No weakness, no implications.
All I have is my music, which is my only escape, and of course my friends.
The rest of it can’t touch me.
—
ALEX
I’m back in Dublin, my city and the place I’ve always wanted to live. I’ve missed it terribly in these years, missed the streets that saw me grow up, the city smells, the sky and its thousand varying shades.
I applied for a part-time job in the Trinity College library and will be starting in a few days.
I love books, and I’ve been reading since I was a girl. I got started on comics, then graduated to love stories for teenagers before growing to appreciate the classics.
I threw myself into books to escape reality, a reality that I cannot accept.
I don’t go out much and I don’t have a big group of friends. It’s not that I’m antisocial, it’s just hard to have friends when the majority of things people of your age do and dream about doing are off limits to you.
I lived with my mother in Limerick for the last few years but I always wanted to come back here. My mom wasn’t very enthusiastic about me moving back here, she would have preferred for me to continue living with her, but my health brought me back; here I can have everything I need.
My father is very apprehensive: he sends me an sms every two hours to make sure I’ve eaten, that I’ve taken my medicine, to make sure I’m still breathing.
If it was up to him, I’d be living under his careful watch twenty-four hours a day, I never would have gone to university and gotten my degree and more than anything, I would not have gotten a job. But in the end he had to give up those ideas in the face of my stubbornness to live my life as I wanted to, even though he had this desperate desire to keep me close by.
Despite everything, I’m not a sad or depressed person, nor am I one who roars with laughter. I just try to remain active as much as I can.
Andlive.
My dad is fantastic, even if he can be a bit suffocating at times. He can’t help it. I’m his little girl and always will be and he can’t accept that there’s something wrong with me.
In his eyes, I’m perfect and he lets me feel that approving love every day, in every instant of my life. It’s not bad having a dad like that, but sometimes I can’t breathe under the weight of it, especially when he forces me to respond to his messages; if I didn’t reply, he would call all of the hospitals in the city, the police and maybe even the fire department.
My mother was more understanding and let me have more freedom. She tried to leave me my space and not to be excessive in either her affection or her concern for me, and I was grateful for that.
The truth is that she was the strong one in the family. She never lost the faith, never went into panic mode when I wasn’t well, didn’t cry all night, was not hidden away like my father was.
She listened to him, consoled him and reassured him. She encouraged him to let me go, to let me live my life my way, so that if some day something unfixable happened to me, she didn’t want me to have any regrets.
My parents hadn’t loved each other for a while and when I went through what I did, it was just about the final straw in their breaking relationship. She left and took me with her and he remained here, alone. She then met someone who didn’t know anything about this aspect of her life, a person who didn’t cry constantly or spend the night standing in front of my door. Someone who put her above everyone else, and who didn’t invest all his energy into taking charge of his daughter’s life and her needs.
My parents have a good relationship despite their separation, and I’m lucky for that. Dad understood, he understands everybody.
He’s such a good guy he never gets mad at anybody, even if they hurt his feelings. The only things that exist in his world are me and his Coffee Shop business, now owned by the third generation in this family, even though I think we’ll be the last to run it. After all, there’s no one else to leave it to.
As far as I’m concerned, I’m fine with what I’ve got. I don’t have big plans for the future, it’s enough for me to have this job and my daily activities free of trauma.
I don’t expect much. I don’t have hopes of meeting a man, having my own family, traveling or anything else that goes beyond the ordinary things in life.
I live waiting for something to happen, aware that things could all fall apart suddenly.
I am alive, but I’m not living, I’m a spectator of others’ lives and can’t do anything but wait day after day, all I can do is just wait for the last day to come.
