My name is Billy...

My name was never Eric. That was merely a mask, a name given to me at birth, presumably because my parents had no chance of knowing I was not an Eric, and I would never be an Eric.

As I grew up I toyed around with figments of my imagination, made-up personalities (or "imaginary friends", as some people would classify them) which helped me cope with the lack of friends, which was due to my introverted personality. I would often write stories and draw pictures of these personalities; I needed something to remind myself that they were there, and subconsciously I needed something to run to when all the fun and games of childhood turned into pre-teen fears and anxiety, and later teenage problems...You must know the drill.

All of these "games" I took to as a child ended abruptly one day when my brother's friends decided to raid my room for a cheap thrill and found all of my creations. I came home from the dentist to find a herd of coca-cola-fueled 13-year old boys laughing on the floor of my room and calling me a "schizo" (how did they even manage to know what that is?), a "loony", all sorts of names on account of my creations. I guess they could never understand the mind of an artist as myself.

The worst thing is I never got any support from my parents, not one sentence or comment which could reassure me and keep up my hopes, not one hug to make the pain welling up in my 8-year old body go away. I never really understood how these humans I was forced to live with functioned, and, up to day, I still haven't figured it out.

However, I refused to give up and conform with the normal child activities of the time; I was never going to be a part of the whole Power Ranger cult, or subdue to the over-obsessive purchase of violent and steroidic-looking action figures, I would never be a normal kid. This is why I dug under my bed until I found what was left of my made-up people and rummaged through what little art I had left. That is when I found Billy Buttonhead. I remember he had been one of my favourite creations, along with Chamomile Sue (who had the power to shoot boiling hot chamomile tea from her tongue).

Billy was not particularly good-looking (as an 8-year old, I wasn't exactly what you could call a revolutionary artist), but he was kind and caring, and he kept mostly to himself, like me. He was not a trend-setter, nor was he a follower of trends; Billy was his own person, someone who did not define others and was, in turn, not defined by anyone else. Years later, I came to realize that I had modeled Billy to what I was, or actually hoped to become, not what my parents had tried to make of me (as they had, numerous times, tried to "help" me become a sociable person by sending me to summer camps and register me for sports, clubs and after-school activities).

Nobody knew about Billy, of course. I kept him as my inside self, the artist, the brain in the head, the soul in the body. This was not to say I didn't have friends at all; I did keep a few friends close and was nice to people in general, but no one has found about my secret...Yet.

Billy is what makes me write, what makes me want to live life, because Eric isn't the one who takes in all the colours, smells and tastes that life sends my way, it's Billy who takes in everything and throws it into poems, stories and, sometimes, drawings.

I could not live without Billy, I could not be who I am, because I am not Eric. I was not born to be a soccer player, a camper, an Eric; I was born to be a writer, I was born to be a Buttonhead Billy.