When I started creating Viva's bags more than ten years ago, I wasn’t thinking only about form, material, or function. I was thinking about everything we carry with us. Not just keys, a wallet, and a phone, but also fragments of our days, unspoken thoughts, feelings we don’t share with anyone. Some things are visible. Others remain hidden. And that is why I believe every bag carries its own story of its owner.

In that sense, I find a certain similarity with the book What We Don’t Talk About, as it speaks about what often remains closed off - like a bag we carry by our side, yet rarely open to reveal its contents. All the small wins, small losses, and other inner worlds that we seldom put into words, yet carry with us every single day.

With this blog post, we continue the Viva's reading blog series with Ana Kompara, which started last summer. Let’s dare to dive deep, even into the harder truths. What follows is Ana’s written piece…

Ana is wearing Vera Bag Black.

Not everything is shown. Not everything is said. But we carry it all with us. One way or another.

“But if there is no conversation—what do we even have left? Silent sipping at breakfast, smacking at dinner, habits that at times seem unbearable to me, pathetic, miserable. I would want to tell you all of this, but I can’t. I’m afraid. It’s too late; it’s no longer important to say something I should have said long ago. Now I only remain silent, retreat into silence, close myself into silence, irreversibly. You pretend not to notice it, because that suits you best. How did it happen to us that we sit and exist parallel to each other, without a point of contact, in the same apartment, side by side? Two bodies without touch, two people without words. Sometimes, when I’m alone, I feel as if I need your confirmation of my existence. After so many years, I can no longer be alone. Our marriage is like a cracked bathroom tile. The crack is clearly visible, yet the tile remains one, stuck to the surface that won’t let it fall apart. What keeps us together is that surface—the fear of being alone.”

Every regular reader, at some point, wishes to read about topics that are not talked about. There aren’t many such books. In fact, authors often write them precisely because they felt their absence in the literary landscape—because they did not exist before. One such author is the Croatian writer Slavenka Drakulić, who has already captivated many readers with some of her earlier works that reveal hidden (women’s) stories: The Invisible Woman and Other Stories, Mileva Einstein: Theory of Sorrow, and Dora and the Minotaur.

In What We Don’t Talk About, with her characteristic style—neither morbid nor kitschy—she takes us exactly where we do not want to go. And yet, whether we are fortunate or not, sooner or later we all end up there in some way. On a hospital bed. In shame, pain, divorce, inheritance, alienation, loss, illness, old age. Although these vulnerabilities are usually what we fear the most, it is precisely there that the depth of humanity resides. Do we dare step into it, as Slavenka does? Courageously and with empathy?

After reading all sixteen stories, you will most likely feel at least somewhat shaken. But at the same time, you will also feel a sense of relief: this, too, truly exists. This, too, is normal. This, too, is part of life. Not only that—someone has even written a book about it.