*__This article appears under number 14 of __*vanity fair at newsstands until April 4, 2023
Teverything has happened in the meantime, when you go out of the fridge hidden behind the salad and onto the kitchen shelf. The antiretroviral drugs for HIV are now in a box that says ‘I love you’. “This is how I remember every morning what I never could: love myself,” says Elena Di Cioccio with shining eyes. It’s the first time he talks about his book Bad Blood, which marks the beginning of his third life, free of mysteries. In the first, Elena is happy as a child in her grandmother’s house and against the world in Milan in the house of her parents Anita and Franz, two flower children who married young and separated when they were six. “It was the late 70s, nobody knew exactly what a divorce and the children of the divorced are: It was a difficult childhood,” says Elena, her gaze wandering to Regina, the black dog with the white paws, who, as she says , “and my family”. Her second life begins at the age of 28 when she discovers that she is HIV positive and decides not to tell anyone until now except a few friends, then her parents and sister and some friends. “I threw myself into work on radio and television, and in the evenings I went home and was stunned not to think.”
How much emotion does he feel at the beginning of his third life?
“I am happy to finally be able to say: I am HIV positive. It’s a great liberation.”
Let’s start at the beginning: She says she was a child with an anxiety disorder and phobias, such as spiders and sharks.
“I also write that I continued to vandalize cars, houses, spray-painted walls, sprayed rocks in the windows, with friends we stole to steal.”
What did her parents tell her?
“I was a little girl living in too big a context, my needs came later and later. Very often my father was gone to play (Franz Di Cioccio is one of the founders of the Premiata Forneria Marconi, editor’s note) and at the end of the day nobody sat at the table and asked: How was it today? ».
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She is very honest about the story, she ignores the fact that she had alternative parents and a rock star father, a bit like her superhero.
“And I was also a hothead. In the book I don’t talk much about my father, never about his group, about my stepfather and stepmother I say three things that stay because there is a right to privacy that I don’t want to violate. I mainly talk about myself. In my story there is not one good one and the others are all bad. Everyone has to sweep their part of the sidewalk, I have a million tasks too».
Which?
«At 15-16 I was difficult, at 18 I was very angry, I did cocaine,
I had a linguistic quality that enabled me to start discussions and I wasn’t afraid of anything on the outside. Everything in it.”
Who saved her?
“My mother when I was 22. She had noticed people coming and going from the bathroom at a wedding. He looked me in the face and said, “You too, no dear, please don’t”. That day I was held by her disappointment, my embarrassment, the feeling of being a failure instead of being as cool as I thought I was. It took me months to quit, but I did it: I’m in the military when I make decisions. Never used again.”
Not even after working in show business?
“Of course I found myself in situations where coke was in circulation. But I didn’t give in. Today I don’t smoke, I don’t drink, I’m not even addicted to the yoga I practice».
He later reestablished a relationship with his mother. On the other hand, he writes of his father that “he wasn’t there”, even after confiding in him that he was HIV positive.
“My mother, in her own twisted and weird way and within her means, did everything she could for me. I can’t say much about my father, except that everyone has their own priorities. I didn’t realize until late that I had them, I was always on stage for others.”
At 28 she was found to be HIV positive. How did it happen?
“It was February 11, 2002 when I found out that I was infected through blood tests that I had every six to eight months, including the HIV test. It was troubling because at the time I was a fundamentalist I feared and was protective of STDs. I had also convinced my new friend to take the test. Too bad something went wrong between the last negative result and this boy».
She confided her status to important friends. One didn’t go well.
“There are those who welcomed me and those who just pretended to become executioners. Every perpetrator needs a victim and vice versa, with my below-zero self-esteem I was easy prey».
He beat her up and left her on the pavement.
“Yes, terrible. But we always focus on beating and little on psychological violence. Fearing that something is going to happen every day is a continuous tearing at your autonomy. I was at rock bottom.”
Did you think about suicide at the time?
«I remember well that day, sticking my feet out of the ledge of the building I grew up in, and her message: ‘Now I’m sending to all the numbers in my address book, which is almost identical to yours, that you’re a shitty HIV positive”. I felt like I had slipped down a tunnel, like those who lie about their degrees or who are in debt or get fired and don’t say it to the family, like in Carrère’s Adversaries» .
