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“Every day I discover that I don’t know myself... today, tomorrow its always the same. I discover that I don’t know where I’ve been. I’ve lost myself and lost the will to live.” I know that once there was a name. I know that she remembers it, but doesn't want to. It embarrasses her and makes her eyes teary. Let’s call her Ariana. Ariana doesn’t have a name, but she has a story. She keeps it in her veins, the reason for such apathy. The most known cliché amongst women of the night: drugs, money and prostitution. She sells her body in order to console her soul. She tells me: “I’ve already forgotten that I have a body. I just use it." I know that she fells dead inside, trapped in a body that she keeps hurting. She hides behind her blurry, unreadable eyes, but I know that deep inside there's still a part of her that wants to live. The body that she carries hurts her soul. She feels heavy, between the constant pain of loading bony shoulders and skinny legs. Never in such a short period of time have I ever felt so bad for watching such apathy and degradation. Between every cigarette that she devours without noticing, I feel that the conversation starts to get inconsistent. An inconsistence caused by a mist of fear and shame. All the responses are short and straight, but carry all the truth in the world. I feel intimidated in front of a reality that I know so little. - Do you know what you are? - "Yes ... I'm a hooker". Life had tattooed her feet with calluses, hands with scars and her veins with tiny little points that tend to grow in number and violence. The fierceness with that she drugs herself numbs her soul and senses. "The absolution of the weakness" the most beautiful metaphor for a terrible, consuming and incomprehensible lie. Life was never easy for her and it's difficult to struggle against some eyes that refuse to be open. A weakness that became really powerful and grotesque. It's not easy to change. It's not easy to fight against the will of her nails, of hers fingers, skin and bones. The fight, the one that she pretends to have it's called "methadone"; and every morning she surrenders. Coming and going... that satanic routine. Ariana doesn't know why she does it. It seems to help healing the hangover, but the taste seems to dilute faster than the traces of each man that touches her body. The results, although, never seem to exist. The walls of that shelter, where she rests her shadow, and that she divides with other partners of “war", tend to compress on her. It's collosal the sensation of suffocation and discomfort that those four walls impose on me. Ariana isn't intimidated, moreover she has spiked in herself seven years of imprisonment in Caxias, for something that doesn't make sense anymore. A confusing story about passports and traffic, the kind of story that the less you know the better. The "lucky hour" approaches. Her eyes fade for an instant. With the same ability that she was rolling a shroud of tobacco and drugs, between a pile of bags and cards she starts to put on the right type of clothing and coloring her lips with a used lipstick. She's ready! Ariana knows exactly what she’s got to do. Where she's going, who's waiting for her, some regulars or some new "treasures" that might appear. The prices change and so do the services. When I asked her if she had some limits, she hesitated. She seemed that she didn't want to compromise her will of being honest and the endearment that she felt that she was starting to conquer from me. I repeated: "Do you have limits?" In fear she answered, "I do everything that they want to pay for." By this time the questions became almost as vile as the responses. I feel dirty, nasty and guilty. I hear Ariana talking about prices and I start to drown myself in assumptions, like a puzzle that doesn't seems to be complete. "What’s the price of a "ride"? 5 or 10 euros." That body, the subsistence for her and others, her hiding-place, has for her a smaller price than the drugs that she consumes. "Do you have pleasure?" "Pleasure…?" - she laughs - " Only when I get home with money enough to eat something and for a good dose." The forgotten body… the makeup… returning home with the same emptiness that when she left. She doesn’t clean herself, doesn’t feel disgusted nor remorse from the last hours of giving to others the only thing that still belongs to her. It's really hard to realize that this parallel universe coexists so close to us. There are lots of Arianas in every corner of our cities… but no one knows them, no one ever sees them. “I don’t know why I do it. I don’t feel them touching me. The only thing I know is that every day I get up and know what is expected of me. Will it end someday? Well … the drugs will end me first ...” “Why Ariana?" "Because I have a son …”