As long as I can remember they’ve called me strong. It started when I was little and vulnerable, but
I kept quiet and behaved. Come on baby girl, you are the strong one. It didn't seem like a
compliment, rather a simplification of everything: if I was strong, they had to care less. Every time
that strength was attributed to me with such confidence, it scratched my fragile and emotional part
inside me, the silent one. It scratched and scratched. Can't you hear me screaming?
Growing up like a defenseless scorpion, I began to build an armor I used to show like a rock
surface to others, and in the meantime, day by day, to fulfill its main duty: defending me and the
delicate world inside me. A world only mine.
I learned to prick like a needle.
Today, I am a strong woman. I say it myself; no one labels me anymore. Yes, I'm strong. I fall and I
get up again, and I prick life when needed. I go ahead, I take what I want.
The secret of my strength is the other version of me.
Indeed, this is my strength: being a needle. With my tip I pierce purposes, prejudices, slaps,
monotony. And at the same time, I hold tight and strengthen the intimate thread of myself: fragility,
emotionality, empathy.
I am needle and I am thread.
You know, I became really strong the day I learned, by myself, to stitch all versions of myself
together.
