By dint of exchanges, we begin to know each other a bit. You notice, no doubt, that I find it difficult to close the topics. It was also in this, I confide to you, that one of my weaknesses lay as a clinician. The end of sessions or psychotherapy was always difficult for me. It happened to me to accumulate a delay at the end of the day which became embarrassing, for all those times when I had not been able to finish speaking, to give him a final point, whereas there was always, it seems to me, so much ‘other layers to add, floors to descend, more.
So, if you follow me, we will soon find ourselves with many threads stretched between us in a kind of endless conversation where we will dare to accumulate layers of meaning and reflect, together, on human complexity. In this way, we will also be counter-cultural, in opposition to Marie Kondo and other guides who seek to classify our disorders.
November already. It is impossible to close on the suffering of youth, the theme for the month of October, since it constitutes so much of us, this youth. We have spoken at length about the contemporary one, of what it invites us to do, of the mirrors that it wears loud and clear, of the paving stones that it throws at our institutions.
Of love, however, we have said little, it seems to me, too busy as we were, and rightly so, to prosecute the injunctions underlying the “evil of the century” (See this little gem by Catherine Lepage at l ‘NFB on this subject: https://www.onf.ca/film/mal-du-siecle /)
However, if there is a theme linked to youth, it is that of the first great love ups, the euphoria that they call, the big slaps they distribute and the disenchantments that they invoke in our narrative frameworks.
My first “great love rise” ended in a way that serves as a propulsion for many areas of my life, especially this desire to probe the human soul, its mysteries and its fractures.
We’re getting to know each other, you and I, so this time, if you don’t mind, I’ll tell you about it, before launching the call for November stories.
He was very tall, very handsome and very intelligent. All in superlatives. We loved each other as only young people know how to do, in an intimacy that opens up paths for the heart, body and mind.
There were the confetti explosions, the hot air balloons attached to the ribcage, an accumulation of words, smells, close-ups of moments that are lived in slow motion, over years.
Then, in our early twenties, there was this sound that crept in between us, slowly at first. We do not know when or how exactly he started to escape from us. The sound became voices, voices, a horde of voices in his head.
Gradually he became an absence embodied in a loved body.
“PEP: First psychotic episode”. I’ll learn how to name it much later, in a psychopathology class, as I work to turn my loss into graduate school.
The years of emptiness, resumptions in hand, hospitalizations, and the police will follow. They will apply Law P-38 (Law on the protection of people whose mental state presents a danger to themselves or to others).
I will no longer be there to attend. It is his mother who will tell me about the cycle of devolution: police, hospitalization, house, police, hospitalization, house, police, hospitalization, street.
Tomorrow, November 2, it will be exactly eight years since the day he took his bike, before disappearing into a mist from which he will never have returned.
The river has been searched.
We never found him.
His mother continues to wait for him. And I, I scrutinize the gaze of each homeless person I cross, in a sort of mad hope. For those who loved him, there remains only the memory of before the voices and a mourning without a body.
Each time I tell this story, I understand that they are legion, our loves disappeared in the mists. We don’t talk much about it, but we all know it. They are on the sidewalks of our cities, wandering and intoxicated, or on wanted notices that do not attract the sympathy of the public.
Talking about mental health also means reflecting on this great collective failure: that of not knowing what to do with all those who live with a horde in their heads.
Call for stories
Tell me about them, these lovers, these brothers and sisters, these sons or daughters who live somewhere in the mists.