The One Who Always Stood Behind

The night I got back from Zurich, I tried to talk to Alessandro honestly about what had happened — not just the highway, but the forgotten birthday the year before, and a dozen other small things I’d tried to let go.

He sat across from me in his living room, arms crossed, listened until I finished, then sighed, as if he were the one who’d had to endure something.

“You know, sometimes I feel like you’re jealous of your sister for no reason,” he said.

“Valentina needs more attention, she’s more sensitive than you. You’re always so strong, so independent — why does it always have to be a competition?”

“This isn’t about competition, Alessandro. You left me on the side of a highway.”

“Because it was an emergency! You’re acting like I did it on purpose,” he said, his voice rising.

“Everything always has to turn into a drama with you.”

I sat in silence, looking at him for a long time, and I understood: no matter how many stories I told, how much evidence I laid out, the answer was always the same — I was “overreacting,” or I was “jealous.” That was how he, and my entire family, always managed to frame every wound I ever spoke of as something wrong with me.