MY FAIRY CORNER

It is not true that I forget people. I just put them in a corner of my life that I will never look at again. I put them in that corner simply because I will take with me only the experience that meeting them left me. I don’t forget people, quite the contrary. I remember them very well, all of them! And it is precisely because I do not forget that some continue with me and others remain in that corner which is the “Past”! Nothing is forgotten and nothing is canceled, but there is a rule that I love to respect first and is to choose who becomes “Past”, who deserves to be “Present” and who will be honored to belong to the “Future”.

I’ve spent my life measuring words, thinking about how to move so as not to hurt others, anyone else, apologizing even when it wasn’t needed. To speak in a low voice, to keep the door open for others, to ask for ‘permission’, to smile at every crossed look, to always say thank you, to apologize for the inconvenience. To knock even where there was no door. To put myself aside, to give up, to set aside my priorities to make room for those of others. To repeat “it doesn’t matter” so as not to give thoughts to those close to me, even when it mattered, and a lot. To start any speech with the premise “Maybe I’m wrong”, to reach out to help someone get up and then end up with their asses on the ground, alone; with no hand outstretched in front. So now I crouch in a corner with my back to the wall and my knees to my chest watching life consume others. And I remain motionless, without apologizing.

We don’t notice when we lose hairpins, or a pen. We don’t care that much when we miss a bus, a train, a plane. We don’t mind when we lose math time for an assembly, or when we lose the desire to study for a question. We don’t give a damn about these things when we experience really important losses on our skin. Because losing a pen is not like losing a person, getting a bad grade because you haven’t studied is not like losing a friendship because you have left it out. Any lost bond upsets your life. Each person who enters us and then leaves leaves a void, which you may not feel, but inside will mess everything up and you will never go back to being the same person as before.

Stop for a moment, close your eyes and think. You are at the theater enjoying yourself, someone enters and starts shooting. They make you line up and, one by one, they shoot you calmly. Your wife is in front of you, she is being called … kneels. You hope it’s a nightmare, you hope they will change their mind, you hope they will save her, but they don’t. The person you have loved for a lifetime, with whom you have built dreams and projects and created a family, disappears in less than 10 seconds. And then it’s your turn. All the sacrifices, the struggles, the years of study to get that job that gives you satisfaction, everything vanishes in the face of death, where you have nothing to do with it. This morning you woke up, you will surely see those corpses on TV, while most of them, the victims, collapsed to the ground, did not even have time to understand what had happened.