Alina

And now she sees him crying.

She is standing, and he is lying on the ground.

He punches the air, but finds nothing to hit.

Even the couch is too far away, and there’s nothing he can use to vent his anger. That rage stays trapped inside him, so he screams and folds in on himself, as if trying to vomit out the pain. But he can't, and his cries choke in his throat.

Alina almost feels pity for the body writhing in front of her. It’s the first time she feels no fear at all. He moves around, searching for something with weight, something to make him feel his own existence. She can’t stand the smell of beer and smoke filling the room anymore. She wants to leave, but stays frozen because she doesn't know what to do.

She looks down at him and remembers when he used to tell her she was just an animal that needed a master. And now that master is lying on the ground, and she feels something in her own body begin to release.

He had never been so heavy. She feels free and empty.

The air around her suddenly becomes too vast to breathe.

She looks at the front door. She turns back toward him and realizes that he can no longer harm her. Her head is spinning and she struggles to walk straight, but she moves slowly toward the door. She touches the handle with her hand and opens it. She looks outside, looks toward the stairs. She sees no one, hears no sound.

She only has time to close the door, and then nothing.

Only emptiness.

That morning, she hadn’t gotten up. She hadn’t even done so later, when the afternoon arrived. She had watched the sun travel across the wall in front of her, gradually lighting the furniture and the walls beyond the curtain. Then it had become thin, and after a while, it had disappeared.

It’s winter, and the days are short.

She could have stayed where she was and watched that light appear, only to vanish again. She would have remained in the darkness in which she had opened her eyes that morning.

She could have done it endlessly, never stopping.

Darkness and light

that lose themselves

one in the other

without end

No one had worried about her absence. Her phone was next to her, looking at the same ceiling, without any messages or calls coming through. Maybe it felt the same loneliness and pain she did. Its blue light was the only one illuminating the empty walls around her.

Every now and then, Alina would sit in the kitchen with the same sense of apathy, watching people pass by through the glass of the window. The footsteps, the voices, the moving shadows. Everyone seemed to have a direction. Everyone seemed free. But maybe they were just pretending.

In the idea that no one was happy, she always found a bit of happiness.

Lying down, she tried to find the strength to get up, but her body remained still. Maybe it was also waiting for the night. Until no one would care anymore.

If it ever really mattered.

Every now and then, even in that moment, she wasn’t finally free. Her husband forced her to do what she would have avoided doing. She did it and didn’t rebel. She knew it would be worse. She let him do it. She hoped it would end quickly and that her pain wouldn’t show. But he never noticed.

It happened that she cried.

But he kept going, and she had completely lost touch with her body. When she found herself in the bathroom, sitting on the floor with her legs pressed against her chest and her feet against the washing machine tight to her, she cried again. In the dark, she couldn’t see her body, but she felt everything inside. She felt the pain.

The loneliness in the dark grew and became light that blinded her.

Soon after, it was morning. She had slept lying on the floor, on the bathroom rug. She hadn’t even found the strength to return to bed.

Her husband hadn’t called her. He hadn’t been concerned that she was on the floor. He hadn’t been concerned that in that position she could have been unconscious. He might have passed by her, but he left her where she was.

Opening her eyes, she had felt him distant, perhaps in the kitchen. She could see the light coming through the slats of the blinds and getting lost in the bathroom’s blue. She sat up, running her fingers over her eyes. As she did, her hair slowly slid over her shoulders. She felt pain along her back.

She was hungry, but she would have to go to the kitchen, and she didn’t want to see her husband. She hoped he would leave soon and disappear for a while.

Her husband came and went without saying anything to her. He worked on construction sites with a friend, and sometimes he wouldn’t come home for entire days. Alina didn’t know anything about his life beyond the door, and she didn’t care. He only told her that they worked far away, and that was enough for her.

She sank into the silence with the blinds down and the dust drifting in the air. The smell of cigarettes in the house was all that remained of him, reminding her that sooner or later he would return.

She had tried to smell that scent while shopping alone.

