The Great Unpacking Of Love
Part 14

Act 3

The spark-lighter and the abuser of happiness

My life is a dead end. Every day I sink a little deeper into the bowels of terrestrial Hell. Everything is pain in me. I feel like I’m escaping. Adèle, you have to face the facts, your existence is seriously derailing, slipping through your fingers.

My marriage is a total fiasco, my children are failing and despite all the love I have for them, I can no longer love them. What can I say about my work that I particularly liked? I struggle in a stormy sea, riddled with long-toothed sharks, predators with oversized egos, eager to crush me and submit to their will, giving them a real feeling close to enjoyment. I only want to fly far, far away from this Kafkaesque universe, far from the ambient malevolence, far from all moral distress.

All my life, I have collected psychologists, psychiatrists, anxiolytics, yoga, antidepressants, mindfulness, I have tested all kinds of therapies, each one more innovative than the last, nothing works. So what’s the point of living? This existential heaviness is imbued in me. I am tasteless. I want to get off this infernal carousel.

Sunday April 20 1:02 a.m.

— Hello, good evening, SAMU Paris 19th

— Help, help, my wife has collapsed on the ground, she is lifeless. Quick, quick, help, help!

– Sir Sir ? Calm down, regain your composure! Explain to me what’s going on.

— My wife fainted while trying to get out of bed to go to the bathroom. However, she is still breathing. What worries me is that I found two boxes of medicine on the kitchen table, completely empty, next to an equally empty bottle of water.

— Can you give me the exact name of the medications?

— Sidéral Retard, my wife has had hypertension problems for many years.

— OK, OK, I’ll send you an ambulance urgently. I have geolocated you, help will be there within 10 minutes.

Paris 19th Hospital, Emergency Department 2:30 a.m.

— Madame Ying? Madam Ying? You hear me ? I’m the emergency nurse.

— …

— Madam Ying? You are in the hospital. Everything is fine, you are in good hands and in complete safety.

– To the hospital ? For what ?

— Last night, you swallowed a large dose of medication that could have been fatal.

— She was not, if I understand correctly. However, it was my goal, totally assumed and intentional.

— I understood Madame Ying well, that is why, tomorrow, you will meet Doctor Willems, psychiatrist for lost souls. I think it is important that you can explain and understand the meaning of your gesture. Rest now, you need it. If you have the slightest problem, do not hesitate to call me. All right ?

– All right.

— Hello Mrs. Ying. Doctor Florence Willems, psychiatrist. Were you able to get some sleep?

– Not really.

— It’s somewhat normal, given the circumstances. Are you willing to tell me about your desperate act?

— Yes, but it could be very painful for me.

— Of course, but your suicide attempt sounds like a cry for help. I must be able to understand your actions in order to help you move toward hope again.

— For many years, I have wondered if I was not born on Friday the 13th. Just like a weightlifter who has heavier and heavier weights placed on his shoulders, last night I felt that I had exceeded my maximum bearable load.

— What weights are you referring to?

— First of all, my relationship problems which started to eat away at me. The wear and tear of the relationship due to daily life, responsibilities, forgetting myself to devote myself to my children, the lack of time together. Then little by little, inexorably, the distance from one another. The impression of becoming a ghost for the other, an asexual being.

This, insidiously, brought moral harassment into my professional life. Long, gentle undermining work, so pernicious, like Kaa from the Jungle Book. Kaa seduces Mowgli to put him to sleep and takes the opportunity to wrap his serpentine rings around his neck in order to suffocate him.

The third thing, by far the one that causes the greatest hurt in me, the complex relationship with my children.

— What do you mean by complex relationship?

— My feelings go on a roller coaster ride depending on their moods. It’s a bit like “I love you neither”, “I take you, I throw you away”. One time it’s mad love, one time it’s total rejection. No half-tone emotions, no watercolor, rather Van Gogh with shimmering colors, with moving features, a sign of intrinsic turmoil.

— Do you know, Madame Ying, that the most fabulous artists are very often people in great existential distress? They try to tame their deep distress through Art. Their boundless creativity reflects their strongest and often most morbid emotions.

Moreover, in certain innovative psychiatric structures, art therapy is offered and seems to be proving its worth. Would you like to try?

— Say, I’m not crazy! I will never fly above the cuckoo’s nest! You hear me ? Never !

“Did I say for a moment that you were crazy, Madame Ying?

– No. But for me, psychiatry = madness = drugs to knock out your conscience.

— Let’s take the situation differently. Let us rather see psychiatry as a parenthesis in life allowing you to put down your flayed suitcases, far from the aggressive outside world, in a place where you are allowed to be at the end of your rope. Then, little by little, slowly, at your own pace, grasp again the thread of your reknitted existence.

— Doctor Willems, how do you expect me to be able to climb the slope of my life on my own?

— Impossible, obviously, Madame Ying. But in the ascent of your mountain of envy, solidarity is essential, human warmth essential as well as tenderness. It is absolutely out of the question for you to balance, alone, over the abyss.

Ms. Ying, I ask you the question again. Would you agree to be hospitalized at La Montgolfière, a psychiatric hospital with innovative methods, including Freudian parasailing?

– Maybe.

— Madam Ying, I will ask you the question again. Would you like to be hospitalized to experience a break for two months?

– Yes !

— Well, Madam Ying, I will organize your transfer to my colleague, Doctor Yang. I wish you luck, hoping you replace your highway to happiness.

Day 1, 5 p.m.

I walk through the front door of the psychiatric hospital with my lead suitcases. The head nurse comes to pick me up and takes me to my cell. Cell ? What a slip of the tongue, Adèle! You are not in prison, even if your whole being, your whole body, your whole soul seem locked in an inviolable prison of suffering. Adèle, you are in the hospital and it is indeed a room, certainly with dull colors, without soul, without stars.

The nurse invites me to drop off my things. Then we go to his office for some administrative formalities. Then he offers to explain to me how the Unit works as well as the psychedelic ROI.

— Madame Ying, in order for your stay with us to go as smoothly as possible, it is essential that I explain to you the rules that govern the Unit. This may seem daunting to you, but we attach extreme importance to it as part of your therapeutic process.

— Okay, I’ll listen to you.

— No. 1: all meals are taken in the dining room with the other patients.

— No. 2: medications are given at set times by nursing staff in the head nurse’s office. These must be swallowed in front of the professional.

— No. 3: it is forbidden to go into another patient’s room.

— No. 4: It is forbidden to have s****l relations with another patient or member of staff.

— No. 5: the doors of the Unit open at 8:30 a.m. and close at 9 p.m. Outside of this time slot, there is no possibility of entering or exiting.

Now, some practical details. You have access to two common rooms. A large one with armchairs, table, TV, library, board games. A much smaller one, very narrow, with a few armchairs, overlooking a garden which allows smokers to satisfy their addiction. The garden is the only place where smoking is permitted.

— Your payment is tough!

“It’s part of the therapeutic process, Ms. Ying.

Oh yes, I almost forgot, the first week, no outing or visit possible.

— Somewhat prison-like, all the same!

— This is the price to pay to rise to the surface and prevent yourself from drowning in the twists and turns of your deadly ideas. Madam Ying, it’s 5:30 p.m., I invite you to go have your evening meal.