First chapter The first time it happened I was 13 and went to the secondary school the gym of which appears in the pic. It was a magical, enchanted experience. I was friends with Him, we talked for hours about the weird topics we shared interest in. The memories of the days with him on a school trip in Central Italy are still my dearest ones. I hadn’t learned the chameleonic tactics I would later exploit in excess to become the woman He was likely to want. I was myself. I became obsessed and in a way violent with subterfuges and blackmails, but it never crossed my mind to attempt to engineer my personality, as would later become the standard. Probably also for this reason I remember those days of imagined love as the most beautiful in my life. I also handled the disappointment relatively well. We shouted at each other once, after which I half attempted suicide and cried a lot, but some weeks after that I was reconciled with my fate. I attended his confirmation ceremony and afterwards put in his mailbox a letter in which I sincerely apologized and said goodbye. He said it was alright. We parted without hatred. 2019-03-12The need of support. The stubborn need for a very specific support – as if instead of being mobile humans we were trees rooted in the soil and you, you are the only one that can keep me from falling. 2019-03-13Blurred vision, the steam of desire fogs up the mirrors in others’ eyes and gestures. It’s warm and comfortable and I feel so good in the midst of that vapour. And when the light is there to guide you, who needs details anyway? 2019-03-13A great distance separates me from the warmth and completeness of intimate relationships. Relationships that can become like homes for their lucky owners, where they come back after a demanding day and find a feeling of belonging and peace. Built and maintained and rich and meaningful. I stand on the bare ground and watch them from a distance with envy. I had grand projects of palaces and skyscrapers for myself. But I was too poor and too ugly to stand a chance. 2019-03-14Like a grapevine to grow properly along my fellow grapevines I needed something to hold on to, in an almost parasitic way. I needed my body and mind to be in great part shaped by his hard, straight, disciplining presence. Only so I could have grown of some use to society. 2019-03-16The window of a library. When I first came in here I remember I was almost tipsy for the concentration of ideas, paths, opportunities, stories, possible worlds in its shelves. I jumped from one book to the other frantically satisfying all my obscure curiosities and drives. I wanted, I really wanted to make the most out of it. Unfortunately this enthusiasm was very, too soon replaced by another, more morbid and destructive type of enthusiasm that stayed with me during all those university years. And I forgot the books and I deliberately ignored them and sacrificed the cultivation of my mind in the name of the age old dream to find myself a man. Now that I start regretting it, and that no library like that is available for me anymore… 2019-03-18
