I MET THE WORDS OF A MAN

Short story of a former princess.

Once upon a time I spent an ordinary petty bourgeois life in a quiet town in the province of Lazio. The “Lines” I had diligently always followed them all: high school, graduation, work, marriage, children … Yet I had the clear feeling of surviving inside a castle, a bit like that of fairy tales, golden, reassuring, apparently perfect but in reality cold and dark. Of course I had not ended up there by chance in that castle, I had chosen it, nothing seemed to have been imposed on me but I felt I had built a prison in which often the pain, the emptiness of ancient failed relationships, of disappointed hope, anguish, the inability to respond to the requests for love of my dearest affections, sneaked into the secret passages making me die every day a little …..

Like so many young women of my generation I had been raised with milk and Cinderella fairy tales, a modern Cinderella who had to work, be cultured, intelligent, full of interests… but always a Cinderella who, once found prince charming, would have achieved the maximum of her expectations. In my fairy tale, however, something had not worked, because although I played the part of the princess well, in reality I still remained a fighter, even when my attempts at rebellion were without identity, even when they failed, even when the violence of my illness brought me back to the starting point, because I felt a strong  will not to let me live but to find a real human way that was mine and would really allow me to realize myself in the world and in the affections.

Perhaps this is why one day I set out on a journey, to look for a new way that would help me reject old, induced thoughts, bourgeois cages that in exchange for reassuring tranquility ask for the very high price of anaffectivity. It was then that I met the words of a man. They spoke of care, of a healthy birth that everyone could recover, of the possibility of feeling good and doing it together with others, not alone. They immediately seemed to me new, warm, revolutionary words and I tried to let them in … it was not easy because they forced me to face the ancient witches that I myself had brought to my castle, also giving me, however, the beauty of finding the lost wings, the feeling of the body, a new horizon to be, to think about the world and relationships. Meeting the words of that man allowed me to rewrite my story and today that my Cinderella no longer exists, when I look at my daughter, I know that I have never told her certain fairy tales and maybe, instead of the “edges” to follow, she can choose to paint her way with a thousand lines and a thousand colors.

Sara Lazzaro