C.Ara Esther,
I am writing to you just to tell you that you were right about everything and now that everything has taken a well-defined shape that looks so much like that of happiness and I found myself whole for the first time in my life and earlier than expected (but you were also right about this: twenty years are meant to be thrown away). I am writing to you with great pride from the room that I have earned with courage, determination and stubbornness (all qualities I did not know I possessed).
After years (almost six!) Of Nino Sarratore (how many there are!) I have collected all the (very few) forces left available to complete my studies and why not, do the famous master you talk about every now and then (study, learn languages, do a master’s degree abroad) e put love aside (at least for a while, at least what doesn’t make you live, what takes away your will to live, what Lila describes well in the last phone call with Lenù) and invest in me. All this took me very far, just me, that I made unhealthy love my only reason for living.
I have discovered the taste of freedom at 27: the beauty of working in a European capital, of being able to rely only on my strength, of being able to become the woman I always wanted to be and of giving a first chance and then a second chance (as you always say) to that guy with good eyes, with the foreign accent that after work timidly makes me “would you like something to drink?” and after thinking “but what should I tell him at this time?”, you throw yourself and discover that yes, you can love someone like Enzo, you can love him better than Nino and yes, Enzo knows how to love better, Enzo knows how to love really: few words, few poems, few disturbances, many facts. Not even the shadow of the bravado and mystery that so fascinated me (but how did I do it? But who was I?).
But how cool is it (and I’m sure you know it very well) to look someone in the eye and know what they think? How beautiful is it to read pure thoughts inside him? How good is it to know there will be tomorrow without even having to ask him? How beautiful it is plan together, dream the same dreams?
Love is a simple thing, as the good Titian says. So, this is a letter of gratitude to you: I want to think that Monday after Monday, word after word, in my darkest moments, too you have unwittingly contributed to creating my happiness (and who knows who else) and that those years have not been wasted: they are my school (nothing is thrown away!). Now I enjoy this happiness that has never been taught to me and this too I have learned: unhappy childhood is not a final sentence and I am proof of it.
Soon,
TO.
Ester Viola’s answer
Ester Viola
Dear A.,
Well, ten and praise, finally a good start to the week for this column. I have to ask for more stories of reawakening and less of love, my room is filled (metaphorically) with light, geraniums bloom sooner rather than later.
What remains to be said?
You have passed the ninety-nine gates. Here they are again.
1) Randomly. Everything goes randomly. There are no affinities, there are no predestined ones who meet. There are no immortal loves that make you suffer / live well throughout your life.
2) Assume that everything is fine, forget that it is forever. We must proceed confidently ignoring the obvious on the horizon: love changes. At a certain point, every feeling – even the first quality – dissolves. It’s normal.
3) The arrogant (also called narcissists or other fictional names) tend to pull the most delicate spirits like magnet
4) Indifference prolongs love.
5) Doing the right thing is a bestial effort. Giving up on certain lame loves means that you are choosing the best for yourself but you keep the worst anyway (and you call it nostalgia). Nostalgia. Time wasted not living. In short, you go from excrucior to excrucior like a dog.
6) The Sarratore treatment sooner or later is up to everyone. It wasn’t he who was magnificent and merciless and capable of producing great moods, you were too impressionable.
7) the unbelievable end of unrequited love is being paid back sometime later. Who did not love, now loves. Whoever loved, just wonders why he was so dumb all the time.
You’re off the ford, A., and (maybe) you’ll never see us again.
How beautiful is the revolt of the unloved. When the unlimited willingness to suffer ends. The greatest show after the Big Bang is you and then again you.
The inevitable happens, on the frontier of patience: it’s not that you rebel, you get tired. In love who thinks wins, you have seen. Love is putting all the happiness you have in the hands of someone other than you. So who? Aren’t they the reliable ones, the only ones you can trust?
The truth I beg of love here it is: people have a tendency to come to their senses, no Sarratore is safe forever.
Read here all the episodes of “The faulty relationships of Ester Viola”.
iO Donna © REPRODUCTION RESERVED