Her breath had caught. She wondered what she had done wrong, why he was there, following her. She had turned, but he wasn’t there. She was alone, but the weight of guilt didn’t go away. She had quickened her pace, rushing home. The terror of needing to justify herself had shaken her.

Months ago, after shopping, Alina had exchanged a few words with a neighbor, not noticing that her husband had passed by in the car. That evening, he had come back, slamming the door.

“Alina, where are you? I saw you today…” He was staring at her from a distance, with hate. “You were talking to the neighbor. What did she want from you? Why did you stop? Why didn’t you come home?” He had approached.

“Why don’t you do what I tell you to do?” Then he had hit her.

It wasn’t the first time. It wouldn’t be the last.

A slap. Hard. Then another. She had curled up on the ground, her hands on her head. He had hit her again. A kick. The fear exploded in her chest.

She had stayed still, eyes wide open, hidden behind her arms. She gasped and was afraid to cry. She didn’t know if she could. She had run to the bathroom, locked herself in, and cried and screamed in silence, while the sound of the shower water covered the noise of her tears.

Then he knocked and knocked again.

“I’m sorry, Alina… You know I love you, and I would never hurt you…” From outside, she had heard him crying. “Come out, my love… I didn’t mean to do it…” Her hands trembled, clutching her knees. She didn’t want to open the door, but she knew she had to.

So, she approached the door, gently touching it with a finger, then turned the key with a snap, surrendering to something she couldn’t fight. And he had hugged her, and they had cried again, together. “I’m sorry… I’m really sorry…” Alina hugged him. She was scared, but she also felt alone.

And he was the only person who could console her.

This thought had settled on her body, lying motionless on the bed, and tormented her. She thought about the people she saw outside the window, how many they were, and everything she had never seen. About the life that flowed beyond the houses at the end of the street.

She thought about what she knew well, since she was little. Doors slammed in anger. The table overturned during dinner because of a wrong word. The face of her father while he screamed until it made him sick.

He would tell her: "It's your fault! It's all your fault! Alina, don’t turn around! Look at me and be ashamed!" Sometimes he would curse her and add: "You're useless! You disgust me!"

When she was a girl, he had also been hospitalized for days because of her. Brain aneurysm. He had collapsed in a corner near the front door, clutching his head and letting out a loud, restrained scream.

Then he passed out.

Alina had rushed to the phone. "Hello... Yes... My father passed out... he's on the floor... I’m checking." They had asked if he was breathing and to put him in a safe position. As she approached, she realized she was scared. She feared that when he woke up, he would unload all the anger he had kept inside onto her.

She turned to him slowly, while they waited on the phone. His legs, arms, then his head. "I’ve turned him… So we’re waiting… Yes… If he wakes up, I’ll tell him to stay on the floor and wait for you… Thank you..."

If he had woken up, she would have said nothing. She would have only regretted calling the ambulance. Her father would have gotten angry and probably would have beaten her.

She had sat far from him. As she watched him, she hoped he wouldn't open his eyes. She hoped he would stay like that, forever.

From time to time, memories resurfaced, and she could still feel her father's hands on her. The pain that lingered on her skin where he had hit her. The bed in the dark room where she would take refuge. The dinners in silence while the television spoke of the faraway world.

She lived those moments from the outside. Not only now, as she remembered them, but even when she had lived through them. They were experiences that had one by one distanced her from herself. Her body had become a high and safe wall where she had taken refuge. No blow could hurt her anymore. It was only that distant body that lived that pain for her.

She remembered when she had been thrown out of the house or the night she had been thrown out of the car while it was moving, because she had answered back to her father.

She had also ended up locked in the dark cellar at the bottom of the stairs. She had stayed inside for hours, until a neighbor had heard her scream.

One evening, her father had thrown a pile of cutlery at her, which had slammed against the wall near her. She had shielded herself with her arms, and some of them had hit her, but she hadn't been hurt. With her head still hidden between her shoulders, she had picked them up and taken them back to the kitchen, while he watched her from afar.

