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Finally, the long-awaited day has arrived, one that neither I nor those who care about me most believed would ever come, even if they would never admit it. It has been difficult months, a difficult year, or perhaps it was the simplest of them all? I don't know, I only know that all my memories starting from the day of the diagnosis are blurred, pieces of days that blend together and often struggle to fit together. When you have a terminal illness, you're supposed to live each day as if it were your last, to make your life what you've always wanted it to be, but this is the cruelest of illusions. Your life is no longer in your hands, but in the hands of those who decide what's best for you, for your future, you have your whole life ahead of you. Fortunately, I knew to trust those who only wanted what was best for me, I followed all possible therapies, took all the medicines necessary for my survival, until I arrived here, today, towards the last step for my (almost) complete recovery. This place is very chaotic, I haven't seen a station this full in over a year.
Transport
Motorways and tramlines
Starting and then stopping
Taking off and landing
Coach 7, seat 2A. For this special occasion, I even allowed myself to choose a window seat. The journey this time will be very long, there are even two changes, the ones my sister always told me to avoid. As soon as I sit down, I feel that sensation I barely recognize, the tranquility of being among a thousand strangers focused on their phones, computers, or books, and the awareness of being nothing to them, of barely entering their field of vision, makes me feel at home. I have read in countless books and songs about the human need to be seen and recognized, but I don't think this truly reflects us. In fact, one of the few things I understand about myself is precisely this: nothing calms me like the awareness of not being known by someone, of not creating expectations in anyone, and a public transport taking me to the other side of the country is the best place for this. I don't think there's anything worse than being perceived and known differently from what we truly are, and I haven't been seen as what I really am probably for my entire life: first I was the house pest, then the problematic girl, then a teenager in the prime of her youth, then a poor young girl devoured by her illness, and now an (almost) survivor. I don't know if mine is a distorted view of reality, but I don't feel like any of those things. In fact, maybe I don't feel like anything at all, or I feel like too many different pieces that don't fit together and make me too many things. I only know that I want to heal.
The emptiest of feelings
Disappointed people
Clinging onto bottles
And when it comes it's so so disappointing
However, I can't help but wonder what living will be like after all this. I barely remember my life before. Who will I be when all the compassion of those around me is gone? What will become of the fragile girl who needed saving? Will I go back to being an arrogant and self-centered twenty-year-old, or will I be a strong and determined woman whose past represents proof of her worth? Honestly, I don't know which of the two options scares me more, but I can't wait to find out. In the train car, there's a peaceful silence that allows me to reorganize the mess of thoughts I've set aside for who knows how long. The words of doctors and my family members bounce from one side of my head to the other: 'after having lived through all this, all the worries you had before will seem like insignificant distractions.' I've never heard a worse phrase than this. My worries are always the same, and I appreciate that: the fear of death has never surpassed my anxieties, fortunately. What's the point of being afraid of death if you're living a life that doesn't satisfy you? There has been no physical pain that has surpassed the lump in my throat from my first heartbreak, no needle that has pierced me more than the realization of being nobody to those I loved most in the world, no cry louder than those I cowardly let out when I realized I had irremediably hurt someone. The hospital routine had created a certain tranquility in me that I had never experienced in 24 years. I know I often talk about tranquility, but for me, it's what matters most. A girl on the verge of death doesn't have to have anxiety about the future, about making wrong decisions, because others think for her, everything is allowed because she's sick, she can't disappoint anyone more than this. I will always choose letting go over fighting for something, I will always prefer calm to anxiety and euphoria. But now I have learned from past mistakes, I have understood the meaning of many things, I am ready for what's to come. I can't wait to heal, and this time it will be my decision, I won't do it to please others. I've spent too much time living by inertia.
