No, I don't want to be lugubrious at all costs. Now I'll explain. "None of us does things to feel bad. All we do, we do it to feel better. Then the tipology of the action might be wrong, but we all try to feel better, always." I can't qualify this as a quote because it's not the exact words, and then maybe my therapist would be perplexed to discover she's been quoted on some blog. But this is what she told me today, and it made perfect sense. It made me think about all the times I've tried to cheer up some friend by telling them that when we make choices we are always convinced it's for the better; otherwise we would not do it, so we should not feel guilty. In a wider way, it's what my therapist said today. And it made me think about Heath Ledger and Marco Pantani. I've never followed either cyclism or the Pirate, and when he died I was sorry for a young life broken needlessly, but I wasn't personally touched. OK, now you know I have this sports songs compilation I listen to when I need cheering up, and they are NOT all about people who died tragically: just scroll down. I like so much the idea, even when it's a sport I don't follow, that I've started looking for more; but how do you look for sports songs? So last weekend I was in Cesenatico to prepare for the Y4 show, and I thought "They MUST have made some song about Pantani". Yes, dozens, but the one I like most is this one, "Where Pirates Dare", in the Andrea Paglianti version. Sooner or later I'll post the lyrics. And it made me think further about all these young people who for all intents and purposes commit suicide, and about those who brand them as idiots. My therapist confirmed what I've always thought: they were trying to feel better. I can vaguely imagine how they felt, but it seems I can't really know it, if I can still be happy, even through the tears, because I've found a new song I like. They didn't even have these little things anymore. You'd do ANYTHING in those moments, or die trying. Why? How can we judge, if probably they didn't know either? I'll tell you a fairy tale. There once was a little child who wandered into some mishap. It doesn't need to be something tragic or obscene. Maybe it was something stupid that scared her, as children are easily scared; maybe it happened more than once, and by chance the grownups around her didn't find the right words at the right time to console her. It was just a little thing, but she really thought she'd die. She'd cease existing, like in a bad dream, only for her it was true. The little girl grew into a young girl, and she wasn't unique, of course, most kids hate growing up. But she couldn't go the obvious way of adolescent rebellion, because she had that fear rooted deep into her; that if she did something wrong, she'd DIE. Not just grounded for a week, not just forbidden to buy a new dress or whatever. DEATH. Why? Because of that impression received when she was too small to understand. Everything the grownups said was an insufferable imposition; but she had no way to strike back, if she wanted to go on living. And yet she had to react somehow; so she created her own world where the dangers existed but were in her hands like puppets, made unthreatening by her imagination. Not that there weren't bloodbaths in her fantasies, but they were controlled and fit into the inner logic of the story. What had happened to her, that shadow that followed her, didn't fit into any logic she could see. The young girl grew into a handsome young woman, and the shadow was still there. Parts of her mind grew up; parts did not, those parts that were stuck on the fear of dying if she did the wrong thing. And as an adult, she began to be exposed to many important decisions and requests from other grownups: work, relationships, living on her own. Her terror simply exploded, because a part of her was still a scared little baby, still thinking that if she made a mistake she would simply cease existing. No matter that her imagination had made her a brilliant artist with words, that lots of people liked what she did. The moment someone told her "do this" - or even worse, the moment she herself thought "I must do this" - something in her rebelled; only, not by saying "OK, I'll do it quick and don't bother me anymore" but rather "You want me to be your slave? So that if I do it wrong you'll kill me? The hell I will! I won't be your slave." Of course, it couldn't work. It grew worse and worse, and our heroine's life became hell. She couldn't keep a job or a man. She couldn't take care of herself, her house, her car. Sometime things improved because she managed to find a way out, a truce, a defusing of the fear of dying; little tricks, little sources of strength, and her everlasting refuge, her imagination. But she was frustrated because of course it was all very slow, and she couldn't really understand what worked and what didn't; it felt like she plugged a leak here and another one opened there. Until one day... Hey, I never said I knew the ending of the fairy tale! |