Eight days left

Yesterday in the evening there was a sort of "social event" on the ward: a dinner, cooked by some of the patients (I didn’t take part in the cooking). It was exhausting. I dislike these sort of events, I usually stay in my nice little room and I am happy enough if I can speak with Paolo on the balcony sometimes and write, draw, read and be on my own. But Paola, the psychologist, made me promise I would take part in the dinner. As a way to socialize a little with the other patients, a way to go out a little, to get accustomed to be around people again. So I went. The food was ok. I sat on a corner, with Paolo and Aaron, another patient. Rolf, a very strange guy, sat with us. Aaron didn’t let me sit beside him, and made me understand that he would explain me on a later stage the reason why. When we started talking, I immediately checked why: Rolf started talking about prostitutes he goes with, and sex websites he checks every now and then to have cyber sex. Everything in a very coarse way. Aaron made him stop talking rude and we could eat in peace. On the whole, it was nothing special. I could as well have renounced it all, and it would have been ok. Should there be something similar again in the future, I’m not going to attend it. 

For the rest, times goes by and I can’t stop it: eight days left. Eight days freedom left. Eight days in which I will have my room, my peace, the right to do whatever I please – notice, "whatever I please" includes studying and reading, I’m not asking for five stars hotels or endless beaches to walk along and cocktail bars on every spot. If this period in hospital is like a holiday for me, it is due to the fact that living at home is a sort of hell; such a sort of hell that makes a mental hospital appear like heaven. I notice that I would like to have a life outside the hospital, I have a strong desire to go back devoting time to my projects, but the thought of being subjected to my mother’s rules and commands makes me want to curl up in my bed and sleep forever. I need my family, I love my parents, and I want to be with them, but I hate, I hate, that damn flat of mine which needs to be cleaned so frantically for hours and hours every single week. It’s a catch-22 situation. I need to live in that flat, to be there and do my things in the same way as I do my things here in my nice little room in hospital, with the only difference that maybe once a week I devote some time to tidy and clean it. But not hours and every day. If my mother wants to do so in her flat, that’s ok for me, that’s none of my business, but if she expects me to do the same with my flat, that’s a problem. Moreover, I could never really live in my flat. The kitchen, for example, is still new. Never used, not even once. My mother is of the opinion that since we always eat together, I don’t need to dirty my kitchen… so, since two years, I have a kitchen I could never use. When I moved in my flat, we had an agreement, that is, that sometimes we would eat at my parents’ and my mother would cook, and sometimes we would eat in my flat and I would cook. But, obviously, everybody forgot that agreement. I am in my house just to sleep at night, and to do my homework for my English course. 

Doctor Livio’s suggestion to stay in The Castle until July 26th was meant to be a sort of provocation towards my mother: like showing her that we could decide over my life even without her consent. Well, I have to admit that Doctor Livio has been a little naif. As soon as I said it to my mother, she decided that I would leave the hospital on July 21st and there was no further discussion. And even if Doctor Livio is ready to take the blame for this decision, all I can do is to obey my mother, because after my period in hospital it is me the one who will have to live 24 / 7 with her. And I don’t want to have a furious, sulky and aggressive mother beside me, who treats me with scorn and insults exactly as it happened when I was in therapy with Doctor Gea. 

Eight days left means also eight days left with Paolo’s company. That man is in love with me, I think. He seeks physical contact with me more and more each day, he makes me gifts despite the fact that he lives with ten francs a day, today he even said to me "Paola, if I had to marry you I could not even bring you to the Altar, I am such a rascal, but I would like it so much". I remember thinking, some time ago, that I am so desperately in need of some affection that I would take such affection from whomever I find on my way who would be ready to give me what I am looking for. I know, this sounds absurd. It already happened to me in a remote past, maybe five or six years ago; I was on the verge of looking for a man whom I would have paid to have sex with and to share some intimacy with. I am very much ashamed of it, but in the end, don not some men go to prostitutes if they are needy and do not have a woman? I remember that I told Marvin about this thought of mine, and he said to me that I did not need to pay anyone, if I wanted sex, affection and intimacy, he was ready to give me what I wanted. So the matter was settled that way, I had Marvin for some time and then we both lost interest… as usual. Between Marvin and me it is always the same old story, we attract each other for a while and then the spark fades away. But Paolo… he would be ready to give me that precious affection I have been looking for for years. But maybe I have become too picky, or too harsh, or too cold, to put it in a nutshell, I could never be with him. He is a sensitive man, quite handsome, he has a huge experience of life and mental illness – he is not a "normalo" who would get scared seeing the scars on my arms – but I could never be his woman. His flirting with me flatters me, because I esteem him and he is not the kind of man who picks up the first girl who happens to be on his way, but I suppose that sooner or later I will have to tackle him about the fact that I don’t wish a relationship with him. I can sense this moment coming nearer and nearer. 

Well, I suppose that today will be a quiet day, tomorrow is my father’s birthday and I will go home a 7.30 am to have breakfast with my parents, then lunch and dinner; I’ll be back in hospital at 8.30 pm. Family overdose, I guess, but I do it for my daddy. 

Much love to everyone and

take gentle care of yourselves.