ANNA

She knows this picture when and where was taken

I wanted Anna like I've never wanted anyone before. I wanted Anna against all common sense, against all pride, against all reticence, hesitation, preconception, second thoughts, lucidity. I wanted her so much, too much, I wanted her more than she wanted me, and maybe she never wanted me, but she was there and continued to buzz around me, of course - I wanted her even more, to fill this obvious distance between us. I wanted her and I still want Anna, that's the problem. I want her even though she treated me like a "weird" because deep down I know I was strange.

Predictable. Grantor. Conniving.

I want her even though she's gone from my life, even though there's no longer a future together and maybe it wasn't even there before, but it might seem, even though she's dating others, even though everyone else — potential boyfriends, potential men who will win at the roulette wheel life and they will be able to make her fall in love like I was unable to do in thirteen months by giving her everything, even the benefit of the doubt which in reality was already a certainty; certainty of having become entangled in a sterile, counterproductive, burnt-out story.

I want her so much that I learned to tell myself: to clarify, to vent, to calm myself, I learned to tell about us, about her, therefore about myself, a new me that I discovered day after day and hour after hour, re- building me after her mere presence - but even more so her absence - had shattered me, approaching me in an indifferent, superficial or rather, weird way - a word she likes a lot.

There is no future, I know it. We will never be a couple (but always never say never is the mantra). Yet I would trust her. She will never fall in love with me because, as a wise man said with that brutal honesty that only those familiar with life have: you have given yourself too much, she already knows you, she has lost interest. To paraphrase, I'm trite. The truth is that she doesn't know me at all, I would like to point that out. But she didn't want to do it, I would like to clarify this too. I, on the other hand, had to get to know myself again. I had to introduce myself again, new, unpublished, unknown, like a distant relative who you have never seen before but to whom you are linked by sharing a surname, blood, family trees.

I had to present myself with this baggage, these new experiences: hello, I'm the new you who only retains appearance and generality of the old you; I bring you new doubts, I bring you old wounds with new pain, I bring you your insecurities - the usual ones, did you by any chance think you had overcome them? — and the conflicts, the conflicts against the usual you and the new unknown — you will not win, so you better make him a friend, this unknown enemy of yourself that you cannot defeat, you better learn to live with this unknown troublemaker who chases an unrequited love and throws himself into the void against all common sense.

She was my void. In everything. The leap into the void. The emptiness in my stomach. The void of substance and content and feelings and perspectives and investments. She gave me a little that seemed like a lot, and with that much that was in fact little I was reassured that I had achieved peace of mind and it would be an understatement to talk about giving or donating. She gave me so little that sometimes I think I even dreamed it. She gave me, for my perspective, for the nothing I had given up until that time - that, in the evident imbalance of the relationship, I remained anchored to my scale while she, in the lightness of hers, was already flying towards new destinations, other stories, new interests, more tantalizing pleasures.

And then, let's face it, she's not the one who's strange. She is the representation that most conforms to the average Vietnamese woman - interested, shrewd, straight forwarded, perhaps apparently superficially and falsely modern but internally linked to the values of the traditional family, but only in words, then in reality I didn't know or perhaps I deliberately ignored, unable to invent scenarios reliable ones that could justify my way of thinking about her. Was it me who was stupid? Am I the one who believed her words, who saw sincerity in them, who fondled her when perhaps she should have been slapped to make her see reason and recognize our relationship? I should have helped her to be found when we had to get lost, to be there when I had to leave. Love is an ironic twist of fate. And a sarcastic joke about life. I thought she was the one after our first pseudo phone conversation with Zalo? It was there, in those hours condensed in a pleasant conversation with an almost stranger whose photographic features I remembered well but not the look, not the look because we had not yet looked intensely into each other's eyes, that I understood, I hoped, I believed that finally after so much wandering in vain, finally after so much waiting, I had finally been rewarded: finally I said, her. And I felt it was mine from the first time we went out, I felt it was part of my life, like a phantom limb: it wasn't there, but I felt it. It was there, we had already met in another time and another space, it was destiny that had told us, inspiration from the oriental idea of love, perhaps perfect or imperfect but it suited both of us perfectly: we just had to meet, it was just that the effort and once made, here we are.

But we weren't here. Or rather she was there, there, everywhere, with the gift of transmutation of those who do not anchor themselves to any shore. It wasn't mine, it was hers, of herself, of her past, of her limits, of her preconceptions, of her present of which I was part to a minimal extent - an ephemeral, unrealistic, surmountable, set aside extent - of her future of which I would not have done but part, I just didn't know. It was hers, of herself and of the interest she never had in me or maybe she did but she never told me openly, of the superficiality with which she treated me, apparent love, of the lies she foisted on me, and I reconstructed with unfailing sagacity, the fruit of my eidetic memory, which was once called photographic, of the apparent respect it has granted me, of the lack of education with which it moves in the world and with which I have allowed it to move in mine and with which I myself have downgraded, degraded, devalued to an incredible and smoky lover like a reflection for his luminous image, the result of skilful exercises in creativity.

She belongs to herself and it is right, very right, sacrosanct that she is, she belongs to herself. I just wanted her to share with me part of her belonging, of her existence: this is what I wanted. The truth is that someone who wants to leave and travel and discover cannot be forced to love and stay - even if that departure then becomes a return, even if the journey then becomes the road home: even if she returns, she doesn't stay - she leaves she will go again, and she has done so countless times, she has done so now too, the last one, in which she ideally turned to the web, almost running away, she smiled at me aware that we would never see each other again.

Maybe we won't see each other again but I don't know this yet, and neither does she, because perhaps I will no longer have the courage to flay my soul to discover her heart. I will no longer have the courage to believe in a future that doesn't exist and to delude myself into what doesn't exist and what I thought was. I don't want to give her the time needed to understand if he is the right one for her. And if not him another? One without a face, without a name for me, but with a precise physiognomy for her: the money as a defined and constant presence who will be able to live with it in a way I can't, not because money causes distance, of course, but and above all emotional distance. I won't have the courage to deal with a bastard but true reality: she doesn't want me and I don't want to allow myself the luxury of falling apart when she tells me that someone else has reached the finish line? I won't survive today's, I won't even survive tomorrow's, and then how many others?

I will no longer have courage because everything was exhausted when I persisted in continuing on viscous, slippery ground, on which I fell and got up and fell again: when, aware of defeat, I went to the bottom of the abyss, to the bottom of the the ocean, to touch the lowest point of my existence with my own hands in order to possibly go back up.

I still love you very much Anna, I know I wanted to take care of you: of your wounds, of your good eyes, of your insecurities, and also on your secutrities, of your ambition. I wanted to undermine your superficial frankness only with words. I wanted, I wanted, I wanted and then I had to unhinge my wanted because you didn't want.

I hope you find your serenity one day. May you learn to look inside yourself and make your insecurities your strengths, fears and courage. I hope that one day, far, far away, you'll find that a person capable of making you mature, grow, understand, know. And I hope that person is myself. I truly loved you, Anna, more than you loved me and this, unfortunately, is a bill that only I can pay.