Just once in a lifetime

I am enjoying my loneliness in the middle of the night. Still, waiting for my mobile to give me a warning sign that Raphaela wants to chat with me. I met her on a dating site. It is the first time I mention by name a woman I met on this dating site. Maybe because she is special, maybe because I have been exchanging messages with her with no hope on a future, as if she were too much for me. She has a job, she is about my age, she lives not so far away from here in a town where I actually would like to move after my Master. I saw a couple of pictures of her. She is… wow. An open smile, a nice face, a pretty look. Very natural, almost no make-up, but feminine. She seems that kind of woman one hopes to meet, sometimes. So, impossible that that kind of woman chooses to contact me.

I have been working a lot on my self-esteem. It is not easy to go on and consider yourself part of the world, when you never fitted in. As a child, because I was a tomboy and a geek; as a young girl, because I started self-harming and having delusions; then because I was a lesbian and a schizophrenic. Still, my friends make jokes about gay people or about “the crazy” and do not even know what they are talking about. Just 6 years ago, I was barely able to speak. I spent about 10 years of my life more in the isolation cell than anywhere else. I focused all my love on a girl who taught me how to harm myself more than I already did, who took all my energy and eventually disappeared. My parents do not love me, they never did.

No wonder I have a deepest need for respect and acceptance. I wish I could love someone without fearing rejection. I wish I could let myself go, just once. I wish I had a chance. Like everyone else. As if I were normal. Just once in a lifetime.