But the fear in which she now lived overshadowed the past. She had been grateful to her husband because he had hidden her from the world, at a time when she had lost hope of facing it. He had taken her to a place where no one could find her. In a house far from her father and her family. In a house far from everything.

She remembered the day they got married and then left together. Far from her family’s house, she had felt free. It hadn’t lasted long, but that brief period had made her feel something she had never felt. She had always lived with her father's gaze chasing her and her mother's inability to protect her.

In the first days of marriage, she had felt the sensation of freedom. She had lost the fear of having someone behind her. She wasn't used to it; she always expected something to happen after doing something she shouldn’t have. It hadn’t lasted long, but it had happened.

And if one day she could feel that sensation again?

Every now and then, she would ask herself that question and then run away from the thought. She ran as fast as she could, because she didn’t want to deceive herself, and she knew she didn’t want any more pain around her. Her husband wanted that life for her.

“It’s your life, my love. I go out there, and you have this house for yourself…”

Yes, but what did she want?

She no longer remembered if she had ever truly wanted something. Maybe she had always just done what she was asked. Orders that fell on her and that she obeyed, hoping not to make a mistake. Mistakes she made and knew she had made, because she wasn’t able to be what she should have been.

Alina thought that every person had a limit beyond which they could no longer dig. Everyone sinks. Everyone falls and gets lost in their own way. They end up where the earth is so hard that they can't go any further.

That body of hers, her weight on that bed, maybe that was the limit. She knew that many times she had asked herself how it was possible to go any lower. Lose another piece of her life down there. See even less light and have less and less air to breathe. Over the years, as she slipped, she found nothing to hold onto. She crumbled, and the world around her fell with her.

Dark caves

in which there was no life.

She had tried to feel if there was something beyond that bed. Even further down. She had forced her back and pushed against the hard mattress beneath her. She held her breath.

She wanted to understand if she had suffered enough and couldn’t be worse than she already was. She wondered if she could lose something more. She wanted to be sure that the bed was at the bottom.

The beatings from her childhood, her father’s shouts, her mother’s silences. The friends on the street who seemed like shelter but were a sentence. Boys and girls who resembled her. The same bruises on the skin, the same traumas in the mind.

They were refuse piled up at the edges of cities, something people looked at from afar with disgust.

She looked in her mind at the face she now struggled to recognize in the mirror. When she saw her eyes and her mouth, she hoped they didn’t belong to her. They were in the image in front of her, but as she looked at them, they felt foreign. They were the eyes of a woman she didn’t know, or one she wouldn’t want to know, staring back at her.

She remembered herself differently. She wished she could see herself differently.

She remembered herself as beautiful.

She remembered her long black hair. The pleasure of seeing herself reflected in the glass of the stairs as she descended to escape with her friends at night. Maybe her image was still there on that glass. She could have gone back and looked for herself. Reached out her hand and greeted that girl full of life, told her that maybe if she had waited, or if she had made different choices...

She looked and looked again at her story, searching for something. But there was nothing. Loneliness and pain danced in the dark.

Every now and then, a light would briefly flicker on.

But the darkness would return, and the dance would begin again,
with Alina unable to do anything to stop it.

Then she closed her eyes and managed to slip beyond those thoughts. And in the silence, she had fallen asleep. Maybe a dream. Maybe her mother's arms.

When she had woken up, she had seen her trembling hands and a distant memory had returned to her mind. As a child, she would see her mother when she could. She was almost never there.

She often worked and was always tired and distant. If she didn't see her for a few days or saw her feeling unwell, she would hide somewhere at school and cry. Alone, so no one would see. When she could, she would ask her teachers to call home to ask how she was.

Like when she had seen her with trembling hands at night. "Alina, it's nothing... go back to sleep... Sometimes this happens at night. It's just work... I'm a little tired...". But she was scared and couldn’t sleep anymore. She stayed with her. She had hugged her, and her mother had held her tightly. They cried together, and she had fallen asleep in her mother's rough arms.

