Notes from "Hunting and Gathering"

She was tired, she should have put her elbows on the desk too, and told him the truth. Told him that if she wasn't eating at all, or almost nothing, it was because the stones were taking up all the room in her belly. That she woke up every day with the feeling that she was chewing gravel, that even before she opened her eyes she was suffocating. And that the world around her had become meaningless, and every new day was like a weight that was impossible to lift. So she cried. Not that she was sad, but to make it pass. The flood of tears, in the end, helped her to digest the pile of stones and get her breath back. Would he have listened? Would he have understood? Of course he would have. And that was precisely why she'd kept quiet.

"C'mon, sweetheart. Don't worry, we'll make it. We won't do any better than anyone else but we won't do any worse, either. We'll make it, you hear? We'll make it. We've got nothing to lose, since we have nothing to begin with. C'mon. Let's go.

Anna Gavalda