Dear friend,

At last, I am writing to you. I have wanted to do it since January or maybe February, not for you, but for me.

It is not with anger or hatred that I write to you, perhaps not even resentment. I breathe a quiet calm; it tastes of fatality.

In these eight months, I have been mostly alone. After what happened in September, it is the worst thing to feel lonely, but in a way, I suppose it is inevitable.

Violence creates a wall between you and others and, ultimately, it’s up to the others, more than you, to prevent it from occurring. You, like others before and after you, but more than anyone else, have spent yourself completely to cement it. Creating walls is as easy as it is convenient. It is pretending that nothing has happened, it is forgetting. In the case of some, it was forgetting that I was raped. Actually, this was the case for everybody except V, Z, B and R. For V and Z, it’s easier; they have the face of violence in front of them every day.

If it is easier not to forget, living is less easy. Admitting to yourself that it is true and that it happened, is acknowledging that you have no control over your life and destiny. Remembering, knowing, means fearing. It is knowing that the world and men are not what we thought they were; not even in our cynical and pessimistic vision, because everything sucks even more. Injustice and violence are institutionalised. Being raped, tortured, and brutalised, is normal. What is not contemplated is complaining about it or, worse, asking the system to admit it is corrupt.

I said that you have spent yourself more than anyone else because you have taken the next step. You didn’t just ignore the event, you deleted the person, and with me, you also erased yourself, or at least a part of you.

Have you ever thought about it?

Have you ever thought about being one of those people, the normal people, who lead normal lives, who don’t think, don’t know, don’t want to think or know or see?

How was the happy hour on Sunday? Did you see A or that cool guy you were in middle school with? Zara’s latest collection?

Today I don’t know if in this year and a half almost, where you have been striving to be normal, it finally worked. If you no longer have anxiety, panic attacks or depression.

I bet you don’t. I bet the more you try, the worse you get. I bet that when you can’t stop thinking, you feel like crap. And I bet that as soon as you can do it again, not think, you tell yourself that it is okay.

It’s the exams, it’s the university. It’s not you. Or rather, yes, it’s you who have this anxiety about university, commitments and responsibilities. But those are your problems, not you. It’s A and R. It’s not your desperate search for normalcy. With your village boyfriend and friends telling you that everything is fine. That you and the guy you’ve seen five times in total make a great couple. It’s not your family. It’s not the fact that you live with people who ask you daily to be the adult, to be the responsible one and, at the same time, not to fuck up and behave like them.

I wish I knew what you dream. I’m sure whatever disturbs such a normal sleep can tell me much more about you than you, your family, your friends and your psychologist together. I’m so sorry, my friend. You don’t know how much.

I’m so sad. Saying these things to you makes me dreary. Not because I mind saying them, but because it afflicts me to know that they are true.

I have lost a lot in these months. Recently I realised that all the losses are connected. There is a kind of mournful and woeful continuity that links people to the bottom. Every step, stair, descent, hill.

The trauma invests you with glacial clarity. What you discover after an event like the one I experienced is disarming, as silly, as it is absolute. If you were as you were, my friend, you would be amazed by all of this. We would talk for hours, for weeks, for lifetimes, about my recent discoveries. Today, instead, I know you would shy away from any of these topics.

Anyway, the number of people I have lost is proportional to the precipitation of security, or the sense of it, throughout my days.

I am so frightened. The silliest things scare me, the simplest and most trivial things and the biggest ones. And it’s getting worse.

At night, I am afraid to sleep. I fear nightmares. Sometimes I even dream about you. In the morning, I have the anguish of waking up and getting up. Having a whole day ahead terrifies me and then, absurdly, I would like to do nothing but sleep.

I have a phobia of people, all of them. Normal people, the ones you like so much, are my nightmare both awake and asleep. Sometimes I have thought about it, that it would be easier to be like them. Then I think I’ve been trying for fourteen years, to fit in, to be acceptable for the crowd. Fourteen years that I’ve been tormenting myself, hating myself, and alienation assails me.

What do I know if not torture? That which I have inflicted upon myself every day for most of my years and which I can now say with absolute certainty is exactly life, mine at least, torture.

People are abhorrent in their normality. The banality is the monstrosity of evil. And I am tired of living in their world, their rules, their rapes, and mine. I am tired of being raped. (Ah, there were four rapes in total, not two, maybe if I think about it some more will come up).

I did try, you know? To go out, to be with them. I just cannot do it any more. I can’t lie, lie to myself, ignore the elephant in the room. Pretend I’m okay, that I can spend five minutes smiling, talking about nothing and denying that I’ve been raped or that I’m not disgusted by them. Each and every one of them, even A. If I have to see any of them, I get anxious and I cry, I cry so much. My record of enduring all this abundance of normality is a few minutes, and then the mask of dough and salt cracks.

My tremors have gotten worse. I now seem to have Parkinson’s whenever I’m not just with V, Z, B and R. On second thoughts, I don’t know if you’ve ever seen me tremble. As a result, I go out little or not at all. The city centre is mostly off-limits. Every time I look around circumspectly in fear of running into some classmate or F. It happened once, to bump into him. I froze like that night. I showed him that I was afraid of him. Unforgivable.

I hate hating Padua. Last year, for the first time, I felt at home there. Now, this place is unrecognisable. It is the theatre of my misfortunes and I am, as I have always been, an uprooted.

This, having a home, feeling a home, is, like security, related to people. Don’t believe it was F who took Padua away from me. It was you, A, A and G, who took it away from me. It was you who betrayed me, not F. He was only the beginning of my ordeal. The candy on the pillow, the welcome to my very own hell on earth.

I must admit that you, as a great master, completed the horrendous endeavour, almost carrying the weight of the hard teamwork entirely on your shoulders. By vanishing into thin air you have robbed the fragile scaffolding that is my person of one of its main pillars. Now I am a pile of rubble and sobs. I am a figment, a puppet at everyone’s mercy. You should have seen me yesterday, when a friend of my father’s spanked my butt and I did nothing, to understand how appropriate the word ‘puppet’ is to account for my ‘persona’. It wasn’t even a matter of acting, simply reacting, which any sentient being is capable of doing. Not me. I contorted my face with my hands, ate dinner and then, only an hour later, broke down a bit more.

I conclude this mine, I think – since until it is delivered this will remain an open letter – by telling you that you are a coward.

Six months have passed since December, eight since October – when we returned from Amsterdam and practically stopped having contact – and you have done nothing. Nothing.

If you think a pitiful phone call, made solely because I made the first step by texting to you, could make amends for the biggest betrayal I have ever known, you are the best-feigned fool I know.

After throwing away, as if it counted nothing, our friendship, our sisterhood, our philia; you don’t even deign to look me in the eyes. For months, knowing where I am and having the means to reach me, you have not moved an inch. I can say with absolute certainty, that in your personal descent to the bottom that I already inhabit; this, what you made of me and our life together, this was your crowning achievement. The seal on your departure. What you did to me you did to you. Betrayed me, betrayed you. “I love Milly. I hate Milly. I am Milly. I love you, my friend. I hate my friend. I am my friend.” I am nothing. What are you?

Dear friend, I, unlike you, do not hate you. I love you.

Whatever happens, I wish you to escape from that hole that is Grisignano, from monotony, from boys and countryside friends, from you who wants to be normal, to be you. To be a Philosopher and Master of Art. To be my friend.