The soldier and the mother

Well, during yesterday’s therapy session I noticed that Doctor Livio was just very, very tired. At some point I asked him "You are tired, aren’t’ you?" and he admitted that yes, he had just had a few hours sleep during the last night. Nevertheless, we had a very interesting discussion about my dysfunctional family. I had to laugh because my family is a tragicomical group of three neurotics who love and hate each other at the same time; who help and isolate each other at the same time; who are just afraid that some intruder might ruin the dysfunctional structure of that crazy trio. I said to Doctor Livio that it would be funny if he could be an invisible observer, even if just for one day, of our daily routine. For a psychiatrist it could be interesting, I guess. 

In fact, I dreamt of being a soldier, carrying weapons and flags, and even throwing myself into a frozen river to save someone who was drowning, while a second later I was a mother, unable to take care of her own child… quite a meaningful dream. The discussion about my family started from this dream. In my life, I have always been the soldier. The one who takes care of everyone and manages everything she is expected to manage, the one who follows orders and makes her parents proud to be her parents. I could never be a child, because my mother and my father never allowed me to be one. In my memory, I can just find my fear of my mother’s explosions of rage and my father’s indifference. The more I dig into it, the more I find some other memories which tell me that I always had to be the one who obeys and cannot have true feelings or develop such a thing like a feeling. 

I always have the impression that in 2005, as my so called "illness" broke out, I died. I bear a grudge against my schoolmates, against my teachers, against everybody I met on my way before 2005. I started giving signs of instability as I was a 13-year-old, but I kept it for myself. Then, I fell into a deep depression with 22. With 25, I turned into a sort of unrecognizable "someone else". This someone else was unrecognizable even to myself. I feel as if in 2005 I had died and some part of me had gone on living, just like a ghost of what I used to be, a demon like all the other demons who speak in my head. Sometimes I don’t feel like a living thing, but just like a… something between dead and alive. Anyway, an important point Doctor Livio stressed more than once is that, maybe, I bear a grudge against the wrong people. This does not mean my schoolmates have been doing the right thing bullying me, but my loneliness was partially caused by my attitude as well. For example, at high school, during all pauses my mother wanted me to call her on the phone. The pauses between one lesson and the next are the few moments in which people can exchange opinions, ideas; in which they talk and become friends. Well, I was on the phone with mommy. I used to isolate myself because I wanted to spend time with Eleuterio, who was far more important than my detestable peers, and if I think back I ask myself: did I isolate myself or did they isolate me? They ended up hating me anyway, until the bitter end, and I know for sure that there have been several meetings of our high school class on which I was never invited. Back to what Doctor Livio said: what if my schoolmates were the wrong people to blame for my illness? What about if it was caused merely by my parents? Or just by myself? 

I know that during the first years at University, I did not really care about social contacts. I was focused on studying because my parents wanted me to be the best. I never went out, never went to a party, never met people, never flirted with a guy or a girl, nothing. My schedule was almost inhuman. There was nothing else apart from studying and calling my parents in my life. As I fell in love with Domenic, I regretted having the ability to have feelings, even if I had already experienced a love frustration with Jazzie. I just notice a difference between that time and now… Now I would like to know people, to go out, to have a reason to get up in the morning, but I don’t think I would stand such a life. I think the only think I can bear is habit, loneliness and inner solitude with my demons. My inner world is very populous. Sometimes I feel as if every interaction with reality were absolutely superfluous, and sometimes I crave for real friends. This does not make sense, but there are not many things in my mind which make sense.

The dream I was talking about at the beginning of this entry also showed me as a mother, with a little child, unable to take care of it. I kept asking people to take care of the child, I kept forgetting to feed it, to wash it, and I eventually even went home for the weekend – I must have been a student away from home or such – forgetting the child in my room in a dormitory. This suggests that, maybe, I should start taking care of the baby inside me. The child I could never be. I know I can be a soldier but I must learn that I can also be a mother. It was like seeing the male and the female part of myself. We all have a little of both, even if – not in all cases, but mostly – we are either a man or a woman. I identify myself as female, even if I have strong male features in my character, like the killer instinct, which is far more developed than the maternal instinct. But this is another story. 

Hoping that Doctor Livio will manage to keep his eyes open during the next session, I will discuss this topic further with him. 

Take gentle care everyone!