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Comrade of mine, beggar girl, monstrous child! How little you care about the wretched women, and the machinations and my embarrassment. Join us with your impossible voice, oh your voice! the one flatterer of this base despair. ARTHURRIMBAUD
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SHE HAD BEEN TOLD repeatedly, and uninterruptedly, that running away was never a good idea. That you have to face pain, because, in the end, for better or worse it is our friend. That mending wounds is easy and natural if you have someone to hold your hand. That pain is only a phase of realisation, which is needed, which goes away if we believe in our successes. She, for a time, almost aspired to believe it. When, for no good reason, she did not know how to justify all the pain that accumulated in her chest every miserable day of her useless existence. She was certain that her would go away one day, because pain like that nobody deserved. But as always it was not true, it could not be true.
She was locked in, with only the sound of words pounding in her worn-out head, and no one had any intention of getting her out of that black tunnel. It was impossible for her to see any glimmer of light. No one was able to help her. And how could they? And why should they?
As the years passed, her mother and various psychologists, who had had the honour of visiting her, had come to the hasty conclusion that her problem was exclusively related to a period of adolescence and great change. Iris did not believe this at all. She felt so dirty, so broken, misunderstood by her own mother.
It was hardly enough to shout if her feverish voice was not heard by anyone. Perhaps because closing one's eyes in front of such events could somehow make the pain stop.
You see, I close my eyes, I do absolutely nothing to help you! It will go away, Iris! It will go away!
That morning (one like any other, she didn't keep count at all) she was woken up by the hysterical sound of water falling uninterruptedly from the sink tap because of a leak. It had been like that for weeks, and she hadn't bothered in the slightest to call some plumber to get it fixed, she recognised her utter listlessness even for those miserable gestures. She didn't like it, not at all, but she didn't feel like making up for it. She squinted her eyes, closing them in two narrow slits, avoiding the sunlight that had entered her room without permission two hours earlier. She only wished to sleep on that rainy day at the end of November.
