Retreat in loneliness

Today I’m going home after lunch, and I’m coming back after dinner. I will have to spend some time with my parents, I suppose and hope we will focus our attention on the new iPad of my father… it will be delivered today. My father is absolutely enthusiastic, he repeats again and again that he hopes he will learn how to use it at its best. I love my father. He is a victim too, in the end. He never had the courage to tell his wife to shut up her mouth, but I can understand. He feels as if he were dependent on her, because actually she takes care of him. The heavy price to pay for that gentle care is being insulted and degraded, but obviously their marriage has always been so. I don’t even know why they got married. I guess my father got attracted by my mother’s beauty and my mother got attracted by my father’s money. I sometimes ask myself what is left of their "love". Habit? Boredom? Despair? I remember that at the time I had no contact to my parents, I sometimes wrote letters to my father. Because yes, the problem was not him, the problem was my mother in the first place. In a letter I offered him to come to Basel and live with me. I would have looked for a flat, I would have taken care of him, we would maybe have had a cleaner, I would have continued my studies and he would have enjoyed life away from insults and reproaches. He just replied "no, thanks". Since my mother found the letter and read it, she forbade my father to write to me ever again. She is so cruel. Well, to give another example of her cruelty: her own mother lived up to 102 years old, she didn’t speak to her for 20 years and refused to renew the contact even as grandmother was ill and dying, and as she died, my mother refused to go to her funeral. She didn’t go to the funeral of her own mother. 

Yesterday Doctor Livio said that he would suggest me staying at The Castle until July 26th. I was very sceptic. I would like to stay here, in fact I would like to stay here much longer, but I fear my mother’s reaction. I told Doctor Livio openly that my mother considers him a quack and that she sees him as a rival. My mother noticed that I very much admire Doctor Livio, that I listen to his advice and I esteem him, and she doesn’t understand that he is just my therapist and not a friend or lover, in any case, not someone who could take my love away from her. She doesn’t know I had – and still have? – romantic feelings for Doctor Livio. He doesn’t fear confrontation with my mother, but she refuses to talk to him. 

Regarding romantic feelings for Doctor Livio, maybe I should devote some lines to it. I used to have a massive crush on him, but this sometimes happens between a patient and a therapist, I guess. I even sent him an email in which I exposed this issue to him, I remember very well. I did not want to write that email, but Eleuterio and Allegro (two of my demons) convinced me to do it. I confessed that I did not have sexual feelings, just romantic desires, like cuddling, cherishing, being intimate. Oh, I made myself so ridiculous. I didn’t speak to Allegro for one week after that brilliant idea to write that email. Doctor Livio replied "For the moment I just thank you for your honesty, we will discuss it later in the therapy…". I was the one to pick up that subject during therapy. I noticed that Doctor Livio was very much embarrassed, but I am not that kind of insisting person; I just wanted to make things clear, because during therapy I discuss all my feelings, how trivial they might be. He said that a crush could become a source of power, if it doesn’t get destructive. Of course it didn’t get destructive. But, I have to admit, it was my first crush as an adult person. My previous crushes were the ones of a teenager who falls in love with a beautiful girl / guy, very much impulsive. My crush on Doctor Livio was something I had thought over before confessing. And even now, when I see him, I sometimes think… "How beautiful you are, man, if you only knew.". 

On another note, yesterday Paolo gave me a necklace as a birthday gift. It is not my birthday yet, it is on July 23d, but he feared I might not be in hospital anymore and he wanted to be sure to give me my birthday present in time. I found it very sweet of him. I must have cost the earth. It is made of Murano glass. I don’t know, sometimes I feel as if he were flirting with me. He makes me compliments, he very often says that Marvin must be a lucky man to have me as a girlfriend, and, moreover, I noticed that lately he has been seeking physical contact. Like caressing my cheeks, holding my hand, stroking my hair. I don’t know how to react to this, because I don’t have feelings for him. Not that kind of feelings. In general, I couldn’t have that kind of contact to anyone at the moment. I reject it. I don’t want to be touched, it makes me feel sick. Even if the perfect woman / man knocked at my door, I think that at this stage of my life I wouldn’t let her / him in. All I want is solitude, tranquillity, and finding myself. I had totally lost contact to my true self, I had become numb and overwhelmed by the feeling of pleasing my mother. My life had become a boring routine, made of cleaning and washing, eating, sleeping, sometimes working for my English course, without any contact to the outside world. Now I don’t stand contact to the crowd or to confusion, but I found the way to ask myself: what do I really want? And my answer is: solitude and chastity. I know, many could think that at this point I could also become a nun, but I don’t think so. Not because I don’t love our Lord Jesus, but because I know that deep inside myself I wish a family, children, a partner, and that my need of chastity and being untouchable is only temporary. 

As a saying goes, going into retreat in loneliness rouses one’s sweet return journey to the world.