Freedom Has A High Price E-Book

Giulia Mancini

• Herausgeber: Giulia Mancini
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017

Beschreibung

On the threshold of her fifties, Michela retraces the important stages of her life and going back and forth between  past and present she relives crucial moments: the pain, the downfalls, the defeats and rebirths, up to the full understanding of herself and the achievement of a form of serenity and, maybe, why not, of true happiness. "The choices we make, especially the rational ones, are too often dictated by social conventions and by what others expect of us . We do things out of duty and make the big blunders . With hindsight I would never do things that everybody considered perfectly legitimate and sensible. What I have done only following my instinct and my heart, I would do it again today.”"To start again I needed a superhuman courage, because I had to get my life back.And only when I overcome all this, when I am the master of my time and I feel calm and happy of solitude as well, of my space, so hard-won, and of my time because finally I'll know how to handle it, only then I will be able to declare myself truly free, to be alone or to fall in love again. This freedom must be won, but freedom is sweat and blood, freedom has a high price.”"It's strange but I have found happiness through winding and tiring roads, overcoming the greatest sorrows, I have overcome anger and pain through my passion for life, despite it all.I always tried to be like others and comply to common rules, but the paths of life have led me to be different, and I have always paid the price.”

Leseprobe

Giulia Mancini

Freedom has a high price

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Giulia Mancini

Novel

FREEDOM HAS A HIGH PRICE

Translated by Silvia De Cristofaro

Freedom has a high price

Giulia Mancini

Translated by Silvia De Cristofaro

"Freedom has a high price"

Written By Giulia Mancini

Copyright 2017 Giulia Mancini

All right reserved

Distributed by Babelcube, Inc.

www.babelcube.com

Translated by Silvia De Cristofaro

Cover Design 2017 Maria Teresa Steri

"Babelcube Books" and "Babelcube" are trademarks of Babelcube Inc.

Presentation

Freedom has a high price

At almost fifty years old, Michela thinks back of the important moments of her life and she relives the crucial moments: pains, falls, defeats and new beginnings, till she completely finds herself and she reaches some kind of serenity and maybe, why not, of true happiness.

“choices we make, especially rational ones, are too often dictated by social conventions and by what people expect from us. We act because of our sense of duty and therefore we make huge mistakes. With hindsight I would never redo things everybody thought to be totally right and sensible. I would redo what I did following just my guts and my heart still to these days.”

“A huge amount of strength was needed to start all over again, because I had to put my life back together. Only when I get through all this, when I learn how to manage my time and I feel happy and content when I’m on my own, when I feel happy of my own spaces I conquered with a lot of effort, and of my time because I’ll be finally able to manage that, only then I will be truly free to be on my own or to fall in love again. This freedom has to be conquered, but freedom is sweat and tears, freedom has a very high price.”

“It might sound weird but I’ve found happiness walking through long and windy roads, overcoming the greatest pains, I overcame anger and pain through my love for life, against all odds. I’ve always tried to be like everybody else and to follow community rules, but life’s paths led me to be different and I’ve always paid the price for it.”

“I don’t regret painful times, I bare my scars as if they were medals, I know freedom has a very high price, as high as that of slavery. The only difference is you gladly pay for it , with a smile, even when that that smile is dimmed by tears.” Paulo Coelho.

FREEDOM HAS A HIGH PRICE

Written by Giulia Mancini

All rights reserved

This book is a work of fiction. Names,characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitiousmanner. Any resemblance to actualpersons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

