Can we choose the way to rediscover the pleasure of living, without appearing selfish? This is a story about rebirth, but it is also about the uniqueness of love.
Anna Julia is a 33-year-old married young Brazilian woman. Her profession is Civil Eng...
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After falling asleep in my "eternal sleep", I woke up with strong lights in my eyes, feeling weak and dizzy. I closed my eyelids tightly and when I opened them again I realized that I was in a hospital bed. Tied to it. I felt a mixture of relief at being alive and pain at being separated from my so-called love. What an absurd thing to think about, I needed analysis, and urgently. Things were happening so quickly that I didn't give much thought to the fact that I was tied up at that moment. My mental confusion became evident when the nurse entered the room. She was an elegant-looking woman with short, gray hair. I assumed she was at most fifty years old. She smiled broadly in my direction, her teeth straight and white. For some reason, his presence brought me peace. I felt like a sick child being cared for by its mother. It was the same atmosphere of affection.
— Good Morning. How are you feeling? — It seems normal, doesn't it? After all, nurses and doctors take care of their patient's well-being, but why was she speaking in English?
As I have never sympathized with English, learning very little, I left this task to Victor and focused on the French that I found most interesting, I answered in the best way I thought I could, with a shy:
— I'm fine, thank you. — I must admit that my pronunciation came out much better than I had imagined. It was as natural as breathing. It could have, if I spoke the language, which, from my comment, was not the case. I remained silent just analyzing her steps. She took a tray, injected some medicine into my arm, smiled, turned on the television, and then left, closing the door behind her, without any possibility of a more elaborate conversation. Just as he entered, he left.
The programming was all international and I understood absolutely everything. Where was I anyway? Was my case so serious that I needed to be transferred to another country? And why was I tied to the bed? Where were my parents, Victor? How was I speaking and understanding another language fluently? There were so many questions and no answers. I don't know why she turned on the TV, within minutes I was yawning, I think she injected me with some kind of painkiller, and a strong one because before I could finish my daydreams, I fell asleep.
I woke up dazed, a little confused, I didn't dream about anything, was it the effect of the medication, or was this all some kind of divine punishment for thinking about someone other than my husband. So I was doomed never to dream about him again, it made me sadder than I would have liked. I really must have been going crazy. How can I miss something I haven't experienced? Miss someone I didn't know? It was probably my unconscious trying to communicate with me through my dreams or the strange sensations I was feeling.
My forehead itched, I tried to bring my right hand up to my head, but realized that I was still tied to the bed. It was at this moment that when I looked at my arm I noticed a huge vertical cut. It started on my wrist and went up about 15 cm on my forearm covered only with micropore. I quickly analyzed my left arm and saw the same thing. I panicked, was the accident a dream, when in fact I tried to kill myself? This didn't make any sense, I would never attempt against my life. But what made sense in the last months?
The great irony was that one of my most peculiar characteristics was the anxiety I felt, even irrationally, about the fear of losing my sanity, in other words, the fear of going crazy. It didn't turn out to be a lysophobia, but it was always a disturbing subject for me. This fear has even motivated some resolutions in my life, preventing me from making any decision that was not completely rational. Decisions in which I did not have full control over everything. There was no family history, no childhood trauma, nothing. Just an aversion to anything that resembled madness, even a movie scene or plot. And today, I found myself trapped inside one of my biggest nightmares: the inability to make sense of the event I was in.
The apartment I was in was large, and until then I had not paid attention to the details of the environment. The design was my last concern at the moment. But my observations would serve a nobler purpose. To try to gauge the level of my madness, I tried to recognize each object and classify it. I just wanted to make sure that in my mind, television was still a television. But was it a television? I couldn't help but laugh at my misery. The architecture of my brain has always been able to create more questions than answers, and at this moment it was amplified. The lack of sense about what was happening made me more anxious and consequently confused my perspective about the facts.
Was she dead? In limbo? Purgatory? But what had I done so bad to deserve this? Damn religion classes that I was forced to attend, now I am left with this bunch of nonsense populating my thoughts as if everything else was not enough. I have not lived a life ruled by dogma and I would not start now. Putting the mysticism out of my mind, the most logical thing became clear, I should be in a psychiatric hospital. But why? What was happening to me? If I wasn't crazy, I was certainly about to be. I couldn't hold back my tears. I started to cry uninterruptedly.
