Lidy
Why I named my diary —
The Cliff Walk, Claude Monet, 1882 — Art Institute of Chicago
“I would like to shout (...): leave me alone! (...) Let me go, far away from everything, far away from the world! Everyone thinks I'm pretentious when I talk, ridiculous when I keep quiet, cheeky when I talk back, cunning when I have a good idea, lazy when I'm tired, selfish when I eat one bite too many, stupid, a coward, calculating, etc., etc., etc. All day long I hear that I'm an unbearable brat, and even if I laugh and pretend not to care, it hurts me, and I'd like to ask God to give me another nature that wouldn't provoke people's hostility.” ¹
We come into this world seeking in the faces of others the connection on which all healthy trust depends. A baby, even bare naked, needs a sense of belonging, which he usually finds in his mother's smile. As we grow up, however, the gap between people widens. Clothing becomes a disguise in the best of cases, a uniform in the saddest. And of these ‘savages’ who are considered extreme, I guess they are simply saying: I too exist.
Yet it seems that before we even take our first steps, some sort of machiavellian Big Brother is whispering in our ear: checkmate. Life is a multiple-choice questionnaire and you don't fit any of the boxes.
The epicurean
After living in hiding for a year in a dark, damp warehouse, Anne Frank wrote: ‘When I get up in the morning (...) I jump out of bed (...) I go to the window, lift the camouflage and sniff through the crack until I feel a bit of fresh air and wake up (...) Do you know what Mother calls me when I do this? An epicurean. Funny word, don't you think?’ ²
We should live each moment as if it were stolen.
There's a childish connotation to the notion of keeping a diary. Maybe it’s unfair, but that's also what attracts me to take refuge in writing. The memories of a golden childhood that I still breathe between the pages. The feeling home, no matter where I am. The feeling, like Anne, that a few stolen moments spent writing are enough to make life enjoyable again.
Solitude
13 years old. So I was thinking about Anne Frank and her diary. They had just bought me a guitar. The house had a garden overlooking the countryside. My brother had just left home and I didn't really know what to do with this me who would soon become the centre of all attention. So I stayed up there, in the clouds, and wrote.
One sunny afternoon, I was walking barefoot to the village. With a book in one hand, and a stick in the other, I was having fun scaring the grasshoppers. Suddenly, a high-pitched cry pierced the silence. High up in the sky, a buzzard was flying over the fields. It kept uttering its war cries, while I opened my arms and ran.
At the end of the road, I closed my wings and, out of breath, cried out of victory. Looking left, then right, I scanned the deserted surroundings and suddenly, I realised.
‘So here I am, right back where this diary began: I have no friends.’ said Anne.
Classmates and family, yes. But I didn't have anyone to tell my secrets to at sunset, or to take with me to visit the most beautiful places on Earth, even if only in my imagination. No one to be really honest with.
‘That is the purpose of this diary. In order to better evoke the image I have of a long-awaited friend, I do not want to limit myself to report simple facts, as so many others do, but I want this diary to personify the Friend. And this friend will be named Kitty.’ ³
Kitty. Interesting… That evening, at sunset, when the buzzards had already gone, I sat down in the tall grass and, under the wind sweeping over the hill, I wrote... for a long time. Then I hugged the notebook to my chest and, bathed in light, I fell asleep. So I was thirteen too. And this friend, I'd decided to call her Lidy.
Free
There is a place, Lidy, where you and I will be free.
Do you hear how that word sounds? Free... It's like putting a shell to your ear, you can hear the sound of a life calling to you.
We will be free to remain silent or to say it all, to adore the world or to curse it. Free to love whomever we want and be real about it...
But just imagine! Imagine how simple life must be when you're allowed… to be.
I'm tired of this time when being yourself just isn't enough. I'm sick of reporting, day after day, to the complaints of an ordinary girl who never stops crying about a fate that has however spoiled her.
Being happy doesn't mean anything anymore, you have to keep quiet. Listen.
All along, healing… was just about being.
I'll take everything then: the good, the bad, the unworthy or... the infinite of life. I'll take it all. Just as long as I'm the one living it and we, Lidy, keep writing it.
[True excerpt from my diary]
The Friend
It’s been twenty years. She’s never left me since. And every time I heard the sentence “But where is Eva?” I smiled on the inside. Who could have understood? Back then, I would hide under the table at Christmas, and write stories. In my twenties, I would sit in stairwells on party nights to tell her that I felt like a fool and that I wanted to go home. Now far away on the beaches, that's all I do: write, and on the paper, however thirty, I still meet her dreaming of the word free. —
¹ , ² , ³ : Anne Frank, Journal, (1947) — Translated from Dutch.
Some inspiring quotes from Anne here.
The PDF version here — Print it, save it, share it.
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