Then the morning had come, and when she opened her eyes, she was lying alone on the floor. She could still smell her mother around her, and on her body, the tremble of her hands.

She had never truly known her, and that hug had been one of the few they had exchanged. Despite being immersed in the pain of a dark night, it was a memory Alina would never lose. For the time of one night, she had protected her mother.

Now it was her hands that were trembling.

Now she was the one living that silence and that distance from everything. Hidden from the world and unable to scream her pain. As she thought about that night, about her mother, and everything she had never understood about her, she cried in silence.

She wished she could hold everything inside once more. Become smaller and hide in that room. She tried, but she couldn’t. She turned and hugged her legs, rocking slowly.

She clung to herself and thought that if everything was empty, she wasn’t. She still wanted those legs, she still wanted that body. She wanted that life she had never truly lived. And in that desire, she wavered.

She was afraid because she was desiring life, and it scared her. Because beyond that bed, that room, that house, there was an entire world she didn’t really know, and she wasn’t ready to face it.

How does one learn to face the world?

Her mother hadn't managed to do it. She had faded away behind the man who had raised their children in fear, while she was absent. But Alina wanted to be there. She didn’t know where or how, but she didn’t want to slowly fade away in that small room, which couldn’t contain all her tears and cries.

A wish,

perhaps.

Perhaps a wish had hung somewhere in her mind. Alina hadn’t seen it. It must have found a place where she didn’t expect, and it had grown slowly.

Then her body began to move. At first, she had held it back as best she could. She kept it in check, but it didn’t listen, and so she had let herself be carried away. She had risen from the bed and walked toward the door of the room. She wondered what she was going to do. With each step, she grew closer to the door, and she felt herself being dragged. One more step. Another. Her body had reached the door. On the other side, her husband, his cigarettes, his beer.

How would he have reacted if she had the courage to tell him that this life no longer belonged to her? That now, she desired something else.

She didn’t even know if he would listen to her. He might have hit her again, but perhaps her body would no longer feel anything. Or perhaps she would keep the pain to herself, and she would be free, locked in her mind.

But as her hand rose and grasped the doorknob, she realized something:

She no longer trembled.

And so, she crossed that door 

with nothing left on her

No self 

No present 

No emotion

Empty

And perhaps of her, 

Seen from afar,

Only remained

A small and faint sigh of light.

Today, in the parking lot not far from home, it’s warm in the biting chill of late winter. The blackbirds are perched on the power lines, gazing far away as spring arrives slowly.

The low sun melts the ice on the windows of her old car.

Alina is tired and happy. In her dark eyes, the light is intense, but on her skin, that warmth makes her feel alive.

She approaches the car, takes the key from her pants pocket, and inserts it into the door lock. She turns it hard, but nothing. It doesn’t move. She looks around, and her breath nervously escapes into the cold air. She tries to force it again. And again. She holds the handle and turns the key. But nothing happens. The door remains shut.

She starts to feel sweat under her clothes, so she unbuttons her jacket and quickly takes off her hat. Today is her first day of work at the cooperative the social worker helped her find. The one that followed her project and helped her find a home. She doesn’t want to be late.

With a sharp click, the door finally opens.

She gets in and throws her jacket onto the passenger seat. She looks in the rearview mirror. Inside, she sees the face of a woman who has lived lives she never wanted. But now, she has a present and people around her she’s learned to know, overcoming the fear of telling her story.

She inserts the key and smiles, taking a breath, giving herself a moment to look around. She wishes that every detail of this moment would stay in her memory. Perhaps because of that light that cannot be stopped, but also for that wonderful feeling of being able to fail without fear.

Fail and fail again,
to finally succeed in finding something that is only

Alina.

On the ceiling, colorful push pins hold the interior lining of the car in place. She often thinks they're just a way to prevent everything from collapsing on her, and she feels ashamed when someone notices them.

But when she's alone, while driving and smiling freely, she feels like those push pins are stars of a constellation she has drawn, one step at a time, leading her toward a new future.

What she took with her when she left that house
and found the strength

to be fragile.