In the living room ofvery true“, Letizia Petris it opened with Silvia Toffanin in an interview that touched deep chords of his life and his recent experience at “Big Brother”, where she arrived among the finalists. The young 25-year-old photographer shared intimate and significant aspects of her past, including the unique childhood she experienced within the community of San Patrignanowhich indelibly shaped his life and that of his family.
Letizia’s story begins with that of her parents, two young people whose lives intersected in the corridors of San Patrignano, both looking for a way out of drug addiction: “Mom and Dad went in to detox from heroin. Mum was 17, dad was 25. She had just entered, she had to travel a longer distance. He, however, had already been there for some time. He waited for her and an absurd love was born. Then they got married and left the community.”
Growing up within the community, Letizia experienced a childhood and adolescence far from normality, a parental choice motivated by the desire to protect her from the dangers of drugs, but which had its repercussions. “My mom, in quotes, was wrong with me. She was so terrified that I would make her mistakes that I didn’t have the chance to experience an adolescence like the others. Until I was 13 I was in San Patrignano all the time and this led me to not know real life, I had no idea about the outside world“. The path to freedom and independence was an arduous one for Letizia, who had to deal with social anxiety and the difficulty of adapting to a previously unknown world. “The only friends I had were the children of community leaders. I found it difficult to stay in places where there were so many people, I had a lot to catch up on.”
Pain touched Letizia’s life again with the loss of his father Osvaldo, passed away due to leukemia when she was only 20 years old. “He left quickly, in front of me and my mom. She was in a coma, the doctors told us that we had to choose whether to turn off the machines, then he decided to turn himself off.” A loss that left an immense void in Letizia’s heart, dragging her into a dark period of profound suffering: “For almost six months I no longer wanted to leave the house. I had bad thoughts, I didn’t want to wake up in the morning“.