What lies beyond

Perception

Flavia has a self-perception that because of the past is not very positive. Her self-esteem has never been very high, because she always think of not being up to what she must do.

This could be because of the famous neglect that has felt, because she think she may not be enough and thus be left behind; or it could go back to her not to feel part of this dimension and in a certain sense, not feeling up to what is required to live in this world today.

The possibilities are many, but the result is clear: the way Flavia perceives herself and perceives who is outside is completely different from that to which society accustoms us.

For this reason, it is difficult for her to relate to those who are around and fully subject to the tenets of the latter.

Since she is small, she doesn't know how to approach other children to ask them to play, she is introverted and shy and never clear on what she likes and what she wants. It's not easy for her to explain what she has inside and when she tries to do it she is not understood, so she starts thinking of being somehow wrong, having to change what she is to be accepted, perhaps because no one wants to stay close to her because she is strange, she is not affected by the games that other children play or gossip of the other girls or subterfuges of people to achieve their goals.

Not knowing how much of what she thinks is right to disclose under the laws of good comradeship, often at the end she doesn't express anything, and she keep it all for herself, frustration, anger, fear and all the other emotions she feels are slowly caught in an implosion that freezes and doesn't enable her to defend her cases and her rights.

To find acceptance, Flavia resolves to do things that in a normal state of consciousness would never even think of, although she doesn't like them and in many cases she even sees them as constraints.

She hopes that favoring the will of the people to which she wants to draw attention, they eventually become her friends and then continues stubbornly to conceal her true self behind the barrier and to show others something different, something Flavia doesn't really feel like being and doesn't even want to become. Yet she is there doing what she is told to, hiding from her true essence to agree to others willing to use her for their own purposes, in most cases without even realizing that she's being exploited for other people's wishes.

Some consider this behavior the one of a person who puts too much faith in the others, without discernment. Flavia thinks rather differently; she is convinced that in the others there is a good part, that something that is hidden behind a mask is worth to be discovered and brought to light, but she has not the right tools to make that happen, and then she finds herself engulfed by appearances without being able to externalize what she found below.

Perhaps she is guilty of presumption, thinking of being able to help someone to get rid of his own fiction when she is the first to hold on hers, for fear of not being understood.

However, the others always see in Flavia good fruit to fleece, a person to be exploited for their own purposes and leaved when she is no longer useful to achieve the goal they have set. This pattern is repeated constantly in her life, so that now it can be said that she got used to it.

"Do good and forget" is a motto that Flavia has done hers, because she knows she can't claim anything from those around her, only at most a little understanding, that most of the time she misses. She stopped to have expectations, because she knows that it's not healthy in the first place for herself and then for relations with others.

She continues in her way, though occasionally she falls into that seeking approval that leads her to hide and to create a surrogate that can be fine for those who faces. Because it is good to wear masks for every situation, but she can not easily show what's hidden behind, and that is perhaps the most beautiful and most vivid part of her.

If for any reason this part comes out, invariably in her returns the sense of not belonging, of isolation; because when to those that are always used to see one side of the coin, is shown another aspect, they tend to move away, not more recognizing the something familiar to them, the comfort zone that is established in interpersonal relationships.

That's how most of Flavia acquaintances slowly move away, leaving her alone and with an increasingly rooted feeling of abandonment that backs the childhood trauma that will not be resolved that after a long time up.