"This strange feeling of not belonging, this sense that every task, even the smallest one, is unpleasant and requires effort - this is how my days will be here."
This book pierced me in places I had forgotten about. I had forgotten that it is possible to forget how it's like to be you. Depression does that for people. Back in 2014, shortly after my cat disappeared and I moved into an apartment alone, I was stroke with depression. It wasn't my first, but it was the first time I named it that way, and it got pretty serious. It stood around until about 2016. Only in January 2016 did I quit medication and started feeling like myself again. Sorry for making the review sound personal, I'll eventually get to the part in which I praise kind and loving Francisco X. Stork, who was writing the book at the time, for having had the bravery to touch his own wounds and dig into these themes. Also, I am amazed at how someone who's lived through so much was capable of writing a novel with this voice - such purity in his view of the world that I almost forgot it wasn't a teenager, but an experienced writer and gentleman, the hand behind it. Thank you, Francisco, for throwing this rope to young people, and to explaining so well that having a mental disease is like living life in the hard mode, with everyone telling you that they'd enjoy it better than you. And that the world isn't so awful, maybe your brain is forcing to see it through the goggles of depression.
"The brokeness out there seems so much greater than the strenght and life given to us."
So, back to my experience with depression, to which I've been open about in the past... I didn't know the nature of that sadness when I was 18, but somehow I was able to reset my mind and produce happy thoughts, listened to joyful songs, moved on from what was holding me to the ground. In 2014 I was firstly hurt by the disappearance of my cat. You might say it was just a cat, but pets are never just animals, and you put your heart, your responsibility, sometimes the love you're not able to share with others into the care of that little creature. And the world is cruel and takes it away with no warning. Then I found myself alone after growing up in a house full of people and noise, without a care in the world for the first time ever. And the weight of the world started to lean on my shoulders and my chest. Anxiety, later on panic attacks. Not being able of keeping the tears from falling in public places, for instance. First I'd cry once a week, only at things that would cause me pain. Soon even beauty, besides animal cruelty, ignorance, prejudice, bad weather, everything would be an excuse to cry. I lost the ability of controlling the tears; they were there several times a week, then every day. Weekends alone were dreadful. My friends were way too young and focused in their own lives - as you should be when you're 23 - to fully acknowledge my aching. And yet some of them managed to understand the seriousness of it and to help me out.
"Is it possible to be loved and not to feel loved? Isn't love supposed to be felt by the beloved?"
Taking medication wasn't easy. It put me to sleep all day long. I could've lost my friends, my job, the support from my family, for I wasn't me anymore. Everything bothered me or left me upset or made me cry. People said they felt like they weren't allowed to smile or express happiness next to me. I reached rock-bottom, and them climbed all the way back up through months of apathy, tiredness, sleepiness and dizziness from the medication. I had to face the prejudice of going to see a Psychiatrist - everybody was telling me good thoughts and keeping busy would solve it for me. I should stay away from 'taking chemicals". My loved ones made me feel like I was damaged. They didn't realize it this way. You see, besides depression there was anxiety and panic attacks. These last two are kind of hard to ignore, or to fight off with happy thoughts. Right as I write this review, the fire of anxiety is burning in my chest. It's like my lungs can't catch enough air. I'm at peace. Got nowhere else to go. The room is fresh and the book I just finished was good. But the fisiology in me is full alert mode, sirens' on, telling me to rush, to run, to worry. It's also taking my breath away.
Don't expect happy twists and endings. When you have a mental disease, I agree you see the world from a different angle. Maybe you feel things more deeply, all the way down to the layer of your skin where it starts to hurt. Maybe you feel lonely and not fully understood. People who you love will address to you as if somehow this is a weakness of yours, a choice, a trait of softness. As if it is your responsibility that you feel this way. They won't want to hear it, because they believe speaking of it summons the thing with more intensity. Ignore it and it'll go away, as if to say.
People will surely let you down, because no one is prepared to deal with others acting against what's normal due to mental illness or limitations. No one is ready to see you acting as being other than you. But one thing this book also reminded me, and I needed this reminder: depression may be chemical, physical, physiological, mental, and clinical. But the environment you're in is always - I guess - a trigger to it. The way the author wrapped Vicky's reality shows it pretty well. It's the hidden things, the silenced things; non processed pain, feelings, suppressed will and going against yourself that will possibly get you ill. Vicky was a sensitive girl in a toxic environment, and it doesn't require domestic violence, or poverty, or starvation and filth for once to feel like there's a toxic fog around her.
She was frustrated, silenced; she had given up on explaining herself or being heard and understood. She felt lonely and awkward in her circumstances, in her own home. You can't feel alienated from your relatives, your own space, and not become somehow ill. Also, the pressure I believe to be an American thing - such competition from such young age... I mean, what for? What's made of cooperation? It sounds sick to me that a parent would see financial success and prosperity as the only way to grant his children happiness. That's not even a need... A need would be love and care. I relate to Vicky, for I'd never survive with a sane mind in a society which expects me to compete with others at all times.
This is a novel about friendship and overcoming monumental obstacles - obstacles that only you aknowledge. About the little things you can do to help others. About the absolute necessity of making yourself clear and listen to others. Maybe that's all they need: that someone else stops pushing their idea of happiness and health on them, so that they can foresee a future and a happiness of their own.
So thank you, Francisco. You trully are a gentle soul. I'll write you an e-mail telling you what's so special about having finished this book today.
It's a 5 out of 5.
Synopsys: 16-year-old Vicky Cruz wakes up in a hospital's mental ward after a failed suicide attempt. Now she must find a path to recovery - and perhaps rescue some others along the way.
When Vicky Cruz wakes up in the Lakeview Hospital Mental Disorders ward, she knows one thing: After her suicide attempt, she shouldn't be alive. But then she meets Mona, the live wire; Gabriel, the saint; E.M., always angry; and Dr. Desai, a quiet force. With stories and honesty, kindness and hard work, they push her to reconsider her life before Lakeview, and offer her an acceptance she's never had.
But Vicky's newfound peace is as fragile as the roses that grow around the hospital. And when a crisis forces the group to split up, sending Vick back to the life that drove her to suicide, she must try to find her own courage and strength. She may not have them. She doesn't know.
Inspired in part by the author's own experience with depression, The Memory of Light is the rare young adult novel that focuses not on the events leading up to a suicide attempt, but the recovery from one - about living when life doesn't seem worth it, and how we go on anyway.
Sem comentários:
Enviar um comentário