What We Carry

Hey there. I know we aren't usually willing to talk about trauma, especially since most of it has left us with all kinds of anxiety. I'm about to start a project in this direction, and I'm going to start with myself to help others gather the courage to share these memories—if they feel it's a good idea, and as long as it won't upset or hurt them.

Ghebosu Florin

​I’m going to talk about how I was manipulated for about two years during high school by a debt collector/extortionist from Giulești. One summer day, one of my high school classmates, whom I used to hang out with more often, took me along on his way home. At some point, we ran into an older guy who was waiting for us with a few others. Right after we were introduced, he offered to protect me in exchange for a protection fee. Since I was poor—especially because I wasn't getting any money from my parents anyway, and I was getting by through other methods back then (which apparently stuck with me, leaving my system a bit broken)—I realized on the spot that this was the darkest day of my high school years. ​Despite the fact that I kept proving to him my lack of money and my lack of interest in his protection, that guy kept threatening my life, even pretending to run me over with his car once. It turns out the protection fee was meant to protect me from him, obviously. Seeing that I was a braver guy and wouldn't give in to pressure (I was just poor, not brave)... he chose another way to use me. He practically forced me, under threats, to be his "runner" (săgeată). This meant I had to inform other classmates that he had arrived to collect the protection fee, and my job was to tell them to come down to meet him, as he couldn't enter the high school. ​Obviously, this ruined all my genuine friendships in high school and affected me deeply on a personal level. For two years, I was used this way. On top of that, I even went to his house to help him chop wood, and once he explained to me how to steal from a gas station so I could do it for him. Obviously, I never did that. Honestly, I don't remember exactly how I managed to get rid of him—whether he ran into trouble with the law or I just graduated high school and vanished. I can still remember the disappointment on my classmates' faces whenever I was forced to call them down...