The Confessions Of A Concubine
Roberta Mezzabarba
One day you will be happy, but first life will teach you how to be strong
A powerful novel, charged with strong emotions, with a cadenced rhythm. A story of domestic violence, of psychological abuse that will grab you in the gut. Mysia, a young woman, and her monochromatic life that step by step will become increasingly tinged with black, a black that knows sadness, fear, mourning. And in an escalation of violence, when the situation seems to become irreparable, impossible to bear, it will seem as if there is only one solution... But life is sometimes able to surprise us, and although this will not represent a fair reward for the wrongs suffered, perhaps over time it will be able to mitigate the memories, cushioning sharp edges and opening an unhoped-for glimmer of light. Every one of us deserves a life in color, deserves to finally be the architect of our own destiny, without succumbing any longer, to finally be free to love, to love each other.
This is a work of fantasy. Names, characters, places and events are imaginary or used in a fictitious key and any reference to people, living or dead, to facts or to truly existing places is purely random Original title of the work: Le confessioni di una concubina First edition
August 2020
IL PORTO
© 2020 La Caravella Editrice
Second edition in Spanish
Publicado por ©Tektime
December 2020
Third edition in English
Published por ©Tektime
December 2021
386 pages
Roberta Mezzabarba
The confessions
of a concubine
Novel
Translator: Barbara Maher
PART ONE
A subtle fear of freedom exists,
so everyone wants to be slaves.
Everyone talks about freedom, of course,
but no one has the courage to be truly free, because when you are truly free, you are alone.
And only if you dare to be alone can you be free.
OSHO
1.
The confessions of a concubine
The confessions of a concubine.
That is all I am.
Nothing but the concubine of my heartaches, my dissatisfactions, my frustrations, my needs which are duly disregarded, ignored, trampled, vilified, despised, burnt at the stake.
That is what I am, mocked, deprived of all dignity, kneeling at the altar of the wishes of others.
Constrained
Forced into cramped spaces that are ill-suited to my desire for freedom.
At the end of each day, all that remains is a piercing sensation of emptiness inside me, almost
as if they had stolen my viscera.
And hope to still have the desire to escape and not listen to anything any more, and forget this torment that never leaves me.
At night I daydream of being able to break free of the bonds that I have allowed to be knotted around me, and be able to do without them. Be able to do without what little I am shamefully able to get by pleading.
Mine is a one-way life, the dichotomy between giving and receiving, between the agonizing desire to live and the existence that saps away moment by moment, in the vain attempt to have my life back, the way I wanted it.
And no answer from the void full of people that surrounds me.
Thus I have learned at take refuge in the solitary universe of colorless days.
Every time I realized it too late and, trapped, became aware of the role I should have
impersonated in that moment of my life, in that situation, while at night thoughts mingled with dreams, and dreams with memories.
With time I have learned at leave the ME that I would have liked to be on a hanger in the closet, and my life went on inexorably, in the attempt never carried out to escape from the inadequacy which no-one had ever been able to allay.
2.
Memories
As a child I always had an almost reverential fear of being judged by my family, by my parents.
I went through my life with uncertain steps always keeping an eye focused on the reactions that my actions aroused.
Never once was it necessary for them to tell me what they would like me to do, what my choice should be, what decision to make.
A look.
