When we met by chance at a bend in a street in Rome last summer, I hadn’t seen him for ten years. It is said that love falls on you when you are least prepared. On the contrary, I am always ready. At an airport, at the bar, I always expect love at first sight.
I had booked this vacation after a great period of depression, the worst in a long time. According to my psychiatrist, traveling was the best cure for melancholy. When you are closed in your head, you often also feel like a prisoner in your body. But discovering new places gives you a feeling of freedom and makes you realize that life still has a lot to offer.
Love, forget everything
Love has always been a means of escape for me. As soon as I fall in love I forget everything else, because all my thoughts go to that person instead of going in circles. And my emotions carry me and build me instead of weighing me down and destroying me.
Before my trip to Rome, I was in the throes of depression. I was 27, summer was desperately late to get to London, and had spent the last few months looking for work (unsuccessfully), comforting myself with gin and sleeping all day. The pandemic had been a nightmare from which I had difficulty waking up, felt lost and desperately alone.
Then I focused on the one thing that makes me feel good: love. During childbirth I ended up confessing to one of my best friends that I was in love with him. It wasn’t mutual but this frankness brought us closer. My older brother, who is a psychologist, warned me anyway: “Be a little realistic and stop fantasizing.”
Deaf to this wise advice, I threw myself headlong into this relationship, hoping that one day my friend would end up falling in love with me.
When he ended our friendship via texting, I felt even worse than a breakup. I was convinced it was my fault, that I scared him with my feelings and now I had lost one of my best friends.
Day to day
The pain is most intense when it has already been experienced. Kind of like constantly bumping into the same blue. I was starting to think to myself that I should silence my feelings.
For the first time in years, I thought about killing myself. When these thoughts began to materialize, I called some friends, who came to my aid. I knew very well that eventually the end of the tunnel would come. So I shut myself up, absorbed by memories and my imagination, to be able to survive day after day.
After four months of therapy and finally a job offer, my depression started to fade
