You can’t get out of childhood, and it clings to you like a bad smell. You notice it in other children – each childhood has its own smell. You don’t recognize your own and sometimes you’re afraid that it’s worse than others’. You’re standing talking to another girl whose childhood smells of coal and ashes, and suddenly she takes a step back because she has noticed the terrible stink of your childhood. On the sly, you observe the adults whose childhood lies inside them, torn and full of holes like a used and moth-eaten rug no one thinks about anymore or has any use for. You can’t tell by looking at them that they’ve had a childhood, and you don’t dare ask how they managed to make it through without their faces getting deeply scarred and marked by it. You suspect that they’ve used some secret shortcut and donned their adult form many years ahead of time.

I am that kind of cunning child, and my mask is stupidity, which I’m always careful not to let anyone tear away from me. I let my mouth fall open a little and make my eyes completely blank, as if they’re always just staring off into the blue. Whenever it starts singing inside me, I’m especially careful not to let my mask show any holes.

Whenever I think such thoughts, my mask becomes even more stupid, because you can’t talk to anyone about these kinds of things, and I always dream about meeting some mysterious person who will listen to me and understand me. I know from books that such people exist, but you can’t find any of them on my childhood street.

I feel like I’m a foreigner in this world and I can’t talk to anyone about the overwhelming problems that fill me at the thought of the future.

I’ve gotten used to the clown role and even find a sad comfort in it, because together with my confirmed stupidity, it protects me against their peculiar meanness toward anyone who is different.

I’m horrified, because they shouldn’t plan their future around my contribution. They shouldn’t count on me in any way when they make plans behind my back

Being young is itself temporary, fragile, and ephemeral. You have to get through it – it has no other meaning.