The spell

Well, it seems that my life has completely changed in less than 24 hours. At least, so it seems to me. Emotionally.

Yesterday I met Professor Cristina for a coffee. She invited me. It was very informal, she has a very direct way to address issues and I have confidence in her. She wanted to know about my family, since she knows a little about the situation and also about my mental health issues. She knows that I am schizophrenic, that I self-harm, that I am that mess within myself even if I am highly functional as a person and, obviously, as a student, since I can claim to be quite successful in my daily routine. She gave me very wise advice. She is of the opinion that I have to set rules to my parents. For example, when my mother compels me to clean her house, I should say no. Not now. Now I have better things to do. Which is in fact so, because I have plenty of things to do for University. I am enrolled in a Master curriculum, besides I work as a student assistant for another Professor (an activity which will take me more than 70 hours of extra work during the semester and which I am paid for doing, so I have to do) and I am in the social media management of a communication conference (an activity which takes me at least 5 – 7  hours work every week). I cannot afford cleaning a 2-floor-house just for fun, just because my mother refuses to hire a housekeeper. I know it is much easier if it is me, the housekeeper, but I just cannot.

So, today, when I came back from University, I said no. She screamed and cried, insulted me, but I remained firm, and just said that I had to transcript a video and I did not have time. I suggested hiring a housekeeper. My mother, of course, insulted me some more, and decided that, from now on, I am no longer allowed to take my meals with her and my father. Well… maybe she thought to inflict great pain to me, but I could not ask for anything better. I have always hated the hours in the kitchen to prepare meals for them, being ready for a time while she was always late messing up my plans. So, I ate a bowl of cornflakes, said good night, and here I am, free as a bird.

The sad reality is that my mother does not love me, she wants to control me as that is all. Professor Cristina said things to me that made me reason a lot. My mother was a very beautiful woman when she was young. Now she is 76, and she lost her beauty. She does not accept it. Her beauty was everything she had, she worked as a model until she married my father and then she was just his wife. She has an old husband, my father is 96. She might fear loneliness, since he is in such an age that he could be dead already. She feels alone, she has me, and she wants to be sure that I will be hers forever. She is paranoid, she hates the whole world. She argues with everybody: with the neighbours, with her doctors (she changed 3 doctors within one year just because they said to her that she has no physical illness), and now even with the lawyer (we go to the lawyer almost every 2 – 3 weeks, and she claims that he is not combative enough).

Somehow I wish this could really be the beginning of a new life. Being on my own, doing what I want. Eating on my own, what I prepare for myself, deciding when I want to go to bed, if I want to work with my laptop sitting on the couch instead of the desk (yes, my mother accused me to have cyber sex when she caught me working with my laptop laying on the couch).

Professor Cristina. When I was going home after our coffee break I had a smile drawn on my face and I decided to shoot music in my ears just to sing along with my heartbeat. That woman is someone special. I know that she is someone I cannot come closer than sitting in front of for a coffee, but let me dream. She knows me. From the inside out. She knows me at least as much as Doctor Livio knows me. That is a spell.

A new life, I am alone, I have no idea who is my God, and I think I feel something similar to what must be love. This is a spell.