And so be it

«My events, and those of my companions in misfortune, would seem to have taken place in a very distant past, or in remote and inscrutable countries, but it is not so. They may seem like inventions, yet it is all terribly true. I changed the names of the characters, most of them still alive. Only my name I have not changed, the name that was imposed on me. That name is the flag of my suffering and my recovery ». Emma La Spina was born in 1961 and lives in Sicily. This is her story. “I am one of a thousand little girls in silence in the large rooms of an institute. I wrote all this to open doors that have been closed for too long, to illuminate dark rooms, to bring down walls cemented with indifference and hypocrisy. Most importantly, I wrote all of this because I've never been able to scream it before. I spent my childhood and early youth in an institution for abandoned children, believing that life, the life of everyone, was similar to what was my lot, continuous physical and psychological torture, ignorance of the most elementary facts of existence, deep misery. The same day I turned 18, I was thrown out on the street. Literally, without the slightest preparation, abandoned in a crowded desert so different from the one I had known until then. And no less hostile. The exteriors, the others, so different, seemed alien to me. Then, slowly, I realized that I was the alien ».

1 Pictures