XXIV – Me hunting myself

So here I am once again, expunging my post-Pinel pains. Yes, it happened again. But wait, before I tell you everything that happened in this new crisis, or outbreak as the men in white would say, I should tell you the previous details. The in-between, everything that happened between these two hospitalizations. Between opening that gate, my eyes tearing at the sight of freedom, and today, where I find myself “imprisoned” at home yet again, post-outbreak.

Four and a half years have gone by. A lot has happened and the causes and effects, if they do exist, are many and are all intertwined. I have to grasp the strings of this trauma in order to understand the present situation. I left Pinel that May of 2008, still at high speed even though under the effects of heavy medication. As I said before, comrade, they had been using Haldol on me, arch-enemy of poets and the crazy (sane?). I was loaded on medication, but in my mind I still saw the world split in its dialectic poles. I still bared the mark of those who suffer from manic-depressive disturbances, an illness as old as humanity itself.

When I got out, the first step was to re-socialize. After all, I had been two months away from the world of the sane, mediocre?, speaking only to the other inmates. I’ve had to relearn how to talk about day-to-day stuff; I had to become a homu socialis once again. But there were still two women in my head.

Sweet Carmelita, senhorita Mel, who had recently broken up with me, was prowling my thoughts… But why did she leave? Did I say something to hurt her feelings? My thinking of Tatiana, Sandra, was it because she knew about all this that she didn’t want to stay by my side? A sea of interrogations flooded my mind, and I found no answers. I sent her an e-mail. I received a dry response. No further contact, please. She really was closed off. This hurt me a lot. I wanted her. I wanted her to help me to reenter the world of men, lest I become a Steppenwolf.

Senhorita Fernanda was still in my head. We met and had a brief relationship together inside of Pinel. For me, Fernanda represented a way out, a way to love and feel loved. I called her on the phone. I knew that she had already left as well. All in vain. Total dryness again. I was completely helpless in the love department. I was left with no options.

How can poets, crazies, the bipolar, or the damned, live without love? How cruel it is to deny them the possibility of loving. To me this was a thump on the head. But aside from the thud, I felt Juan and decided to go out with my friends on the hunt for new love. I poetized the world, with my neurons racing at full speed. Each piece of paper or napkin was a chance to write a poem to win over a new love.

The feelings of fullness, of maximum potency still invaded me, even with all the mediocrity inducing medication. But despite the beautiful poems and flirting, it was one frustration after the other as far as love is concerned. It seemed that the world didn’t fit me and I didn’t fit in the world. I started to personify myself, dividing myself in heteronym form, in order to get along in social circles. But it was crazy, just crazy! Not fitting in, the inadaptability. My heart suffered greatly, although I appeared to be the happiest of beings.

Then came the side effects of the medication. Persecution syndrome. Difficulty going to the bathroom. A constant battle. Fear. Anguish. The scenario was changing, and there I was in the eternal struggle, chasing me on the edges of my own self.