The situation seems to be improving, I’ve started rehab.

I’ve been trying for a week gradually to leave my shelter. I started walking my dad’s dog in the nearby countryside. Then I drove around a bit to get used to it again, until I made it to my house, roughly 20km away. I felt weird going back home, like asking myself where I’d been, where these past four months went, it’s crazy. My excitement was strong, but step by step I started winning back my ability to do things.

I look around, I sit on the stairs trying to assess my new normal, to listen to my body and take stock of myself. I am not relaxed, but I guess it’s normal after such a longtime. The biggest hurdle is driving: strange things happen when I am on the road, sometimes I feel my throat closing up, like I have something on my chest and I can’t breathe. I still have to get used to this. My doctor says that if I face it, these feelings will wear off, and I just can’t wait.

Now that I’ve gone over my current state, I think it’s time for me to share my path from the beginning. My goal is to show you the difficult steps that brought me to self-awareness and to rediscovering myself. I want to explain how this is all the result of a sick society not suitable for human beings who, more and more often, resort to intense psychic training to bear it.

Part of my mind started rebelling more or less four years ago. The weight of my sense of inadequacy being swallowed and repressed was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Yes, that’s what it’s all about, that’s the demon I carry inside of me and I am trying to beat.

It wasn’t easy to recognize the “bastard”.

image/svg+xml

I still remember very clearly my first encounter with the psychoanalyst. I had no clue what kind of person he could have been, a wizard or the typical eccentric doctor who would hypnotize me with a pendulum, just like I’d seen in movies. I was quite worried. We shook hands, I sat at his desk and, still apprehensive, I started sharing the reason for my visit and what I was feeling, hoping he could quickly diagnose my “condition” and point me to a cure or a treatment to follow.

I had already tried a few remedies: yoga, Bach flowers, so I decided I would tell him how useless they were. The doctor would listen in silence. Every now and then he would ask me about my life, my job, my family. I tried to be as honest and detailed as possible, to make it easier for him to look inside of me.

What I was doing was an unconscious transmission of my fears, just as if my mind knew the only way for him to understand things truly was to make him feel just as I did.