May, 9th 2017 — Milk and pear

This article is part of the series “What is like to attempt suicide and fail”. Start there, if you have not read it yet.

Tuesday, D Day + 32
4 dias until discharge

The day was pretty dull. We had a lecture that I did not pay much attention to. There was activity that I could not keep up with. And I wrote a short version of the story of my life. As an exercise. To try to understand myself. Kind of a how did I get here thing. Let’s see what happens.

I just had my last meeting with psychologist Good Cop . Two hours of good talk concluding that I’ve evolved a lot these weeks I’ve been hospitalized, downed my guards, understood a number of things, and am ready to continue living and treating myself outside the gates as of next Friday. Amen.

Tomorrow I have an appointment with the psychiatrist who is actually going to sign the discharge. If he’s nice, he might even let me off Thursday, which would be a spectacle.

I’m still waiting for the moment when someone is going to leave some hidden door to tell me that it was all a dream, some madness in my head. That I’m here until the end of time. They say there are no atheists in the foxholes. Let us pray, then.

Continuing the list of things to move life from now on:

1. No more car: my first car was a Fiat 147 Spazio — in the family still with a collectors plate. My last one was a dream Mercedes. I do not have a car today. What I had, the crisis took. And I do not want it back. Not anytime soon. Unless things are extremely favorable for this. Or I move to some corner of the world where this is the only viable option. So if I have to go, I’m going on my Harley. If it rains, I’ll call an Uber. If there’s no Uber, I’ll ask for a ride. No ride? I’m not going.
2. Live with the minimum: notice that I did not say live with less. It is living with the minimum. I want to finally adopt a minimalistic way of life where I can get rid of everything that is not necessary for my daily life. This is not to say that I am going to abolish things that bring me small pleasures, like the high-tech life of everyday. But I do not need to have all the items released by the technology industry inside my house. I also do not need to be an early adopter those disgusting people (me) who always has the newest iPhone bought before the store opened. The rule holds for everything. Clothes, furniture, utensils, decorations and so on. The space left over will shelter a simpler life, a handful of more freedom and quality.
3. End of news consumption: Goodbye CNN, goodbye local news, goodbye information on national and international policy. What is really important will come to me in some way and I will do my best to avoid it. From the world I want to know what’s best and, believe me, it’s not the news that will bring me this information. I’m leaving here for a new life, full of wind in the face, water noise and smell of adventure. Not to die in front of Anderson Cooper.
4. Pay everything upfront: and early if possible. Abolish the installments. And organize life to make it possible. I want to take away from my habits this very Brazilian culture that leads us to the hole.
5. Stop receiving installments: One of the last projects in which I worked the client committed to a very high payment in so many days (market practice). Let’s say he’s responsible for 50% of the lithium I take every day. Take the practice and stick it up your ass (my language got really bad here). Organize the work model to receive cash, or in extremely well-organized installments.

More itens to the list tomorrow.

Before bed, I shared the dinner table with some colleagues. We ate the usual. Rice, beans, lettuce, tomato and meat. It is the same every day, changing only the type of meat.

At the end of dinner, one of them told me the reason for her depression. I will not repeat here, because it would extrapolate the function of this diary. But what the poor girl suffered as a child at the hands of a sexual abuser in her own family for months and months is indescribable.

I, of course, fell apart. And I felt unworthy to be sharing the same environment as her, a real life warrior, a survivor, someone who has every reason to give up, who faced the unimaginable and stands firm, staring the Monster in the eye.

I, raised to milk and pear. And I’m here with depression. Lack of some good old spanking that is (I don’t actually believe that)!

One of the girls still got a letter from her daughter and made sure to show it to me. I reproduce here a passage.

Letter to a mother with depression I can not imagine how difficult it is for you, I can not understand what happens, I try to put myself in your place but I can not, I lose my way, I try to imagine what goes through your head, when you lie in bed, or when you look at nothing. I’m bothering to think of something to help you, wondering what I can do to take this pain away from you. I wanted it to be okay. I did not want to see you sad, I did not want to see you dying inside.

I thought today would be my first day without crying. I’m trying to compose myself up to now. In 4 days, at most, this not being a myth, I leave this Mordor of Hell.

I loved seeing the direct comments on Medium. Please, continue!

I will post more tomorrow. I’ve created a list of songs I’m listening to while inside the psychiatric clinic. To listen, subscribe to the “After Death” playlist on Spotify.

If you want to talk to me, write to rodrigo@bressane.com.

Be kind,
Rodrigo Bressane