She descended into madness
Almost died
there
then rose
And this is how life goes
For some
If not for many
It started slow, really really slow and I had to learn patience the hard way. Decided I would go to therapy, pay attention, sometimes mask pain with laughter – when it would be too hard to face, do homework, pretend that I was at home in a city I felt totally disconnected from when all I wanted to do was run to London, write my thoughts sometimes – poorly and barely having a voice, listen to shitloads of music, sometimes even dance alone, in the mirror, wondering whose eyes are those because they’re unrecognisable to me, obsessively clean and adorn my apartment with all kinds of pretty things, things I used to love, things that screamed “this used to be me”, things I’d made sometime, in the past, regain my independence one step at a time.
The change was subtle at first because I felt and behaved like a frightened deer in other’s company – anxious, skeptical of everyone and everything, doubtful, I’d forgotten I was allowed to push boundaries and rebuild my style, myself, my inner and outer world – but then, as time passed, I started making bolder choices, placed warm white light bulbs everywhere in the house, bought colorful pillows, rearranged the furniture, got rid of lots of stuff that didn’t have a place in my life anymore, started to nurture the house plants and rebuild connections with fellow humans – cautiously at first, because my thinking process was still distorted and was very difficult for me to trust, to be vulnerable, to be authentic – I discovered I still loved sunsets and quiet moments alone, on my bike or wandering around the countryside, still loved the sounds of nature, the crickets, the chicadas, the smell of rain and the sound of it falling on my umbrella, I started appreciating humor again – I still remember the first time I realised the funny girl was still inside – I was in Morocco one night talking to a guy and having a coke. I remember him saying something about the Coke glass bottles there, how they seemed much larger than in Europe and I replied “Well…after all, we’re in Africa”.
I was told that every little bit of me was still there, inside, latent, waiting for the whole of me to heal, but I couldn’t believe I could retrieve any of the parts I missed most – had already abandoned hope that I would ever meet the witty me, the creative me, the feminine me, the femme fatale me, the curious me, the gentle me, the powerful me, the profound me, even the dark me…ever again. I was now a NORMAL, boring individual who was learning – perhaps for the first time – to live a stable, normal, boring life with no mood enhancers such as weed (which has caused more damage than good in the end because I’ve come to know that reggae sounds great even without a blunt between my fingers, I can be creative without being high and reality can be faced, accepted and even beautiful – and so can pain if you don’t immediately run away and hide from either of them inside a joint; not to mention that weed was what got me downward spiralling in the first place – that and my lack of healing). It hurt at first – the routine hurt, the lack of hopes, dreams and aspirations hurt, the mundanity hurt like hell, but I slowly started to find loopholes to all this normalcy and enhance my day-to-days.
I learned how to bake cakes (and I mean quite complicated cakes) following and even allowing myself to change some of my grandmother’s old recipes, then crunchy, lattice crusted apple pies so I could enjoy them with vanilla ice-cream and quiches – and yes, it may sound easy and simple, but for someone who’s spent most of their life as far away from a kitchen as possible, that was huuuuuge. I wasn’t afraid of making mistakes anymore. I was on the other side of fear, experimenting. And…received a great deal of compliments, too.
I reopened the door for humor, watched old and new stand up sets from all my favorite comedians – for educational purposes this time – to remember what it’s like to be silly and light-hearted, how good it feels to be able to poke fun at your – not ideal, if not absurd – situation and somehow turn it around, to hear yourself laugh again, the importance of a well placed silence, a grimace, how liberating it feels to not take yourself so seriously all the time.
Although I’ve never been much of a consumerist – except for in my twenties, when all I cared about was clothes and fashion related items and you could even say I was sort of a shopaholic but never quite felt at ease inside shopping malls and big stores, I was now leaning more and more towards frugality, following advice on investing and saving money and only spending on people, experiences, things that bring joy and enhance your well-being and I must say…I got quite good at it.
After setting unshakeable boundaries with them – which were shook multiple times, still, I slowly begun to get close to my parents. Not as their child who’d been so wronged in the past and was now seeking revenge or apologies galore, but as an adult who was beginning to understand that at least one of them was incapable of change, because he simply couldn’t and since I am incapable of cutting ties even when I’m told I must for my own benefit, it meant that I had to find another loophole and decide how much I would allow myself to give and how deep our relationship should go. I became more patient, more forgiving, more compassionate. But movie and real life scenes of fathers and daughters hurt like a knife and probably always will.
I started looking more and more outside myself, asking myself what I could do to bring some relief and bits of joy to others, kicked off random conversations with the nice ladies at my neighbourhood stores trying to get to know them, during holidays I made phone calls and invited over the friends and family members who were the loneliest, made space for others’ problems and needs, asked questions, listened, offered help, understanding, time, space. I watched Ricky Gervais’s “After life”, balled my eyes out, but something hit me harder than anything else: the thing that Anne said sometime during Season 1 as they were sitting on a bench in the cemetery:
“We’re not just here for us, we’re here for others. All we’ve got is each other. We’ve got to help each other struggle through till we die and then we’re done. No point in feeling sorry for ourselves and making everyone else unhappy, too ”.
And just like that, I was beginning to remember who I had always been.
To be continued,
Green Eyed Kisses,