non è per tutti andare avanti
con il cuore che è diviso in due metà

è una bambina però sente come un peso
e prima o poi si spezzerà

We all know that august feeling, when the summer sun is starting to wane, the nights are getting colder and the little shops start removing the plastic pools from the shelves to replace them with pumpkins and Ghostface masks.

It's different that september, that feels like another turned page, almost as if with that breath of autumn in the air you realize that last year mistakes had been wiped clean by summer.

Coraline's life could be described as a long august, as waiting for something beautiful that seems never to come.

She was a porcelain doll, beautiful and sweet on the outside, but so fragile that even the smallest scratch could hewn her into a thousand pieces.

And she needed someone who could handle her with care, but life had something else upcoming for her.

Her parents were happily married but seemed to be more distracted by one another than to really take notice of their daughter, who never received that love she would have deserved, rather hasty kisses and expensive rag dolls to collect at the foot of her bed.

Inexplainably, she has always loved unconditionally, more than necessary at times.

Coraline loves deeply yet never seems to find someone who can love her in the way she needs.

That December morning she woke up because of a lightning that lit up her room through the semi-leaked shutter.

She opened it completely and looked out the window, seeing a blue butterfly under a leaf trying to shelter from the rain that seemed not to want to stop.

If she could decide what to be reborn she would certainly have chosen a butterfly, she liked the sense of inconsistency of happiness that reminded her and the process of metamorphosis the insect faced to feel free.

Which was what Coraline wanted.

She also wanted a metamorphosis for herself.

She was too tired to accept the default path that the society forced to follow, she felt too tight to go along with that straight line that she almost needed to get out of the edges, not to feel like the other thousands of people who lived the same off-life.

Coraline has always lived feeling inadequate, unable to keep up with others, trying to fight against the hundreds of insecurities that no one has helped to cure and to find her own place in the world.

She looked in the mirror, noticing how the tank top she wore as pyjamas seemed to be widening every day that passed.

Coraline was not naive, she was aware of her own problems, but it seemed as if she didn't care, or didn't realise, the situation she was in.

Since she was a child she had missed the attention she needed, so much so that now she was desperately looking for it in whatever environment around her.

She noticed that when she suddenly stopped eating all her attention focussed on her, and finally she felt loved, happy.

"It's cold in there" it's the only sentence that goes through the girl's mind.

She isn't listening to the psychologist's words.

Her eyes look at the room too small for a professional study.
The windows are too small, not even a wire of light passes by.

Not to mention the non-existent heating, that's why Coraline is cold.

She wonders how her psychologist endures this cold room every day, she barely endures it for three hours a week.

"I see no improvements Coraline" the doctor's phrase dictated with a mix of seriousness and worry, awakens her attention.

In Coraline there is something wrong since a lot of time.
The psychologist can't understand what it is.

Coraline doesn't want to talk about it.
Simply...she got tired.

"Since when you haven't playing your guitar anymore?" asks the psychologist biting her lip worried.

Coraline is difficult to understand, even more difficult when she doesn't talk.

"I don't know, I didn't notice." Coraline answer dry, an already programmed answer, she expected this question.

The psychologist just nods, but doesn't believe her.

"A week." Coraline said, revealing the truth only to herself.

All the stress she had around her had taken her away from her beloved instrument.
She felt a sense of emptiness that only the guitar was, in part, able to fill.
It was her only way out.
But that had also been taken away from her.

"Why don't you talk like you used to anymore? I liked talking about how you felt."

Coraline looked at the psychologist, looking up from the bracelet that was turning between her fingers.

"I have nothing to say, I'm fine." she lied.

She lied because she hasn't been well for quite a while now.

But she didn't want to end up locked up somewhere.

She wouldn't talk about her desire to get on a roof and fell on the asphalt, or how much she would have liked to take all at once the blue pills contained in the clear box.

Coraline is also morbidly looking for strong sensations lately.
As if she can't perceive those milder emotions that characterise everyday life.

To look for that shiver she is willing to do anything, even trample on the feelings of the people around her or put her own and other people's safety at risk.

Or again, it is precisely in these extreme sensations that she finds refuge from monotony or, simply, from appalling reality.
That's exactly what Coraline does and feels.
She lets herself be led by instinct and throws herself headlong into the most dangerous situations to be able to find comfort and finally feel alive.

"Why did you stop eating again then?" the doctor asked her, moving a tuft of hair from her eyes.

Coraline stammered something incomprehensible, then sighed and surrendered.

She was tired of suffering.

Her eyes filled with tears that they had been waiting to come down for too long.

"I can't do this anymore."

The first thing that struck me about Coraline, the first time I saw her, was her smile.
So genuine that it infects you, but with a note of melancholy that only the most attentive perceive.

The first time I saw her she was jumping around the hospital garden, wearing a sage green dress keeping daisies in her hands and in her hair.

I immediately noticed the blonde hair moving with euphoria, in the midst of all the wormed faces of the teenagers hospitalised in there.

I could only imagine how difficult it was to spend the best years of your life swallowing pills cut in half without being able to see a way out.

But she was different.

I asked the nurse next to me who she was, and in response I got a sad, melancholy smile.

She told me about her, the sweet blonde girl who raised the morale of those who were worse off than her, the same who one day in February tried to take her own life by consumed a few extra pills.

How can you even imagine such an aberrant ending for someone who seems to take life so lightly?

We talked that day.

She told me how beautiful were the blue butterflies bloomed on the branches of the tree that was out of her window, took me to see the plants she was helping to grow and played something to me with her guitar ruined by time.

She had a way of speaking that kept me hypnotized to her childish look.

At lunch I saw her at the canteen among everyone else, with shiny eyes as she looked at a plate of vegetables, while trying to dialogue with a girl next to her, probably trying to dissuade her from forcing her to lunch.

The nurse also told me about this.

Coraline hated not being in control.

Sometimes she walked around the hospital to check that everything was fine, as she had found it the day before and how it was supposed to be.

She had to know all the meals they brought her during the day in advance, or she would collapse.

But you can't run away forever.

Rain will always take the place of the sun sooner or later, it's not something you're in control of.

I fell in love with her.
And when you get to know her I think it's hard not to.

But Coraline is just a breath of reality, it doesn't last forever.
I tried, to hold it tight, but it slipped through my fingers, and it didn't come back.

You think it's my fault don't you?
You think it's all in my head.
Yes, it is, it's all in my head.

The days that bland together to create one suffocating loop, that feeling of loneliness that hits me like a truck.

It's all in my head.

Do you really know how this feels?
Do you really know how this grips me inside and threatens to rip me apart?
Do you know the weight that holds me down? It's a weight so powerful I can hardly move.

I am trying.

Do you know what hurts the most?

Every day i try to remember the things that made me happy, but i can't, i feel like my life has always been this way.

You talked about me to her don't you?

Me, me, me... yes, it's all about me... I want you all to drop everything and focus on me!

The only time I feel something is when I get on the scale and see the numbers go down.

I know you can't understand what I mean, I remember your worried look when I told you that it was days that I was just drinking a glass of water.

But it's so nice to think that you'll fall in love with me again when I'll be prettier.

Skinnier.

Before I die I'll stop, I promise.
It wouldn't be fun anymore, otherwise.

I just hope you notice me, once again.

𝖺𝗎𝗍𝗁𝗈𝗋'𝗌 𝗇𝗈𝗍𝖾 *ੈ✩‧₊˚
if you are reading this, you are not alone