A PREDICTABLY DARK DAY

Tempo di lettura: 3 minuti

This morning I opened my eyes at 5:45. But I didn’t get up. I stayed there, trying to stop time a little longer. Because getting up would begin one of those dreaded days. I fell asleep again, enjoying some of the silence that is short-lived in my neck of the woods: at about 7 a.m. the neighbor downstairs curses, just before that the neighbors listen to the TV as if they were at the movies, and the people who come out close their doors almost as if they wanted to knock down the doors of the building next door as well. That is the time I get up, with exceptions, because they decide that and not me. My dog always stays in bed a few minutes longer, so much for those who say that if you have a dog in the morning you go out at dawn. I waited, because I didn’t want to read or listen to the news: no smartphone, no TV, no radio. Silence, slowness, deep breaths: because these days I feel overwhelmed, by the fact that we women continue to die even for a lock of hair, in the name of religion but at the hands of men; because sometimes I can’t breathe when I think that this world is continually violated by those who oppose basic freedoms; because I come from a week in which I have crossed the gaze and lives of invisible boys and girls whom an adult world is leaving alone to survive through hatred and lack of empathy; because I can no longer stand the hatred and intolerance that leads people to hate other people just because they get in the way of their race to nowhere; and finally, because I am deeply pissed off at those who let this happen, in an ongoing mediation with a power that has only one name, PATRIARCH.
I waited until 8 o’clock, made breakfast for myself and my quadruped who needs very little to be happy. I sat down, turned on the TV. This day began, predictably smelling like shit.
What happened today you all know. Italy is writing a black page of history: as black as fascism. That fascism that we have never gotten rid of, that fascism that also wears women’s clothes. That fascism that feeds on hatred, on lack of empathy, on ignorance, on fighting against sexual and reproductive rights. That fascism that screams, that deforms its face to communicate virility and threat to the enemy. That fascism that does not wear a black shirt or a uniform, but sits in the places of democracy. That fascism that tries to deny that it is fascist — but fascist is who the fascist does, no use hiding behind the collection of busts of the Duce. The flame burns, you left it there.
This black page of history began to be written many years ago, when those who were supposed to protect us from all this lost the courage to take clear and opposing positions, and stopped guarding our rights to maintain their own privileges. Now step aside, and leave it to us. That activism is serious stuff, it doesn’t last as long as an election campaign.