INGRID (ENGLISH VERSION)

PROLOGUE

[*This story, even the prologue, is a fiction, although they might seem to be the author's personal views}.

Very often in life, we might go through several experiences and situations, which we can describe in the most suitable way for us. However, when asked to describe our feelings upon them, then we might remain speechless, not being able to recognise what exactly is all we feel. Of course, you can be aware of the time that you are happy or sad, but how could you describe this feeling, which leads in an immense pain in the lowest part of your stomach or when you feel you want to scream out of fear, but instead of that, you pretend you start to run away as fast as you can. And opening our mind's window and escaping, as I used to like saying, once upon a time, is not always the perfect solution to deal with difficulties and problems in everyday life.

Sometimes people who feel empathy towards us say that they undestand EXACTLY how we feel and that they had similar experiences. In that case, I'd like to cite a verse of a poem-song, written by my beloved pianist of the band Nightwish, Tuomas Holopainen, that goes like this: Stop saying I know how you feel! How could anyone know how another feels?. Well, in that point I absolutely agree with our Maestro. I believe that the prase I understand how you feel is the greatest hypocrisy towards our friends, while it's only us the ones that can be dominant of ourselves and we only know ourselves - and in some points, our psychotherapists.

Until a few years ago, I used to live being tortured by long years of anxiety as well as depression, mainly caused because I was thinking that nobody understands my soul and can't feel any empathy towards me and furthermore I used to believe that the others viewed me as a freak or somewhat odd. Moreover from 18 to 25,  I had this view about myself that I was worth only of writing music and stories and that I would never achieve anything in my life, because I'm immature, naive and useless and a person who survives only by being a burden to her parents. I gradually began to make all this part of my so-called self, thus I ended up not only underestimating everything I did and was, but also despising and cursing myself about how I have become like that. I would get up from bed and whenever I looked at myself in the mirror, if I ever dared to do it, I was thinking: How did you achieve to become like that, you motherfucking freak. People point at you in the street and say that you look like a retard alien. On the other hand, I was right to feel upset about myself, because suddenly I had this terrible turnabout to idleness and laziness. That is, while until 18, I used to lead a perfect life, I used to hang out with friends, I was creative, reading books and had millions of interests, I suddenly started taking trivial things for real, giving them importance and completely stopped believing in myself. And then, this backfired! While I stopped putting effort in all I was doing and started receiving failure after failure, I was thinking that my fears came true, and that I was indeed a zero, instead of a hero. These feelings, of course, are as well related to the fact that deep down I always had a low self-esteem and to what I was seeing while looking myself in the mirror. I admit that I never liked myself and nothing of what I had ''achieved''. Then I took it all of a sudden, when told I was likeable, because I was thinking: Why should I be worth as to be likeable?

My life has drastically changed since then. But I, myself, have also changed as a person. I have met lots of different people, have had more experiences in life and now, because of my own age, I can view life with different eyes, at least not in the same way that I did when I was 20 or 25. And of course, I have at last learnt that we have to accept a few situations as they are or change them, if we suffer because of them. Besides everything changes and makes progress in this world, and we are nothing more than a piece of this puzzle, called universe. More than a decade has passed that my whole life started to alter. I used to look back in the past and, in some way, I can't even recognise myself in past photos, but in some other ways I think: Of course, I know that cute little girl. That means, some things exist that are part of my identity and I could never leave them behind, such as my need to narrate everything in a fully detailed way, when writing, because the oral way is something I really suck in.

The reasons why I decided to write that story are millions. The most important, though, is that I am constantly asked about myself, my identity, my personal life, background etc. Thus for the first time I get the chance to talk to people about everything, before I die, and tell them even the faintest detail about my life, i.e. anything important to me, without having to hide myself from reality's face. I will talk about things, the way they are, without feeling any embarrassment nor fear.

Writing, for me, is a very important part of my life. It was always too hard for me to go and discuss personal topics with others or say I feel this and that. The latter has happened, although several times when enough is enough and I feel like I'm going to explode, if I don't get everything out. That's why also this usually happens in a way of rushing out and rave or frenzy, and I might scream out anything I feel, or not feel, so that I might have reached a point where I have said things I shouldn't have ever said. But usually the fact is not that I feel shy to talk to someone, but it is maybe that I cannot or will not do it. And this is related to everything I talked about in the beginning about feelings. You just don't know how to describe everything you feel.

On the other hand, writing for me is a perfectly easy task. I could fill up a whole notebook, either with stories, or my daily journal, easily at once. Very rarely did I have the experience of a writer's block and many people assumed that the reason why I had once stayed at home in Norway for almost a year and a half was caused by a writer's block, but this had exclusively to do with the fact that after 20 years of intensive work, I was just bored to write anything.

Therefore, in that point I'd like to end with the introductory note and start writing a tale, which is, however, real. There's no fable in it and anything I write hasn't any single piece of lie. So, let's embark on this journey and travel back to the past, 40 years ago, in a small village next to a lake.