The tale of Zayra [in Review]

02. NIGHTMARES AND MIGRAINE

||And he practiced continuously
To develop that latent talent
Hidden in the folds of the mind||

Extraterrestre - Eugenio Finardi

×~×~×

From the end of October, a month has passed, a month spent with Antony. It's been a while since we started hanging out. We're in that period where from mere acquaintances, we are building a stronger relationship.

We're getting to know each other, and we can define ourselves as friends. We go to school together every day, support each other, go to the movies, and he took me to the library to study.

One day, due to monotony, we decided to take a trip out of town and go to the park. At that moment, there was an archery competition, and he let me try a new experience. For a few weeks, he helped me when I had panic attacks, the worst ones, in the midst of silence. They catch you off guard and stab you in the stomach, and that "pain" never ends. Quietly, it slowly gnaws at you from the inside, and as you wait for its end... all you can do is try to breathe... Breathing, as if someone is suffocating you, and even if you try to scream, you are silenced by another sharp pain in your gut.

Plus, there's anxiety, which comes like a bolt from the blue and stuns like a sudden slap from someone you love. "Anxiety, anxiety... please, go away. You're destroying my soul, my life... I want you to stop stabbing me when I least expect it," I kept repeating, but it was obvious it wasn't listening. "Leave me, you've attached yourself to me, to my bones. You've become marrow without me asking, you've taken possession of me without me realizing it... and I still don't understand why you've become a part of my existence, why are you here? What do you want from me? What do you want to teach me? What do you want me to understand?" Questions, questions, and more questions, to which only silence and pain repeated themselves. An invisible pain, nonexistent to some.

There was a period, almost two years ago, when I didn't talk to anyone, didn't want to see anyone. I wanted to be alone, under the covers of my dark room. Dark because I closed the door and pulled down the blinds so that no ray of light could filter through the cracks.

Sister Cristina told me that what I was going through was temporary, that if I wanted, I could see the light at the end of the tunnel. But the only light I saw was that of a candle in a church on the day of the funeral. My funeral, my mother's, my father's, Bastet's. And I cried, cried endlessly.

My head wouldn't stop talking, spewing out words and phrases so heavy that I wanted to silence it forever: "now that nobody sees you, everyone is better off without you", "even your parents didn't want you, see that nobody cares about you", "you're just a burden to them", "they think you're crazy." I felt useless, a weight. I thought I wasn't up to the situation and the people. I started to feel ashamed and didn't want to be seen, and the worst part is that, according to my head, people's judgment is "this is just victimhood," but I wasn't doing it on purpose.

For a while, after Gianluca left weeks ago, I cried (but not for him), didn't eat, didn't sleep, and if I slept, I slept all day. Beatrice would come every day to drag me out of bed to get up and go to school, but I didn't want to.

I would take Bastet, and we would sleep together; during that time, she was the only one I wanted. Everyone at the orphanage tried to stay close to me, but I pushed them away not to drag them into my abyss.

Together with an expert, I started the first journey: to discover myself, my passions, my dreams, and what I wanted to do at that moment. Because that's where I had to be, in the present. I had managed to emerge little by little, without medication, but only with the help of those who wanted my good. I had embarked on a new journey: new school, new routine, new mental order. An evolution of myself.