Don Lorenzo: We all come from childhood (Part 1)
In fact, I have so many questions about Lorenzo that I'm just- I'm not ready to let him go. I love him so much. I really hope that someday we'll get a novel/chapter with him and Snuffy, because otherwise, the world would be too unfair.
He's good, caring, funny, the best, and generally-
Okay, this is where I'll stop and get to the point haha
(Here somewhere I'm looking too deep, somewhere I'm ignoring the farcical setting of Blue Lock. A lot here is based on my own experience (I also was thrown out of home by my parents when I was 13). Some things of course will be misinterpreted since the whole truth is known only by Kaneshiro-sensei. Also, consider the fact that most of the things described here are unconscious)
1. Relationships/Attachment
Lorenzo is a very loving and grateful person.
It is evident to anyone that his relationship with Snuffy is imbued with warmth and trust. Lorenzo genuinely loves him, he is willing to do anything for him.
Even his conversation with Barou is initiated in order to get him on Snuffy's side, going through all of his traumas and 'exposing himself' to Barou. Making himself vulnerable, because telling someone that you were once abandoned by your parents is like showing them that you have a flaw that made the most important people in your life disgusted with you. That you're wrong. It's like pointing at your chest and saying 'here's the heart, if you want to hurt me, hit me here'.
And he's doing all this to help Snuffy.
And it's obvious that Snuffy wouldn't have asked him to do that - it was Lorenzo's initiative. He loves him very much - even though Snuffy isn't perfect, and of course has made his mistakes (which you can't avoid when you're in your late twenties picking up a teenager off the street after a friend's suicide and career collapse). But that's something we'll get back to a little later.
Lorenzo doesn't pay attention to any of this - he doesn't care what else Snuffy could have given him. He's grateful for what Snuffy has already given him.
Speaking of his relationship with Barou, it's obvious that they both care for each other equally. Barou isn't rude to him (well, 'not rude' like classic Barou), he accepts him despite all the quirks (I'll come back to that too a bit later), and Lorenzo feels it. For him, Barou is a 'Snuffy' type of person, perfectly accepting and gentle, without the endless pull-push in affection. They're like a reference point that helps ground and gain confidence in the relationship with both of them.
Lorenzo is also quite open in his affections. He has a certain authority within the Ubers, giving them the command to "get to work". He doesn't avoid people or push them away in the fear of intimacy and the pain that follows, but reaches out to them himself. In doing so, he shows no visible fear of being rejected - on the contrary, he behaves as freely and even strangely as possible, without trying to adjust his behaviour to society's standards; behaviour that would make him 'his own'. Remember this moment, because it will be important a bit later.
He adores both Barou and Snuffy so much because they accept him without question. Like, you're like this, so what?
They accept him absolutely.
But why is that acceptance so important to Lorenzo?
2. Fear of abandonment.
I think it's redundant to say that having experienced this as a child, it's impossible to become a person with a completely healthy type of attachment. His parents, the people who brought him into this world, who were supposed to teach him how to live, feel and love, abandoned him in the street alone, leaving him to survive and starve. In doing so, apparently keeping his other two brothers for themselves. Lorenzo was the only one left behind. Can you imagine how a child feels after something like that? If they were kept and I was abandoned, I'm definitely broken, I'm disfigured on some primal level, I'm always worse.
I was already born wrong.
The fear of rejection is something that is 99% likely for Lorenzo to have.
Remember his motto: "Give me a job. Give me money. Give me love." What can a man whose most basic desire is love be afraid of? That he'll lose it.
Can you imagine what that does to the psyche? After such events, one can't help but question oneself. What did I do wrong? Why did things happen the way they did? If I had behaved differently, if I had stayed away from my parents, if I had been more obedient, would I have been kept?
Was it all my fault?
And he lived alone with these thoughts not for a day or two - but probably for years. He says that he lived this life already when he 'was little'. These thoughts may have been reinforced afterwards because he began to realize the moral wrongness of what he was doing to survive (stealing). The psyche can be very persistent in convincing us of bad things: you should have found another way, you let everyone down, Snuffy picked up someone who wasn't worth it.
Beyond that, as much as I like to portray Lorenzo and Snuffy as parent and child in my writing, it's likely that their relationship is more of a friendship. Even the graffiti caption in the moment where Snuffy picks him up says "who finds a friend finds a treasure".
