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 The soft blue blanket became rough and unpleasant to the touch.
Curled on the bed, the eyes fixed on the door opposite to her, a hand in her lap, the other one gripped to that piece of sky without life.
That sense of dissatisfaction she initially felt, little by little crept into her mind, into her ordinary life. Slowly, it became a part of her. She had lived together with it for years, there had been no problem; in that body, anything but perfect, there was place for both, both for the side full of hope and expectations towards the future and for the one which constantly warned her against big and potentially unrealizable dreams.
She slowly slipped on the bed, without thoughts, with dull eyes.
And yet she didn't know who she really was anymore: either the ever smiling and optimistic girl who daydreamed about the future and about the thousand opportunities life would offer her, or the sad and disillusioned one, so full of fears that she couldn't trust anybody and first of all herself?
She would have liked to cry; perhaps it would have ridded her of the sense of oppression, but her eyes didn't shed a tear.
The door was always in front of her. She perfectly knew what she would find if she opened it, she had known it for 15 years, but that was not the problem, it had never been that...
Syd closed her eyes, it was all vain. How could the others understand her mood, her fears if she couldn't even be totally conscious of them?
The bright green eyes stared again that forbidden object. The door was simply a symbol, the symbol of a world Syd was refusing because dangerous, on which she had no control.
She was stupid, she was aware of that. But a failure was not permitted to her, being refused by other people, hurled again in that room with the awareness of not being up to the task, of not having been chosen would be too painful.
Syd curled up again. That position had always made her feel safe, since she was a child and nobody wanted to play with her, to play her stupid games without any tool.
She gave the hint of a smile, she imagined what she could see beyond the door; not her parents, not her school mates, not all the people who would judge and condemn her if they didn't consider her worthy, but only a starry sky, the universe in which she would have loved to lose herself. Without worries, without that terrible sense of inadequacy. Millions of stars and a sweet music, nothing else more.
But it wasn't like that. The smile disappeared from Syd's face and a stare lost in the aseptic void without prospects took its place.
If I open that door, I'll have to accept all the possible evolutions of my life. Pleasant, bad, acceptable, unbearable.
Syd's heart started beating fast, if it could, it would have jumped out of her breast.
- What should I do?- Syd pushed more tightly the legs against the chest. Her eyes closed, the heart gripped by loneliness, by the sense of lost.
Tears glided softly on her cheeks, wetting the dark blue of the blanket.
No starry sky, no sweet music, only the sound of her sobs were filling the empty room. And that door, always there, always closed, which was waiting to be opened to show her the universe.
Story Info
- Story written by Lara and translated from the Italian by Marta, 2003
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