Is it common, fair or even expected to feel, at some stage, the constraints of marriage and children? Lucrezia knows that she has created alter-ego Emma, whose boundless writing is unleashed into the blogging world, in order to achieve some occasional escaping from her unexciting, though perfectly formed universe.
She also knows that Emma, free to deal with an everyday reality which Lucrezia has abdicated, and increasingly self-sufficient, has soon found her own unique way to deal with neighbours, the house, the family and the community she lives in, dragging real people into her make-believe world and blurring the fine line between Lucrezia’s real life and her darkest desires.
Is it necessary to intervene if Emma's behaviour affects Lucrezia's reality directly? Mr Lost had initially appeared to be just another character destined to populate Lucrezia’s wild dreams; but now, as he tracks down Emma’s blogging diary and straddles between fantasy and reality, it seems that Mr Lost is claiming a large slice of Emma’s attention and, in so doing, an even larger one of Lucrezia’s own.
The quest for relief had started, relatively innocently, with the dream of a sexual affair as a way, perhaps, to prove that one can still be desirable. Mr Lost's posts already seem to go further beyond the promise of physical intimacy, bypassing it with ease and forcing Lucrezia to confront the current mirage of happiness and togetherness.
'If I allow Emma to take over, she will question my entire outlook to life', Lucrezia muses, reading Mr Lost's posts for the umpteenth time. 'Is there ever a right time to inflict grief upon other people, when I could just keep going and successfully manage the guilt of feeling incomplete, as I have always done?'
'And if you don't, will being "incomplete" ever make anybody else happy, Lucrezia?' whispers Emma. 'What is worse? A certain pain or an uncertain, fluid idea of contented satisfaction?'
'I could kill you', thinks Lucrezia.
'And you would kill the part of you that can feel like this.'
What to do?
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Lucrezia and Emma, you two keep repeating the same things to each other. No wonder you are stuck! Let me tell you gently, there are other options, not just the two you mention above.
You both have rights as well as responsibilties, and the other adults involved have responsibilities as well as rights.
Look around and see where you are actually at. Look at the path that brought you here but don't fix on it, then look at all the possible paths ahead.