Sitting on the couch watching at the Christmas tree lights that illuminate intermittently. It’s snowing outside. Right now I am thankful to live far from the city center. In the driveway of my neighborhood a few cars occasionally pass. Only a few cars. Christmas. New year’s Eve. The holidays.
To cast away this wistful thinking, with a phone card I draw a white line of cocaine that I snort fast and furiously, as I’ve been doing so for days, since I answered that call, that call that I had expected for days, “Mom ….hi. I can’t come for Christmas Mom … I’m staying with Dad. It’s better. So you can take care of yourself Mom … Do you understand? I love you. Bye. “
My daughter.
The shot of coke rises. Clenching my jaw, clenching my fists I get up and go to the window. The patio is covered with snow. On the grass, whitewashed and scattered, the remains of the gifts that I had prepared for her, for my little girl and that I have now destroyed blinded by anger and pain caused by those words. I’m crying right now. I am crying because that pain does not pass despite cocaine, despite the alcohol, despite the drugs. I would like to escape or die or fall apart. I would like to be blind, deaf and heartless. I would like to slip into a black hole never to come out again. I would like to delete my existence, along with all my memories. Sometimes I wonder why I have sold my life so cheaply? Who am I? Where are the people I love? My house is just an empty box where I locked myself in where, selfishly, I wanted to bring my daughter, she, like a tiny firefly in the dark, the only glimmer that lights up my life. But not even her, my daughter, wanted to stay with me.
I decided to have my daughter and I wanted to give her everything I hadn’t been given. A doting mother, a comfortable home, a serene existence. But I hadn’t been able to give her any of this. Obsessed with the fear of living as my mother had always lived, working hard without being able to afford anything, I started my life over the top. Men, money, drugs, sex, alternating transgression with despair. I spent years drunk and on drugs, either going from one party to another, or locked in a room alone with my grief.
All the people I had met along the way were unhappy but I thought they were doing fine, in certain moments they all seemed very happy … they danced, laughed, drank, and flirted. Evidently my and their unhappiness was agile enough to evaporate into the glasses of champagne and glide away along the dance floor, over the parking lot with their luxury cars. No, back then I didn’t felt surrounded by damned souls … I wasn’t thinking about my daughter that came into my bed finding it empty and cold. I had no idea of what I was getting into.
When I decided to come into a community I knew I had been risking to lose my daughter, I finally understood that I was also risking to lose my life.
I started everything all over again. For the both of us.
