Serena Dandini (photo by Gianmarco Chieregato).
con effort I’m telling you about this book that really struck me and took my breath away; reading it I almost had the desire to keep it to myself, like when a friend tells you a secret that you mustn’t reveal. But books, even if so intimate and painful, once written they must circulate because they still contain a fragment that belongs to us and it’s good for us to share.
I don’t know how Matteo Bianchi found the courage to tell his storyof course it took him twenty years to process the tremendous pain that fell on his shoulders but in the end with The life of those who remain (Mondadori) managed to perform a small miracle and by getting rid of its weight to give us a precious gift.
As you will have understood it is an autobiographical story and perhaps the most dramatic experience that can happen to a human being. Matteo has a boyfriend, S. Theirs is not an easy story but over time they manage to find complicity and balance. However – as in many love stories on the other hand – after seven years of relationship they break up.
“The life of those who remain” by Matteo B. Bianchi (Mondadori).
S., as often happens, still has the keys to the common house where he left his belongings, but one evening something terrible happens. Matteo returns home and discovers that his ex has taken his own life. A blast. His existence will never be the same and he will have to live forever with that atrocious suffering that friends and relatives of suicides know, who become “survivors” by continuing to obsessively ask themselves all those questions that no one will be able to answer.
Anger, pain and guilt become traveling companions with which we will have to deal with every day and forever and it is not easy to find help except in people who have gone through a similar experience.
Matteo Bianchi’s story proceeds by fragments, memories, almost on par with a travel diary that accompanies us in his personal descent into hell but precisely because he ruthlessly digs the abyss, he offers all of us the opportunity to re-emerge, finding with him the strength to still face life with all its complications.
The topic of suicide is a great taboo in our societya removed drama that scares us and that we are unable to interpret, and I am truly grateful to Matteo Bianchi for having chosen us as confidants and friends in this difficult path of resurrection which, together with his loneliness, also defeats ours.
All articles by Serena Dandini
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