Cafe Letters | Ethan Torchio

"The Initial Letter"

"No daughter of mine will ever be in a relationship with a woman"

"Then I guess I am no longer your daughter," she yelled back as she stormed out the front door.

A year ago today, Aurora's mother kicked her out of her house and since then she has struggled to live. Her family abandoned her, she was forced to drop out of university, and she didn't have a job at the time.

It was only a month ago that she began to piece her live back together. After serving a man in a restaurant, he introduced himself as an agent in the modeling industry and explained to Aurora that he would like for her to work with him. She went to the Elite Milan headquarters the next day and signed a year-long contract. Elite was kind enough to find her an apartment so that she could stop sleeping in a homeless shelter and buy her a phone, since she got rid of hers when she stopped paying the bill. All in all, Aurora finally saw a future for herself-something she hasn't seen for a while.

Stepping into a cafe with her notebook in hand, Aurora thought about those words from her mother. Sitting down at a table near the window, she remembered the pain she felt in her heart when she looked into her mother's eyes and only saw hatred staring back. She opened her notebook to a fresh page and like every other tough day, she wrote down her feelings.

How does a mother just stop loving their child? Especially for something as little as who they want to love? It has been exactly 12 months since I last saw her and still she and this question plague my mind. I tried to call my brother last week after spending two weeks building up the courage. He answered, probably because he didn't know my new number and the second he realized it was me, he hung up. I never got to find out how everyone was doing. Will I spend the rest of my life constantly wondering whether one family member is still alive? If another is getting married? Graduating school? It feels like that since no one ever calls to tell me anything. I want to go back to my home city when I get enough time off work but every time I think about knocking on the door of my old house, my hands shake at the thought of my mother opening the door and yelling at me and the more I think about it, the more my head begins to feel light and my heartbeat races.

I wonder if she thinks about me, about where I am now and how I've spent the last year. I could be dead and she would never know.

Sometimes I wish I never told her I was bisexual. I could have continued to keep my relationships with other women a secret and only told her about my boyfriends.

I would still have a family if I did.

Carli said that when I write these little entries that I should always end on something positive. She says it helps you feel a little better after writing all the negative stuff. So here is my positive: Since starting my new life, I have only been honest with myself and others about who I am. I don't pretend to be something I am not. So if getting kicked out had one upside, I would say it it that. I am the happiest I've been in a long time.
-Rora

She stared at the page in front of her and feeling content, ripped the page out and crumpled it into a ball. She knew she should just leave it in her notebook but when she crumpled the paper, it felt like she was crumpling her feelings so she could get rid of them.

Placing the ball of paper on the table, she went to the front of the store to buy another coffee. Standing in the line, Aurora felt her phone in her pocket buzz. She pulled it out and almost dropped it, her brother's name flashed across the screen and Aurora went outside the cafe to answer.

___________________________

So I think time-wise, this will take place between them winning Sanremo and them going to Eurovision because I have an idea for the interactions during ESC but I wasn't sure how far back to go.