XXIII – Before and After Pinel

It’s amazing what pretenders madmen and poets can be. Fernando Pessoa was right. While pretending to tell of their pains they pretend to purge them, to adequate themselves, to succumb to mediocrity. And everyone, even they, eventually come to believe in their pretending, a mere artifice of the rhetoric, mere creation. But in pretending their pains don’t just draw off. In the catharsis of telling, although pretended, of retelling, post-script, the soul frets in the bipolarity of being, and the very own inconsistency of the maladjusted are diluted into words. Poor words! Without consultation, they are obligated to carry the heavy load of life and existence.

Amid the monotonous days of incarceration, an unexpected conversation arouses. The boss man in white, scientific rationality embodied in psychiatry, calls me at a time not the least bit unusual. The sweet nurses launch their smiles in my direction. I prepare my defenses, my protection, to keep me from falling into psychological ambushes. Already well adapted and integrated in the conviviality of Pinel, I wink to my colleagues as they watch me walk into Dr. Lucas’ office.

The same, cruel sanity tests are applied as always during the conversation. I pretend, but then I am surprised… an opening!? I don’t believe it… the direction of the words that come out of the mouth of that man seemed to be misleading me. No, he couldn’t have meant to say what he just said. My family thought it would be better for me to leave Pinel and continue my recuperation at home? How so? What made them think this way? Could I have fallen into the webs of psychotropic drugs and resigned to all the mad geniality that had befallen me? It couldn’t be real. And right now, at a time when that prison had become my home. All my friends were there. An avalanche unhinged in my mind. And a furor of joy and fear invaded me.

I shook the Doctor’s hand, ran to my room and packed my bags. My mother was there waiting for me. My brother, outside… Everyone was waiting for me, outside. Outside, the world. But what world? So unworldly was the world that had mistreated me so. Why go back? Could I? Would I be myself? But who was I after so many pharmakons? After nearly two months of uninterrupted incarceration. Friends? Did they still exist out there? How would they look at me? What could I say to so many mediocre beings?

An iron door swung open, a tear trickled. For the first time since I was tied up in a straight-jacket, I breathed and felt free. I was freed from that damned jacket! Now it was time to gain the wings of freedom, to enjoy the world, to live new and old loves, to write poetry, to finger-pick bossas and sambas on guitars. Would I be ready for all this? There, that day, I was reborn. It might be said in a BP and AP life. Before and after Pinel.