Reading andromacha's journal

People would look at her as if she were completely transparent. No one would consider her, and even less care about how she was feeling about being totally ignored. She was ignored, yes, that’s true, but everyday she had to stand the ridiculous behavior of her mates trying to be nice to her to get favors and copy her assignments for the day. Johanna was desperately longing for a little love, but no one had ever shown her not even a little crumb. And it wouldn’t have been so hard… just an “How are you?” every now and again, or a “Hey, we’re going out today, do you wanna join us?”
She was sometimes invited to parties, but only to be asked for favors later, and she was that kind of girl who helps everyone in need of help.

She had some friends; she considered some people good friends, but she painfully realized that they were ready to turn their back to her, whenever she was in need of something. They didn’t give her affection, and they have never realized how alone she was feeling.
The only friends she could count on were Elizabeth and Allison. She’d known them since elementary school, and they were always ready to give her suggestions, help and comfort. Yes, but Johanna didn’t need only the comfort which her girl friends could give her. She wanted someone to love, and to be loved by. She was desperately seeking for her significant other.

Everytime her mates went on telling about this or that guy, she felt sick at her heart; she wanted to live a love story so bad, and hearing those girls talking about having sex and every other kind of relationship with people of the opposite sex would get her more and more depressed. Not that she had never been asked out. She had actually. A couple of times. She’d always had this look for guys who weren’t right for her, and she would always go out with the wrong guy.
Johanna was the romantic kind of girl.

She was profoundly influenced by one of her previous boyfriends. He was the kind of guy who doesn’t care much about the girl he is with. He was just interested in having fun all day long, no matter how and no matter with whom. Well, she fell for him, and even now she doesn’t understand how she fell in love with such a horrible guy. He was completely wrong for her. He kept hurting her during the whole period they had been together, and she kept feeling guilty about that. Yes, because she tended to forgive him everything. He cheated on her, he made her feel ugly and horrible, he managed to destroy completely all her confidence in herself. He hurt her so badly that she started thinking she probably wasn’t made to be loved. She was convinced that probably she wouldn’t deserve one of those wonderful sweet love stories she’s always been reading of in her books.

The guys who dated her made her change her personality completely. She was known to be a sweet open hearted girl, but was obliged to protect herself from the others by showing a strong personality. She managed to build a sort of shield around her, and closed her heart completely, because she didn’t want to suffer again.
The only persons she had some relationship with were Elizabeth and Allison, her two best friends. They would meet and talk for hours about her and their problems, and Johanna was very helpful towards them. They all considered themselves as sisters, and were ready to do any kind of sacrifice to help each other. Johanna’s life lacked of affection, even if she had a warm family to support her and those two nice girls always ready to cheer her up whenever she needed to let her emotions go.

Johanna’s parents never realized what their daughter was feeling, because she was a shy girl, and didn’t talk very much to them about her problems or her life in general.
She was used not to cry in their presence, and she’d always manage to be strong in order to hide her problems, her lacking of affection and her awkwardness about playing the role mother nature had chosen for her. She didn’t feel like a woman; she felt like the worse copy of a woman, and this obviously got her depressed and more and more convinced that she would never find a man who’d treat her with respect and love her for what she actually was.
In a world where appearance was everything, she felt definitely ignored and not equalized.

She was very fond of computers. She’d always been having one since she could remember. Her father brought home their first computer when she was only 5. She would use it mostly to play and later to do her assignments. She never thought, however, that her computer would be the mean to get in touch with the love of her life.
In a room filled up with books and stuffed animals, the computer was the only thing which could give her new emotions, and a way to escape from her sad reality.
In the Nineties, also in Italy there was the so called “Internet boom”, and Johanna managed to get a connection to the ‘net as many of her friends. The World Wide Web was finally open even for her, and with the new technologies, Johanna got more and more able to escape from her reality and dive into another one. A brand new way to interpret the life, as if it actually were the locus amoenus everyone around her pretended to believe in.
The most wonderful news for her was, however, the electronic mail. A way to get in touch with people who lived thousands miles from Italy. People different from her with their problems and their lives; in other words, a whole new world to discover.