Snuffy probably didn't live with Lorenzo for a long time - I think he picked him up, fulfilled his wishes, and then sent him to treatment and helped him with his football career. That's already a huge gift, and even more so for Lorenzo. They kept in contact, they saw each other often, they probably called each other.
But at the same time Snuffy was playing at a football club and winning trophies, which you can't do if you're not 100% invested. He was on constant travelling between countries and games. He just didn't have time to always be with Lorenzo - and it's likely that Snuffy (who wasn't given the "How to deal with a teenager abandoned by his parents and saved from starvation" manual) might not have thought about it. It would have been fine on his end. Why? Because Lorenzo, especially as a child, would not have shown him that anything was wrong - remembering the way his parents had thrown him out, he wouldn't have let it happen again. He wouldn't talk about his problems, he wouldn't impose, he'd do anything just to please. Just to be comfortable. Maybe even blaming himself for having those needs, because Snuffy already seemed to have done a hundred times more for him than he should have (from his point of view, of course).
He'd do anything to avoid causing trouble - only for not being left behind.
Imagine - getting someone's love, and not being able to feel it all the time? Constantly losing the only person who ever genuinely loved and cared for you and gave you a chance to start a new life, seeing him off on flights and likely for seasons to other clubs (it's not known how long Snuffy played for the Ubers, but it's likely he was under contract with them and then the club loaned him out to leagues in the countries where he wanted those trophies for Mick. Otherwise the chronology between Mick's death, Lorenzo's find and Blue Lock seems too compressed). It's in some ways even scarier than not feeling love at all ever. Because it's far worse to get love and then lose it again and again.
Even so, Snuffy showed him what it feels like to be loved. He gave him purpose and a new life. He gave him an understanding of that healthy basic need that Lorenzo is so eager to fill - the need for love.
But then we look at his behaviour and we have... questions. Why is Lorenzo so embarrassing? Why does he act so defiant? Why doesn't he adjust to others like, for example, Isagi and Hiori, who were also afraid of being alone? It would seem that if you're weird, you'll never be accepted. If you don't fit in, you won't be loved. Yes, we can say that he just still doesn't fit into social norms because he missed the moment of childhood adaptation to this world, and just doesn't know how to do it. But as the conversation with Barou shows, he is capable of being completely serious in the right moments. He consciously behaves the way he is, without holding back.
We can say that Snuffy showed him that he could be loved for nothing, for himself, whatever he was. But still, after experiencing so many rejections Lorenzo would either fixate on Snuffy alone (only he cares about me, and no one else) or still subconsciously withdraw into a passive role in human relationships. Again, making himself comfortable.
But why does he behave like this in spite of this - making jokes about money, meowing and barking (I'm sorry), not shying away from making jokes about rivals and acquaintances? Why is he so uncomfortable for them?
Because the best defence is offence.
Most likely, when he was a kid, Lorenzo did tried to adjust to his parents. And obviously, even if he succeeded, they still ended up abandoning him. His strategy didn't work, and then it probably didn't work while living on the streets either. He tried to secure his safety, to make sure of it, but then he was tossed out of it.
And that's been imprinted on his memory.
It's both a defence mechanism on his part and an unconscious demonstration of "here I am, this is how bad I am". He was already rejected when he tried to fit in - so why try now, especially when he has Snuffy?
Think of how pejoratively he talks about himself. How he smiles broadly when he talks about his tragic past. He's being deliberately defiant - yes, I believe only money has power in this world, yes, I was a street rat. Why does he say this, if in order to be accepted he has to hide his flaws? Yes, the past may be impossible to hide, but other things?
Because if he says it himself, and if he laughs about it himself, showing that he doesn't care, it won't hurt him so much when others will talk about it.
He literally shouts with his appearance - that's how I am! I'm ugly inside and out, I'm a mess, I'm wrong! I'm impossible to love!
Because if he shows it first, he can endure it when someone else says it.
Are you saying I only care about money, Mihya? Ha, and I already know, I've already said it myself!
In a relationship, Lorenzo is prepared in advance for the fact that sooner or later this, in his opinion, ugly and vile essence in him, because of which his parents abandoned him, will be recognised, and he will be rejected again. And sets himself up a safe base so that this time it won't be as painful for him as it once was with his parents.
He adores Barou and Snuffy so much precisely because they accept this ugly shell without question. Like, here you are, so what? Sure, he probably doubts them on bad days too, but they're still like stable lighthouses for him.
