, although now our friendship goes beyond playing…

At that time (90s), finding girls interested in our hobbies was really difficult… so I never understood what was expected or how I should act in social interactions with the girls I liked, something that looked extremely normal and funny for my brothers or most of the rest of the boys I met… For me it was like watching them interact in Wild Life documentaries in the Discovery Channel. It was natural for them… but not for me…  It made me even more introvert.  I could spend the whole night going party, dancing, but without speaking to anyone… It seemed that everybody could find someone suitable for them but me… and all my experiences with women during my life seem to have been  a reflection of my completely incapability to understand Human Interactions. Every time I’ve had a couple, I’ve tried to transform myself in the perfect man… I  so I usually hide every part of me they couldn’t or didn’t want to understand, losing part of my personality in the process, and becoming in several years in that “.. You’re not who I want for the rest of my life” kind of person… I was a beggar… I gave it all in my relationships, and it was not worth the effort… The only good thing that I´ve had from these mistakes is my daughter, the only one who seems to understand me…

I’ve wasted half of my life working with computers, when I was born to be a Teacher… When I finally managed to start working as an English teacher, I found that there were many kids like me, hiding their interests because they thought nobody could understand them, sometimes not even at home, so I’ve focused my free time at school to make them understand that there is no problem at all feeling that your different, that there’s no problem if you don’t like “soccer”, or if you prefer to spend time speaking about films or comics or videogames or books… Every year  I try to gather these “special students” in a class during the breaks, to play board games, or invent miniature games for them with their LEGO miniatures, or just having a small talk about their interests, just to make them feel that there can be a group of friends beyond the people in their classes…

… and that’s exactly what I try to do here… Helping this “special people” I’ve been lucky to find in this group… Encourage you to be patient, trying to keep your Hopes lit and bring some little Light in your darkest moments… a support I would have liked to have…