Knock At The Door / Llamar a la puerta

"Childhood is a knife stabbed in the throat, you knew how to take it away. Now, you got to learn how to swallow saliva." ; that is the way the playwright named Wajdi Mouawad describes the loss of the innocence in his play Fires, and it was the same force of that metaphor that puberty hit me: when I was thirteen I found many alcohol bottles hidden between the clothes of the wardrobe of my aunt, revealing her addiction and my naivety.

That energic and authoritarian woman, the role model, was who conducted me to confront the practicality of the world through an endless list of steps to follow, of expectations to fill and women ideals to accomplish: "Behave, don't go out by yourself, don't dress like that, don't play like that, a lady doesn't act like that."

Day by day I followed the rules carefully until the bottles got out from their hideout, not only to discover that de model was a misleading guise but to prove that I was an unbreakable part of that situation when I saw myself putting the bottles back in their place without saying a thing.

That way it was started to be called Knock At The Door, intending to condense that moment of disappointment and take it to a story that doesn't belong to me anymore, but that has been presented to each one of us, knocking at the door demanding to confront the uncertainty that distinguishes the transition into adolescence.

SPANISH
“La infancia es un cuchillo clavado en la garganta, tu supiste retirarlo. Ahora hay que aprender a tragar saliva.”, así describe el dramaturgo Wajdi Mouawad a la pérdida de la inocencia en su obra Incendios (2004) y fue justo con la misma fuerza de esa metáfora con la que me golpeó la pubertad: a los trece años encontré varias botellas de alcohol escondidas entre la ropa del ropero de mi tía, dejando al descubierto su adicción y mi ingenuidad.

Aquella mujer enérgica y autoritaria, el modelo a seguir, me condujo a afrontar la practicidad del mundo a través de una lista interminable de pasos a seguir, de expectativas que llenar y de ideales femeninos que cumplir: pórtate bien, no salgas sola, no te vistas así, no juegues así, las señoritas no hacen eso.

Días tras día obedecía las reglas al pie de la letra, hasta que las botellas salieron de su escondite, para no solo descubrir que el modelo era una apariencia engañosa sino para comprobar que yo era parte inseparable de esa fachada al verme regresar las botellas a su lugar sin decir una palabra.

Así comenzó Llamar a la puerta, con la intención de condensar ese momento de desilusión para llevarlo a una historia, que ahora ya no me pertenece, pero que a cada uno de nosotros se nos ha presentado tocando a la puerta para exigir enfrentar a la incertidumbre que caracteriza el paso de la adolescencia.