THE START.
As any normal Sunday morning, I was lying on my parent's couch watching anything my dad would put on the flat screen. It was like a ritual by now; to hang out just enjoying the time together after all the days we don't see each other thanks to my busy life. It has been hard for me, to live away from them; but I guess it's part of growing up and no one said we should like it.
I had my head resting on my dad's lap while he stroke my hair; he always did that to me as a child. I was such a daddy's girl. At the moment, we were watching some British soccer game and getting ready for the football match that was about to start in a couple of hours. My dad, my big Master Jedi. He is the one I have to blame for my sports addiction. From all my friends, I'm the only one who's always checking on scores and times, always eyeing my wrist-watch waiting impatiently for the next match to begin.
When I was a kid, my dad used to work from 6am to 9pm, Monday to Saturday. Every night, when he arrived, all he craved for was his bed to crash on and forget about another suck-ish day at work. All that, the same story, six days in a row, without interruptions, not even vacations; but when Sunday came around, I didn't care what I had to do, my goal was to stay by his side every possible second. While my three siblings passed their day washing my dad's truck trying to earn a beach day, I sat with him in front of the TV and learned all he had to say about sports, which was a lot. Sometimes he thought me about soccer, others about tennis, or football or, once in a while, F1 racing driving.
Years went by and the day my dad had to stay at home arrived. He had a hard time with it, he was not used to be at home, so he felt locked in a cage and his only scape was talking. I did all I could to help him with that but it wasn't much anyway, school was taking all my time away and it fell on my mom the responsibility to take care of him.
Our closeness grew a lot and we couldn't stay apart when a match or a race was on the TV. By then, I already had my favorite teams and sportsmen and, even when he was a 100% soccer man, I became a 100% F1 girl.
When I turned 18, I moved out my parent's house to a place I shared with a schoolmate, it was nearer the Universität Hamburg, my alma mater, and I could save a lot of time by living there. But that meant I had to find a job to be able to pay the rent. Like every movie cliché, I started working serving tables. It was a small dinner like a mile away from College, which got over-crowded twice per day. Good paid, lots of work. I stayed there for ten months, till my feet told me they couldn't handle another day anymore.
Next, I worked in a sports bar two blocks away from my place. It was a nice hole full of college students and an occasional stranger. There, I could follow all my scores and matches at day till I made a reputation as the walking-newspaper. I kept working there for the rest of my first year, all the second and almost all my third, when I had to leave because of an argument I had with the new manager, a bastard named Bron that knew as much about sports as me about thermonuclear fusion.
Suddenly I found myself jobless and with a lot of bills to pay. Time was getting short and I couldn't find a decent place where I could work and still study enough time to get a good grade. That's when my parents talked to me and offered to pay for my rent in exchange of visits every weekend for the rest of the scholar year. I couldn't say no, and not because of the deal itself, but because of the look in my father's eyes. He wanted that time together and I wasn't about to deny it to him.
The rest of the year was a good one for me, my grades got better now that I had more time, I started dating a cool guy that understood my family situation, and I was about to graduate. However, the peak of the year was in November, when my favorite racing driver won the Formula 1 World Championship. It was an excellent race there on Interlagos. It was red on the podium and he got to drink from the top. Kimi Räikkönen had become a Champion. Little I knew about the future back then.
A little bit after I graduate, I applied for a lot of places to either got a job or do internships. I wasn't getting good feedback and was about to quit those chances when I got a call. Apparently, my application plus a recommendation from one of my teachers got me to be the new intern in the Public Relations area on the Scuderia Ferrari team. I can't even express how stunned, happy, scared and nervous I was. This was fate telling me I didn't choose a wrong sport to follow and this was my chance to get and stay on the market. I was going to give my 100% to make it big and get a job, not only an internship. It cost a bit though; I had to move out to Maranello, Italy and my boyfriend thought it was a risky movement he wasn't about to follow. How fool of him if he thought I was about to give up on my dream for him.
However, life showed me how funny and tricky it can be for there is where my worse nightmare appeared. A knight covered and snow and flames. All heart and wisdom. Pride and vanity. I learned to love him more as a driver but I couldn't help but to loathe the very sound of his name. That year, 2009, became the hardest one I can remember. Because of him. Till today.