Un artículo escrito por la periodista inglesa Rebecca Atkison para el periódico The Guardian. La columna se llama “Losing sight, still looking”, en referencia a una condición diagnosticada en la adolescencia: “te harás ciega gradualmente; puede ser en un año o en veinte”.

Llegué hasta ella a través de una serie de eventos circunstanciales. El principal: fue novia de Nick Nyro, un DJ inglés que me envió los mejores “mix tapes” (cedés, en realidad) que he recibido en mi vida.

 

The infant months of a relationship are imbued with discovery. You’re Christopher Columbus and your lover is a map of the world. Each time you meet, you notice new islands of moles among the waves of blue and green ink as you snuggle into the folds of their tattooed skin. Each time they speak, things you’ve never heard before emanate from their mouth; and each time they laugh, the muscles in their face move to form new shapes and expressions under their skin.

 

You lie awake together at night, learning new things: how they ran away from home in 1982 and didn’t return until 1987, and how they once galloped through a field in the dark with their pockets stuffed with squealing baby guinea pigs, liberated in the name of animal rights.

 

At the end of your three-month voyage of discovery, you either don’t like what you’ve found and set off for more bountiful shores; or, like me, you find they’ve colonised your heart, but you can’t spit out the three sticky little words that you want to say through fear that it’s just too early to share them.

 

But then one sunny morning in July, I was in a building when a bus blew up outside. The fragility of human life lay before me on the road. That night I went to tat man’s high rise, sailed up in the lift and let the suppressed ‘I love you’ escape from my mouth. Life suddenly felt too short not to.