Barbara Leolini – Creative and Visual Storytelling

The Swallows Return

I am one of a triplet. In my childhood, I've never been alone. Not physically, at least. It was more about my being disconnected, my identity. My anger was always a big part of my life, and so often, my shield. There is a spring of the heart and this mine. Love, as I know it, resolves itself into small solicitudes: food, heat and cold, tiredness, sometimes money. Everything else lay as if submerged at unreachable depths, in a mass of subjects never addressed, excuses to be made and received and memories to be corrected, which would remain unchanged. Sometimes I felt like a keeper of a museum. A huge, empty space where no one ever comes, and I’m watching over it for no one but myself. Feeling different is the worst cage a person can build for themselves because sooner or later, when you start realize how sad you are, you can fall ill with just a memory. With time, I've understood that behind my indifference, or “couldn't-care-less-attitude”, there was a big inability to communicate. I was unable to communicate my emotions and for that reason I couldn't read others’. I wandered through the silent apartment like the ghost of myself, unhurriedly following my own lucidity. “I'm going mad”, I thought sometimes. But I didn't mind. In fact, it made me smile, because at last, for the first time, I was the one making the choices.