Leaving The Castle

Today is the last day I spend in hospital. I feel very nervous, anxious, at the same time excited, maybe happy in some way. I feel like I will be released from a place where only ill people should be, and actually, I was not that ill that I needed a hospital… it was just a way to take a break from my family. To breathe in some freedom. To live the way I please for some time. I know that I no longer wish to be here. A hospital is always a hospital and I crave for a "normal" life, that is, living my life as usual, with some changes though. Nevertheless, I am almost sure that no changes are likely to happen. 

I just filled in a form about my general psychological condition, and I think my current mental situation is quite ok. I had to fill the same form as I was admitted to hospital, and I remember that I had many negative thoughts, like hurting myself and others, torture dreams, blood thirst, very macabre fantasies. Now they are gone out of the window, I am free. It has been a month since I had my last delusion. I can be satisfied. 

Tomorrow I will leave and in the afternoon I might see Doctor Livio in his office already. I will go to the hairdresser, try to become acclimatized at home again, and try to be among people without feeling exhausted after five minutes. Let’s not forget that I am accustomed to my nice little room, in solitude, and I will be thrown into the crowd… it could turn into a cold shower, as we say in Italian. But I’m not scared. It is a matter of a couple of days, then I’ll be alright. 

I try to stay positive and weight up the pros and cons of leaving the hospital. With the hope to find more pros than cons. Let’s think over it… I leave a safe place. I leave a place where I can always speak to someone – a professional – every time I have the urge to hurt myself, to hurt others, to break objects. On the other hand, such feelings have gone away and I might no longer need professionals to talk to since I consider myself quiet and calm now. I leave a place where I could see Doctor Livio three times a week, and where they could call him at every moment if something was wrong. I no longer need that either. I leave people I like, like Paolo or Pete, but I feel like they are not the kind of people I can really be friends with forever. Paolo is in love with me, I supported him a lot during this time – mostly financially – and maybe he took my help as a sign of interest of me. We had interesting discussions, we are on the same wavelength on many things but I don’t know if I wish to continue the contact after this period in hospital. Let alone the fact that my parents would try by every possible mean to forbid me to see Paolo again. My goal was not to make friends here in hospital, it was to find myself and not to find others. I think I found out many things about my true self, and furthermore I saw the light in the darkness again. As I was writing in my paper diary a couple of days ago, I saw something that I would describe as the Light of Christ: I had the chance to do some good here, I didn’t let slip this chance and I created a sort of light through the darkness I had fallen in. 

And now, let’s think about what I’ll find outside this hospital: first of all, I’ll find my family again. My mother and my father, the two people I love the most on this planet. We are a dysfunctional family, but I love my parents and I could never be without them. I am scared they could die, because without them I would be lost. I still am very dependent on them, maybe not materially, but emotionally. The thought of being with them again tomorrow fills my heart with joy. I contradict myself, I know; on the one hand I would like to stay in The Castle a little longer, on the other hand I crave for being with my parents and going home to them. My life has always been a contradiction anyway. I will go back to quite a boring routine, made out of chores and rituals I hate; but I’ll bear it, as I always did. I’ll go back to my projects, like studying English. I contacted my English teacher, she will start working on August 12th again. She became grandmother and she is devoting some time to her granddaughter at the moment. That’s ok, I might go to Basel for a couple of days before August. Maybe my parents will come with me, maybe not – I’m going. 

Next week it’s my 33rd birthday – what a drag. I remember that three years ago, for my 30th birthday, my parents put me in hospital in Basel because I had promised to myself that if I had not been healed before becoming 30 I would have killed myself. This is how coward I am, I am still no healed but I’m still alive. Eleuterio very often says to me that suicide is the only courageous act of a coward, meaning that in fact escaping life through suicide is an act of cowardice but it takes a certain amount of courage because it can be painful and it involves facing what happens after. Nowadays I sometimes thinks of suicide, but I would never attempt it again. I’m over it, now I try to find a way of living. But I dislike my birthday. That smiling and faking happiness. I know that my parents will do all they can do to make me happy, maybe it will even turn into a nice day, but inside myself I will be screaming. Screaming because I am becoming older and I am still so vain. So insignificant. I don’t have a job, I don’t have a family on my own, I don’t have a man / woman / partner in general, I don’t have a life. It’s all so empty. I make myself numb with frivolous things in order not to think. I would like not to think, but I can’t help myself. I always rack my brains over a way to make my father see my University graduation, the birth of little Gabriel / little Giorgia, my first day at work. Please, God, make my father live up to be a hundred. 

That’s the pressure I live with, and I am swimming upstream because all those plans involve emancipation and this is what my mother doesn’t accept – me being an adult. In my soul I am a fighter, but I am so tired. Well, tired or not, I’ll fight. <i style="font-family: 'Bo

okman Old Style’; font-size: 14px; “>I get knocked down, but I get up again.