Imperfect

Chapter 3

"I don"t want them to think I"m abandoning her, I"m afraid that doing this thing for myself will compromise the relationship between the two of us forever."

Reckless weeping, unstoppable, exhausting.

Zoe looked bitterly at the tears and mucus that was staining Matteo’s green shirt.

It was the night before their departure.

Matteo held her close, whispering sweet and reassuring words, his voice sliding over her like a balm to dissolve the fears and anxieties that gripped her.

He said that her mother would understand, that even if she would not immediately understand her choice, maybe this time more time would be needed.

She had sat next to her, watching a cooking video with unsuspecting eyes, perhaps not even that much.

She imagined that she had enclosed the empathy and her strength solely for her personal battle, so she had been strong because who better than she could understand Zoe"s specular choice?

To save each other they had to save themselves, they could not drown together.

It was a concept she had arrived at during the months of therapy, but Giorgia had provided her with that metaphor, one evening. She had told her that if it could help her, she had realized that if you love a person and you are drowning with them in the open sea and you are near a life buoy, we must not drown trying to take the person we want to help to the life buoy and drown too, no.

"You have to take it, that life buoy," she had told her.

Only if she saved herself could she help her mother. As soon as her mother looked up into her eyes, she really felt it.

She tried not to cry and told her she didn"t want to hurt her,

that she didn’t even want to justify herself, just that she needed and wanted to leave, to find herself again and some serenity, she did not know how long it would take, but she had just begun.

She was afraid.

Her mother had not taken it well.

She scolded her and judged her as she had expected, lost all reason and told her that if she left the house she would never come back.

Zoe lost her temper too and left herself the right to defend herself for the first time.

She had never been so immovable. Never.

She was terrified.

Zoe, finding some inner strength she didn"t think she had, lowered her eyes and went out.

As Matteo held her tight she was overcome by fatigue, but this time it stripped her thoughts of every obstacle: everything seemed to be in its place, and even if she couldn’t see it at the moment she would see it later. She would leave. If she was ill she would listen to herself and wait for it to pass, that way slowly slowly as she had told her mother, she would be fine again.

She wanted to recover, completely, so that she could go back to taking care of her future and attain it.

She looked up at Matteo, who was there, always beside her, as motionless as the wings of a flight that would take her far.

And to safety.