CHi Esther
I’m V. I wrote to you one summer night in the throes of the loudest thoughts. Now it’s day, there’s the sun and the blue sky, the year is ending, I have a specialization thesis and a splendid cat to take care of, I recently turned 29 and it’s time to take stock.
You told me “promise you and me to make yourself happy through means unrelated to love” and I started doing all these things and it was nothing short of exceptional. I started listening to myself, doing things for myself, going out with 100 guys and focusing on what I WANT, on what I LIKE, I wrote anonymous letters left in strangers’ cars just to free myself from thoughts.
And what can I say? What a beautiful thing learn the art of choosing, the art of saying “even if it hurts a little, even if I was getting attached, you’re not the person for me, you’re not what I’m looking for” and I’m so happy that you have no idea. So what I wanted to do first of all is to thank you, because with your words, never taken for granted, you unconsciously give a boost to women, to the strong ones, to the independent ones, to those who are trying hard to make it on their own, to those who they believe in love but it seems that for them there is very little love (understood as relational love) because everything is too complicated.
So I read from your last letter that you advised take a sabbatical from love. I think that’s what I’ll do, do you know what the problem is? Now that I’ve learned that by going out with 100 guys I have fun, I discover things about myself, I discover things about others, I feel emotions, and for me, as Brunori says “I only want sensations, only feelings and a cup of coffee” it’s difficult now to do so unless. However, what I learned from this self-analysis is that it is not good to be too generous, neither with feelings nor with gestures. But you know how strange? Having given, having had the courage to close what wasn’t for me, and not being desperate by the closure, but being grateful. I feel better. But in this sabbatical year I will try to be a little less generous with others, I would like someone to be generous with me one day. But someone calm, good character, good person. Thank you Esther, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year
From a 29 year old girl trying to make the best of herself in a world made for two.
Ester Viola’s response
Dear V.,
Let’s end the year like this, under the sign of “it can be done”, the only horoscope that matters.
You were good, because this beautiful security doesn’t grow on trees, it digs, normally when you’re at the bottom and you don’t have too many alternatives.
Yours is a very rare interval. An exploitation of life at its maximum power. Independence from others is a powerful strength and a powerful weakness, you saw clearly. I found this a few days ago, from the latest book by Sally Rooney:
Margaret gets up, turns on the light, fills the kettle. Sound of flowing water. Indistinct and swollen reflection in the dark glass of the window. These situations are created little by little, now you realize it, one step after another, and after a few weeks, or a few months, your life has become unrecognizable. You tell lies to everyone you know. By now you are too passionately, totally tied to a person who is not for you. You can no longer focus on your future: not just in five years, but in five months, or even just five weeks.
Everything is messed up. And all for one person, for the relationship that exists between you. For your loyalty to the idea of that relationship. In the name of which you begin to no longer give weight to many other important things. The respect of your family, the admiration of your colleagues and acquaintances, even the understanding of your closest friends. After all, life has not freed itself from the net that enveloped it. Life cannot free itself from it: it is life itself that is the network, that keeps people in their place, that gives meaning to things. It is not possible to extricate oneself from the constraints and simply lead a meaningless existence. It’s people, other people, that make it impossible. But without other people there would be no life. Judgment, blame, disappointment, conflict: these are the means by which people remain connected to each other. Because of her friends, her ex-husband, her family, colleagues, fellow citizens, she is not entirely free to live the spontaneous and unconstrained life she had imagined. But on the other hand, because of Ivan, because of what there is between them, she isn’t even completely free to return to her previous existence. Other people’s demands don’t go away; they just multiply. More and more complex, more and more difficult. Which is another way, he thinks, of saying more life, more and more life.”
It’s hard, V., with this story about others. To keep upright between these two walls, complete independence and complete dependence. We depend without knowing it, without even wanting to, and we are never adult enough to say “I know how to do it”. If there ever was anyone who knew how to do it.
You have succeeded in a small undertaking, V. You have said that love is behind you and everything else is ahead. Many people say it, a very frequent expression of intent, but succeeding is another thing. Now there are the possibilities of thirty years ahead and you who must become you. Doing it as a free person, with your mind far away from sentimental misfortunes, is much easier than having to do it as a lover (happy or unhappy). I expect great news from you, write to me soon.
You can also stop worrying about love: the less you beg for it, you’ll see, the more they come to say to you “miss, if you don’t mind too much, I would like to spend my life or even a little time with you”. It would take Jane Austen to say it better, it’s a nice feeling to feel healed by something and infected by something else. In those rare years without love, when everything aligns with making other things perfect, one says to oneself: the rest will come later, calmly. And instead he comes right away.
And Merry Christmas to you.
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