Page 33 of Teddy Bear

I practiced the moves, devotedly focused.

Dad walked in the door after overtime at work.

His vision was glassy, slightly bloodshot, his face contorted into a dead, hideous paleness with waxy contours.

It was not necessary for him to speak a word; in the coldness that came along with him, everything was already clear.

I continued with the choreography, trying not to pay attention to him. My day was more than difficult and tiring too, and right now, I didn't have the strength to fight and enter the vortex space of his chaotic, gloomy world.

I was tired, and more than that, I was exhausted from constantly trying not to disturb the fragile peace within his mind, which was certainly already deeply disturbed.

I was tired of trying to shrink, to make myself smaller, to shut up, to disappear, to do anything so as not to disturb some colorful and purple idealized image inside his deeply diseased brain.

I was tired of acting and of my desperate hunger.

I was tired of feeling starved, of begging for crumbs of fake love.

I was tired of trying so hard to please my father, devastated by the fact that I ended up being rejected anyway.

I couldn't take it anymore.

I longed for my old freedom, my lightness, my personality, myself whole, in all my ardor and all my darkness, free to be exactly the essence of myself - without makeup and without embellishment, enough just as I am.

I turned up the music on my iPhone for a few seconds. My father gave me a cold look as he headed for the kitchen. His hideous look said only one thing:

“You fucking disgust me-”

And I couldn't resist tears filling the corners of my eyes.

I was afraid that my legs would give out, and that I would fall, right on the hard lacquered parquet floor of our false paradise.

I continued my dance when the kitchen door closed.

I closed my eyes and let the rhythm carry me - free even as a light movement of a song, free while my body is just a tool, just an instrument, free while I'm not my own, neither his, nor Danny's, free while I'm music, a tear, the light movement of a white foot.

With closed eyes, I saw fields and hills in front of me. Green landscapes without end and beginning. I arched and then rhythmically nodded my head so that my loose hair flew up - it was one of the most beautiful, and my favorite movements in the entire choreography - a movement that reminded me of the breaking of chains, of the final liberation from a terrible and painful slavery, and the shrill murmur of a body desperately crying out to be freed from cruel captivity.

I made a sharp turn to the left, following the rhythm of the music, and then stepped forward with my foot; before my eyes, in my head, this movement took me to a rose garden of plush, red roses that flooded the entire space that I could encompass with my gaze.

Following the music, with a light movement, I went from one to the other, bowing in front of each wide open, gracious and fragrant soft bud.

The gentle sunlight caressed my white cheeks, making them blush, and my dance brought me down to my knees in the center of the most beautiful garden I had ever seen - kneeling, I remained there, on the warm, grassy ground, absorbing the fragrance that the intoxicating flowers gave off.

Then I heard a terrible crash and a shout coming from the kitchen.

I opened my eyes, quickly becoming aware that I was not in a fragrant rose garden, but in the cramped space of our rented, family apartment.

Black-gray, thick clouds seemed to hang over the vault of the white, low ceiling, heralding a terrible storm.

I heard my mother's frightened, muffled scream and then ran into the kitchen.

My heart was beating fast, and my whole body seemed to betray me.

I crossed the apartment in a few steps, not feeling my limbs, completely numb, as if in some other reality that simply could not belong to me.

I burst into the kitchen, opening the door wide. A loud scream that seemed to be absorbed into the cosmos escaped from my parched throat. I wondered how much pain the human heart can actually take.

-No!