“It’s like it’s me, but it’s not really me, just a person there. Like someone who could be me, but is not, and I feel like it is, but it really isn’t because I’m me and no other person” I said, trying to make some sense, telling my mother how I felt.

“Pass me the milk will you?” she asked with a smile in her face, I knew she wasn’t probably listening anyway, but I kept telling her.

“It is something like inexistence, but I know I am here. Like in videogames, you control the body of the hero, I sometimes feel like the kid with the controller” I said, looking at her eyes to get any response, she poured the milk and continued to stir.

“I mean, I don’t think I’m a hero or anything or that I have to collect a hundred keys to get somewhere else, I’m not crazy.” I said, self indulging to apparently just myself “I just sometimes feel like it’s not real you know? You and I, the spoon you’re using instead of the blender, the bowl of your cookie though; nothing at all, real” I said, trying to get her into my scenario, trying to make her see what was inside my head, what worried me. But she had only eyes for the cookie though.

“You know I don’t like how the blender machine smashes the apples” my mother said, giving me the spotty glare. You see, she had this obsession with things being clean, but not your regular –wash with soap and water- sort of clean. She wanted a floor, a dress, a conversation, even an idea to be spotless, to be without a flaw, no trace of mistake, completely clean. She gave that look when one was not overwhelmingly polite with the neighbors,  when there was something she didn’t like about the set table, and specially when she though a discussion was not going the way she wanted it to.

And so I received the spotty glare, but I didn’t mind, I went on, I was sick of the spotty glare, sick of apple cookies and sick of silence. “You know, this guy on Youtube says the most wacked things, he’s like this philosopher who works at a book Publisher, and he speaks about this neo-existentialist guys who thing nothing is real and give advice about how to disconnect from reality” I said, partly because I wanted to, partly because I knew it would throw her out of her nerves.

“Amanda, you know perfectly how the Shepherd thinks about that web site, I will ask you not to reference it, or even visit it” she said, saying what was right to say, then there was silence, and she kept stirring, and mixing. “You don’t even know what I’m talking about” I said, raising my voice.

“Watch your tone!” she scolded me, without any attempt to comfort me. “What was I talking about?” I nearly yelled, and then she faced me and said. “I always listen you, you were speaking about videogames and Youtube, both things I completely disapprove” then she went back to her cookies.

“Could you just for a second listen to me? Could you just for one freaking second acknowledge that I don’t care about your stupid apple cookies, or your dinner parties, or any of that crap? Could you just for a second acknowledge I’m a person with thoughts and not just somebody who you put a dress on?” I yelled, I screamed, I cried and then I grabbed the fucking bowl and tossed it to the ground. And then, just then she looked at me, me and not her daughter who asks things she can’t understand, me and not some silly preppy girl she would like I were. Me, and it was terrified look, me and she didn’t recognized the person. Then the silence again.

“Amanda, I think you should go to your room and prepare, the guests will be here in one hour” she said, collecting the pieces of my broken self and the bowl from the floor. None of which she could repair.

By I'm the penguin