Plagued by suicidal thoughts that come and go, particularly in the depths of winter, Myrique spends time in psychiatry to treat her discomfort.
His openness to others leads him to meet complex beings whose stories overlap with his own, like trees in the same forest linked by an intangible force. “How can we move forward when we have lost our way? »
First novel by Mélilot de Repentigny, Name the living opens with the suicide attempt of Myrique, a young bipolar person, who defines herself as non-binary. Around Myrique, other people in crisis are staying in the psychiatric emergency rooms of the hospital. One fumes and blames the entire planet, the other hails passers-by in the corridors in search of human contact.
“The tenuous bonds that are woven between patients create networks of meaning in me, like small constellations,” observes Myrique, who draws her strength from within others, told with simplicity and kindness in a series of short portraits encapsulating in a few pages what they were able to grasp.
Her other salvation will be the forest, that of Bas-Saint-Laurent where Myrique settles after a life spent in Montreal.
Through his forest explorations and wild gatherings, fueled by the writings of Brother Marie-Victorin who, in Laurentian flora, knew how to name the living so well, Myrique lives again. “High tides will always come back”, but in case of emergency, Myrique has her list of beauty.
With Name the living, Mélilot de Repentigny takes a sensitive and humanizing look at mental health, in simple writing, both powerful and fragile. “To write, you still have to agree to live. »
Name the living
Leméac
136 pages