Last month, that was the first time she's ever laughed in her whole life, or at least that's what she remembers. She has always been a quiet person, inward looking and more often than not full of rage. Silent rage. If her eyes could talk…

Her eyes are pitch black, and so are her clothes, her hair is not. She has her hair dyed very often in bright colors, tropical; Tropical, that's what a man she has come to know and like more than she ever thought possible calls her. Right now, purple is the color. Right now, not so dark is the mood.

Not so dark, that's not a bad state of mind, since it's much better than it used to be for her. All the people who used to think they knew her were clueless. They thought she loved the dark, but the problem was that she's almost never been acquainted with the light.

She grew up in a home where love was a foreign land. An accident, that was her mother's description of her arrival into this world. Her father didn't even bother talking to her, let alone describe things. Her mother and father had one thing in common though; they loved fighting each other. And they loved making up afterwards.

"I would have died if I haven't learned how to take care of myself since I was a kid", she told Margarita, her best friend, someone she got to know more or less two years ago. Their meeting was accidental, or fortunate, name it as you like, but meeting her was one of the two best things that has ever happened to her.

She loved to write. She loves to write still, but nobody knows that, not even her friend. She likes to describe her existence as chaotic, though it's not; it's just a complicated one, and sometimes it just takes writing things down to clarify them, to give them substance.

"Speaking is like walking on a string. Writing instead is possessing it, winding it into a ball", at least according to one of her favorite authors, Erri De Luca. She's trying to fully posses the string but time is not on her side. Always something comes up, something that smuggles away her moments of solitude and tranquility, a thing that she may come to love and hate at the same time.

Her soul is unquiet. She needs constant action, movement, change, new challenges. She needs not to get bored. Never bored. But she also needs to give herself a break, to allow it to recuperate from the things that make her soul bleed. Margarita is her rock, though she'd never admit that to anyone, since she makes her see the light in the dark, that most sorrowful of souls.

How can she be this way? she wonders often about her friend. How can she see the world the way it really is and yet embrace it, find goodness where no one looks, find evil under the most bright of human masks? Did she see my darkness? Could she spot my hunger for light? Did she guess my story?

Her story she's told no one; not quite as yet. Only her grandma, who's passed away a few years back, knew most of it. Her parents knew almost nothing. She's spent so much time being her self's best friend, that she couldn't open up so readily to other people, share her secrets.

"My story is like a stranger's story", she wrote in one of her notes. "When I write it I feel like watching myself from the outside. As if I am a figment of my own imagination". She smiled, when she read that recently; a cynical smile. Written words are not her only escape nowadays, but written words she still thinks sometimes is the only thing that she really has.

It all started… How did it all start, really? Was it when…? Or was it when…? The two facts that led to her new life, that bloodied her, the two facts that but for her late grandma knew nothing about. Take a note. Put it in a note. Or even better, spell it out, to a couple of sympathetic ears.

What's wrong with me? she asks the non person that exists in her empty room. What's wrong with her? The other day she laughed. And the very same day, was it the same day?, she cried. She laughed after a dirty old man tried to hit on her and Margarita during an interview. She cried when she recognized the ghost of her younger self in the face of a sixteen year old girl who helped bring down a ring of human traffickers.

She is me, she thought when she met her, when she learned her story. If she could she would have adopted that poor girl on the spot, make her feel as safe and as loved as humanly possible. But alas, she's no mother material. She's not there yet. However, the girl has found a new home, a good home, where she will live and grow up as a new person, and hopefully learn that she has the power to overcome her past and thrive in the future.

Christina, the girl, trusts her. Perhaps she recognized in her what the others couldn't see. And when she can she spends most of her time following her and Margarita around, learning their trade, offering her opinion when needed. Mostly she remains quiet though, as if afraid that she could say something stupid, something that could destroy her newfound freedom.

What would I say to her if she ever asked for my advice? What guidance could I ever provide? Could I love her? She writes these questions down. Could she love her? She loves Margarita but it took her almost two years to reach this milestone. Could she do it again so soon?

She shakes her head, smiles bitterly in a dark room, slightly illuminated by a computer screen. She tries to drink some coffee, but her mug is empty. It's almost four in the morning. The witching hour? At five something the new dawn will break. At five something a new adventure will begin. At five something she'll be deeply asleep on a chair in front of a computer screen. Like in a scene from a Manga.

Lakis Fourouklas

The picture was taken from here.