Sometimes, before going to sleep, she lies there thinking. And in her head, she writes her story and sometimes, only sometimes, she cries, her face buried into a pillow.
Her story always starts with smells. All of those scents that make up her memories. One after the other, they all tie up together.
There's the smell of clothes from home - washing powder. Such a banal thing, yet it reminds her of many things; there are at least a couple of people she remembers by the scent of the washing powder they use. There was once that embarrassing moment when she met a long-lost friend and as she hugged him and a long-lost past came rushing back she couldn't hold back and said 'you still smell the same;' he looked at her awkwardly, maybe aware of what he used to mean to her once, the small teenage crush that he was. And then there's also that boy she was mad for, the quirky one that made her want to be that way - maybe that's where it all started - she wonders, does he still smell the same?
But she's losing track; she was thinking of the smell of home, clean clothes washed by the hands of her mother, the scent of cleanliness that makes her miss her family, their city, their flat, every time she receives a package.
Home... Home has so many smells, which come to her from those childhood memories which are so faint, so far away, but can be brought back in a second by anything, something she does not expect. She thinks about the sweet scent of her mother favourite moisturiser, oranges and lemons, the same since she was a child. She used to want to cover herself in it just to smell like an adult - to her, that was what made her mother a woman, somehow - and having that scent on her suddenly made her feel important, similar to whom she admired the most.
There is that other cream, green and cold, that she bought a long time ago, the one that managed to console her when, all of a sudden, she did not want to be an adult at all - when it all felt like a scam. The one she used to wear at night and then wash away with tears. It was icy cool on her face, that strong smell of eucalyptus which made her feel alive. That brings back to her the long nights she spent on her own, not wanting to be on her own. Feeling so weak she didn't even feel she deserved help.
And from scents she starts getting flashbacks, of moments, days... The last time she can remember the two of them being happy together. Walking around a suburban supermarket, and then she sat down on the grass with a picnic, slowly smoking a cigarette after the other, white smoke rising on the background of a bright blue spring sky, watching him. She knows she felt in love that day, but now... She knows that deep down she could already recognise the falling apart of them, how they had gone too far to save anything at all.
That period when she knew that they, they as 'us', were already disappearing, that day when she finally stopped thinking about it, seeing all that nature, walking along grandiose avenues ornate with trees, flowers and peacocks. Pollen in her nose which made her sneeze and cry, but somehow it did not matter because she had finally found a place where she could lose her thoughts at the back of her mind, the worries and the pain. For once she did not have to pretend she was ok.
And then, when it finally did collapse and die like a star exploding in a universe far away, then the days of worthlessness and pain and anger came. When only a few people could touch her heart, when they forced her to get up and sing and let out everything that was rising inside her and suffocating her. And they laughed with her, through tears, they did everything, they gave everything.
Maybe that was one of the few times she felt good during those months; she knows without a doubt that she felt loved, like so many more times during that bizarre summer. Every time she showed her weakness someone was there for her... Tears coming out of her eyes despite herself and a blonde fairy hugging her under the stars; a birthday and a phonecall, desperation coming out of her throat that she could not stop, and words that finally made her understand: you are doing something else now, it does not matter anymore; being held, over and over again, bodies used to make her understand what her worth really is.
And does all this really matter anymore? Is she not happy after all, at this moment in time?
Somehow she has always known that there is nothing wrong with longing, for someone, something, it has its beauty. Looking at the moon, separated from the people she has loved and cared for most in her life, and realising... They will always be there for her, whether she is here or there or somewhere else. And how silly, that a song should tell her that.
"Se anche tu vedi la stessa luna
non siamo poi cosi' lontani..."
Melancholy under the moon... It wasn't the first time and it won't be the last. She has looked at the moon so many times, alone in the darkness of a weirdly shaped room, with tears in her eyes while she hugged herself in a soft baby blue duvet, the coldness of London biting at her skin... She looked outside that tiny window: a row of gardens in front of her, with two rows of small houses lining it, and right at the top the white full moon in the middle of the darkest blue sky.
So many bedrooms, where she has loved, cried, laughed, felt. The soft white light on the leopard print of a bedcover. Rooms of her childhood, all over Europe, Rome, Umbria, Paris... Rooms that she has seen for just that one night, escaping in the morning. Student bedrooms, each one the same as the next one, yet each building some memory in her mind, some meaning. Bright white light, blinding sun of an early summer morning, in a room which only seemed to contain two souls in a bed. That song in the background...
"You in the dark
You in the pain
You on the run
Living a hell
Living your ghost
Living your end
Never seem to get in the place that I belong
Don't wanna lose the time
Lose the time to come..."
And those last lines remind her that she cannot lose that time thinking about what went wrong and why.
She can at long last admit that she is still in love with him. She will always be in love with him, it cannot be helped. But there was a past before him and there will be a future after him.
There are so many more people in her life. People she's loved for a long time, or for four years, or for just a few months. Each one taking up a tiny but definite space in her heart, in her soul, making everything that she is to this world.
Despite everything, she would never give up her memories, sad or happy. Avoiding the pain does not appeal to her, simply because it would change who she is, how she sees the world. She would not be where she is now, building a future, following the path life has drawn for her.
Slowly her thoughts dissipate into the tropical night, the warmth of which soothes her. She falls asleep, knowing that tomorrow she will wake up and smile.