So we've covered why Lorenzo acts so openly and perhaps even defiantly. It's a perpetual test of boundaries and a way to protect himself from rejection - how much of this will you take from me? Are you sure you're okay with this? Think again. I'm uncomfortable for you. I will always be.
But there's one thing that doesn't fit with his behaviour, even with that said.
His "There's nothing in this world money can't buy."
He is obsessed with money, explicitly saying that everything in life can be bought with it (of course, this is not necessarily true - sometimes people lie about themselves as well). He judges players by their stakes, and even calls Raichi worthless. But it seems that the love he longs for this much cannot be bought. And Lorenzo is well aware of this - 'money' and 'love' go separately in his motto.
Dissonance, isn't it? Seems strange for a man like him.
So we move on to the next part of the analysis.
3. A price of the man.
I'm actually very interested in Lorenzo's real relationship with money. I'm sure that because of this terrible background he is quite impulsive (I'll tell you more about this in the second part of the analysis), and more specifically impulsive in his purchases. Even if we're talking about ordinary ones - buying a more expensive juice in a shop, choosing an ice cream not on sale, accidentally buying an adult public transport ticket instead of a youth one. Any expense perceived by the psyche as 'unnecessary' must be met with guilt - either suppressed and ignored, or vivid. Because the psyche has no switch between 'here' and 'then'. It's used to reacting to trigger events according to a certain script that once perhaps helped Lorenzo to survive by avoiding unnecessary expenses. Except now everything seems to be fine, right? Money's there.
But you can't explain it to yourself so easily.
Let's go back to Lorenzo's statements about money and his attitude to it. He quite logically, after such a life, believes that money solves many problems, if not all of them.
But this stance of his goes a little further than the prices of things and services.
Remember how he was introduced to us as a character? He remembers the price of every player, he mocks Raichi, he's sarcastic in response to Kaiser's claim.
He asks - Michel, if I defeat you, will I be worth more than you?
Lorenzo still believes that people have some mythical 'value' that he alone cannot grasp. His brothers were more valuable than he was. His parents' lives without him were more valuable than he was. Every person who passed him in the street was more valuable than him.
He believes that on his own he was worth nothing - and that's why he was abandoned.
Remember what he says about his little self? Good-for-nothing. But it's not true. Lorenzo was a kid who just couldn't do anything under those circumstances. He didn't need to be good for anything - he needed to grow up and be a happy little kid. And he was robbed of that.
But he still doesn't accept it, mocking it.
The whole Mr Worthless thing with Raichi is an obvious reference to himself. Because he too, from his point of view, was once worthless. I'm worthless, so I don't matter and I'm nothing.
But why is this 'worth' of his so important to Lorenzo, especially now, apart from those people?
Because little children have nothing but themselves, and can give nothing but themselves and their love. But Lorenzo knows that he-child was not enough. He was worthless. He was not loved for who he was. But his brothers were loved. They were 'valuable'.
And this belief remained sitting inside him at a very deep level.
And, believing that on his own he is not worth love and never will be, what can he do but think of a way to still get it?
The way out for him is to 'earn' that love.
In fact, though certainly not intentionally, Snuffy's words probably played a role here as well. A deal, salvation in exchange for a football playing.
This only strengthened these beliefs Lorenzo had about himself and about living with a system of people's 'value'.
Snuffy didn't just give him 'money, work and love'. He gave him a way to earn it all. He gave him a way to gain this mythical 'value' that would guarantee his safety - that he would not be abandoned.
On his own, he didn't deserve to be saved.
But what did deserve saving was his talent.
The only thing that Lorenzo thought was valuable about him.
Snuffy's whole philosophy with football - a job that you earn your value with and see it in the form of rates and rental prices - actually suits Lorenzo very well. Because he doesn't feel valuable on his own - only in relation to achievements. And so this semi-comedic treatment of others as money is actually a terrible reflection of his same treatment of himself.
The more he's worth (again, the scene with Kaiser and "will I be worth more than you") the safer he feels.
Lorenzo is sure that he will be abandoned as soon as he makes a mistake and loses his 'value'. And the only way to avoid that is to stay 'valuable'.
Yes, rationally he probably knows that Snuffy won't abandon him. That Ubers care about him. That he's no longer the helpless child he once was. That he can defend himself now.
But we have not just rational intelligence, we also have an emotional one. And the latter continues to throw out familiar beliefs about ourselves, formed from childhood and youth, to any trigger, and influence all our thoughts and actions.
And sometimes it is simply not possible to fight it alone.
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