First edition July 2014

ISBN 9786050311518

I

Going through the important days of my life everything now seems incredibly close and strangely clear. Everything now seems understandable to me, like a thriller where eventually every piece of the puzzle perfectly fits with the others and the picture, blurry and undefined at first, now becomes finally clear. I go back to every far away memory, even to those very far back in time that seemed to be forgotten. What was once confused it becomes now clear and the reasons that seemed unintelligible back then become totally understandable to my eyes and my heart. What happens in our life can completely change us and, sometimes, we don’t even realize that till we see, by looking inside ourselves and looking back, that things haven’t been the same from a certain point on. I often find myself smelling scents in the air that bring back moments and memories, the smell of lighted fireplaces reminds me of the beginning of fall and of the first cold spells of the season. Today it would be a perfect day to light a fireplace and it seems to me to smell the smoke of our fireplace in the air, the smell of glazed almonds my mother made with caramelized sugar under the yellow neon light of our childhood kitchen with flowery tiles. At the first cold spells of the season I always long for glazed almonds, not for their taste actually, as I didn’t like them that much really, but I long for the feeling they came with, that familiar and safe feeling. Thinking back of my mother’s smile reminds me of the other women in my life, women who left a permanent mark, who left a mark simply because of who they were, for the battles they faced and for the wars they often lost, always with all the love and passion they could give though, always tameless.

Nowadays I feel all them are inside myself, I am them and they are what I am now.

My name is Michela, I was named after my grandpa, whom I’ve never met, who went to the United States and then came back to never leave again.

II

Forty days and forty nights, that was how long it took to my grandfather Michele to cross the ocean and reach the United States. He travelled that route twice, the first time with his brother Pietro, the second time to go back to Italy, “I’ll be back” he told his brother, “I just need to see my homeland one more time”.

But after long nights of sailing, spent breathing in the salty and steely ship’s smell, he couldn’t think of the sea anymore without feeling sick.

Pietro wrote him many letters for a whole year before realizing Michele would have never come back and he accepted he had to go on without him, even if everything seemed harder without him. My grandfather stayed in Italy.

“I wonder how it would have gone” my mother said sometimes “we would be americans now”,

Deep inside my heart I was happy to be Italian, I thought living in Italy was better.

I was six years old and I always listened to grandpa’s journey story in awe.

My mother, through the magic of her stories, is always present and alive inside me.

Benedetta, in her twenties, was a tiny woman with big breasts she used to hide under layers of bandages.

Her long black hair went down her shoulders soft and curly like whimsical streams. Michele was mesmerized by that thick hair and when he thought back of America he knew why he came back.

While he was watching her approaching the altar, beautiful and classy like a princess, he felt he was the luckiest man in the world even if he was one of the poorest.

He never regretted he came back and, in spite of his poverty, two world wars and so many struggles, he felt he didn’t waste his life and he knew he had been happy.

Benedetta was my grandmother.

One day, I was about eleven, our Italian American aunts came to visit us; they were Pietro’s two daughters and one of them looked exactly like my mother: she had freckles, red hair and green eyes, and they even shared the same name.

Names and last names are the same from generation to generation in the south of Italy, so you could happen to find the same person with the same name and last name after years, only fourty years younger. Nowadays this tradition has almost disappeared.

Our American aunts, who lived in Boston, were with their seventeen years old nephew, tall and with blond hair who didn’t speak Italian at all and who was always smiling, and they spent a whole day with us. Our aunts seemed very happy to have found a piece of their family and they told us about their life with great excitement talking in their old and hard to understand, even for my mother, native dialect, as they used words not used anymore. In that moment I totally understood what my Italian teacher meant when she said spoken languages are “alive” as they change and evolve along with us: my aunts, my mother’s cousins and Pietro’s daughters, were grown up listening and learning their father’s language, that had never changed since the beginning of the twentieth century.

I’ve got a photo I sometimes look at: from the left there’s my father smiling with a smooth face with no wrinkles, even though it’s a rugged face; my mother is smiling as well and I’m in the middle, tiny and very skinny, my sister Benedetta (named after my grandmother), our two Italian American aunts Maria Sole and Immacolata, with the same names of my mother and my aunt. Now I wonder where my great aunts are, if they are already dead like my mother and my uncles or if they’re still alive; I wonder if my handsome blond second cousin, who should now be well over fifty, is still handsome and if he runs the New York marathon or if he turned into one of those bulky and fat Americans.

All in all I’d rather remember all of them as they look in that black and white photo: alive, young and smiling. When I still had to do everything in my life, when my all life was still ahead of me.