“I want to be the one I’m going to be as soon as possible”; dancer, painter, singer… However, given the problem of the protagonist and narrator, she couldn’t “think about being a writer (which is what I most wanted to be) or a historian, or a schoolteacher, or a doctor, or a secretary”.
The problem, which is not directly alluded to in the text, except in one explanatory note, is dyslexia, a background theme that makes her “live in some kind of secret fear, instability, uncertainty, insecurity and embarrassment”. But, aside from the central theme, unknown at that time, there is an interweaving of many others that have to do with the girl protagonist: her family (her father is dead and her mother has remarried), her school (her first moments and friendships from that time) and her teachers… This set is best described through the presence of a series of characters that, quickly outlined and defined with short significant phrases, help to deal with the situation in a completely natural way. To be precise, it is Pierre Chauvert, her stepfather, who suggests that the girl’s problem is being wrongly approached and consequently he is the one who takes the steps to find solutions. Only then does she begin to be clearly conscious of the fact that “you’ll get to be who you are going to be day by day”.
