I had learned as a child how to deal with criticism: you are not good for anything, why can X do it better. Over time, when love entered the landscape, it changed its tactics: it came together with fear and anxiety. My soul was tormented by unhealed wounds. I had lost myself so deep and far inside myself that I couldn't find me anymore. Until that day, when it crossed my path. I've been stalking it for a while. It had the courage and fearsome beauty of a scarecrow. Itmade me jump on its shoulders. I saw the Sun. Since then, we've been making amends: me and self-esteem.
(Translated by Medeea Alexandra Stan / University of Bucharest, Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, MTTLC, year II / Corrected by Silvia Petrescu, coordinator of the translations)Real Fiction is a collective project started in 2013 by Florin Piersic Jr. The concept of Real Fiction continued to exist as a Facebook group, after a volume of stories was published at Humanitas Publishing House. (In August 2022, the group has 9,000 members.) The authors write ultra-short stories, with the texts limited to 500 characters (in Romanian, so the length of the English translation might be a little different) - a flash-fiction exercise on a topic that changes every few days. The group's coordinators are Florin Piersic Jr., Gabriel Molnar, Răzvan Penescu, and Luchian Abel. (Drawing by Adrian T. Roman)
Versiunea în română a acestui text se poate citi aici, în rubrica Ficțiuni Reale. 