What made you take a step back instead of forward?
«An enlightenment: I would only have given this man power again, for the umpteenth time I would not have taken care of myself. It’s a pity that even if I left this man, I only changed my addiction: I started working like crazy and drugging myself with marijuana».
Are you referring to the time she was a hyena in a black suit?
“Yes, Velena by day, healthy and super powerful, and Elena by night, depressed, sick, stoned on weed”.
Didn’t anyone notice?
“NO. I staged security to hide from those who didn’t know and to reassure those who did”.
How much does such a secret weigh?
“It means you’re never honest with anyone, it’s like you’re not living. I was scared of being myself, I was scared of being left out of the game. But whose game is it?’
Everything has changed for AIDS since 2002.
«Of course I am the daughter of the stigma, of the prejudice of the last century, of the purple nimbus of pubblicità progresso. When I found out I was HIV positive, Freddie Mercury had died less than ten years ago and only Lady Diana understood how it was transmitted and went to hospitals to talk to AIDS patients.”
On the therapy side everything is different now.
“It’s easier to talk about because medicine has made great strides, a negative patient like me is not contagious. Now, after years of antiretroviral therapy, I can no longer get it, I can have sex without a condom and I could give birth naturally. Even though endometriosis has made my journey as a mother more difficult».
When did you decide to publish a book?
«I had fragments in different diaries, but during the lockdown it became necessary to organize my whole story. The inner change had already happened, I had left my agent, friends, completed an important story and I was preparing to leave Rome after 12 years to start anew in Milan in 2020.
But the pandemic has arrived.
“And loneliness, in an empty house. I wrote a first draft, but I sweetened it. I wrote a second one with everything in it. In the end I cleaned up because there were things that didn’t need to be said: the book that comes out is my raw story.
It was a form of therapy.
“A psychotherapist explained to me that trauma is like a wound that festers even when you’ve closed it. So you have to open it again, cut the skin open and it hurts, clean it and then close it again. The scar remains and you have to accept it. The book chronicles many of the detours I’ve taken for not processing my trauma.”
When did it stop drifting?
“The spring of change was my mother’s suicide in 2016”.
do you wanna tell
“A mother’s grief is always devastating, no matter how she dies. In my case, she was my only parent figure. She was depressed and I also confessed my fear of being dragged down with her: she greeted me, she understood». Break. “In the beginning you take care of the bureaucratic things and keep on your toes, then you get into another phase of mourning: That’s when I realized that we had the same dynamic, that I would have had a bad time if I hadn’t changed I had toyed with the idea of ending it several times. I decided to change something. Thanks to my work I had some money and my mother left me something so I could stop and take care of myself too».
Where did it start?
«In the country, in the house of my beloved grandmother, I started chopping wood, cleaning the garden, building cupboards. Do you know the things that are done in film montages?».
Yes, but nobody really makes the wooden cabinet.
“I do! Then at some point I said: I need my job. I’m an actress, a performer. But they were just great “I’ll call you back” and then nothing. It was a lot worse than I expected: Then luckily I found two wonderful agents and got back to projects, films, radio and now the book is finally out.
In the acknowledgments he writes: My apologies to those who didn’t know. Are you afraid of the reactions of others?
“No, because I’ve already done everything I could have done to myself: My story is a story of self-discrimination, what do I care if someone insults me? I’m on another level.”
Which?
“I’ve been very reluctant to tell the truth. But the truth sets you free. Jesus Christ says it in the gospel, although I’m a Buddhist. I accepted that the universe was telling me, “Now I’ll line up the deck, these are the cards. You don’t need to shuffle, they always come out, the health card isn’t included. Accept yourself, the illness, your mother, your family, the shame, the abandonment, the betrayal. Make peace”. I went all the way and passed it. Now I am also that person there, but not only».
What is the first thing you will like after this interview?
“Now that everyone will know, I don’t have to say, ‘I like you very much, but comma, I have to tell you one thing, two dots’ and question the reaction. Anyone who wants to be in my life does so voluntarily.”
And the medicine box stays in sight.
«Yes, even if I now want to change my therapy and take the injection that allows me not to have to take pills every day. Have a nice trip with the new Elena».