Let down and hanging around
Crushed like a bug in the ground
Let down and hanging around
Shell smashed, juices flowing
Wings twitch legs are going
During these months I have travelled through my country countless times, but I have noticed that every place seems to me to be the same place: from this window I see the same hills that I used to see 50 km from my home, across the same river, the same sea, the same abandoned cottages scattered here and there, everything repeats itself constantly. No matter how many lives I changed, in how many different places I spent months and months of my life, I always ended up meeting the same people, experiencing the same situations. It was as if in every place there were the same people with a different appearance, and in each of them I did not recognise anyone similar to me and who could understand me. Maybe it's my individuality complex talking, but I never managed to feel part of a group or even simply connected to someone. Paradoxically, the only thing that ever made me feel at home was my melancholy: I used it as justification for every moment when I needed an alibi for my meanness and superficiality, I always considered it as my best strength, what distinguished me and made me deeper than others. After my diagnosis, however, I thought that in the end I was just one of many patients, that it was not my own merit or characteristic to perceive everything around me in a certain way. I spent so much time recognising myself in sadness that I never really understood who I am. Maybe after all this I will have time to understand it, also because this was not an easy choice. I am moving for the umpteenth time far away from everything and everyone, perhaps there is no place further away than the one I am heading to, among those I have gone to so far. However, I cannot forget the happiness in my loved ones' eyes when they realised that I wanted to do this, that I wanted to receive the treatments that they said would finally put an end to this ordeal. A part of me though, the despicable one I mentioned earlier, thinks that surely their happiness is due to me getting out of their way for a while. I don't even want to dwell on these things too much though, I realised long ago that there is no point in worrying about human relationships, you just have to wait for them to end as usual. Whatever, maybe I'm being a bit too tragic in thinking this way. It might be all the drugs in my system, or it might be the chemical imbalance in my brain from my birth, who knows.
Don't get sentimental
It always ends up drivel
One day I am gonna grow wings
A chemical reaction
Hysterical and useless
Hysterical and
Let down and hanging around
Crushed like a bug in the ground
Let down and hanging around
Let down and hanging
Let down
Let down
One thing that has changed a lot, however, is my relationship with myself. I know that from what I think it may not seem so, but I love myself very much. I know what I do and who I do it for. I know that I am making all the decisions that for once are good for me and for nobody else. Maybe, for the first time in my life, I feel I am on my own side. Of course, years of therapy were not enough to be on my side, but it took a near fatal illness that literally threw me from people pleasing to self-care, but the end justifies the means. I certainly couldn't do it by flying, but it didn't help to send me (almost) underground either. I got so lost in these useless thoughts that I almost didn't realise that we had reached the end of the line. The train doesn't stop wobbling, and people start to stand up and pile in even though the doors haven't opened yet. How I hate it when they do that, what is the point if not to oppress those who remain seated? Some people should be taught patience. Of course, then I speak of patience. I have oppressed most of my interpersonal relationships by oppressing people with my presence, just like this gentleman is doing with his suitcase in front of me. When I think back on it, I almost laugh. How much I banged my head against relationships that only I kept going on with, how many tears wasted on people who didn't even care if I lived or died, my favourite songs have this phrase in their lyrics but I never learned it. Who knows if one day I will learn to relate to people. Man, I see the station sign and it's not the place I was supposed to be. Maybe it is and I can't remember? It all seems fuzzy to me at the moment. After getting off the train and quickly looking around, I realise that I am exactly where I need to be. I am finally going to put a stop to this freaking illness, the last step before I start again with a normal life, one worth living. I just want to heal. I just want to heal, I repeat to myself as I proceed in my direction. I just want to heal, I whisper as I look at the train arriving at the platform two steps away from me. I just want to heal, I repeat to myself as I finally have the courage to take the last two steps ahead of me, the ones that will finally bring me to my side.
You know, you know where you are with
You know where you are with
Floor collapsing, floating
Bouncing back and
One day I am gonna grow wings
A chemical reaction
The last thing I hear and will ever hear are mechanical noises and screams, then I will stop disturbing, this time for real. Strange that these are my last thoughts. In the end I won't need to learn how to relate to people. In the end I have decided what to do with my life. Surely this choice of mine will please no one, and as usual no one will understand it. The problem is that it is really hard to understand how a girl so young and after (almost) overcoming all that can make such a gesture. For many it will seem like the latest selfish act of a spoilt, egocentric megalomaniac who does not know what pain is. Surely now I know. I never wanted to get over that illness: she was my only family, friend, home, justification. She was the only one who knew me. What was rottenest in me had somatised, had become part of me, I never wanted to survive. Finally now, after years, I make the first decision made for myself and no one else. Killed by the same train I have taken almost every day these past months. I have dragged relationships, careers, myself, too long. I never knew how to let go of someone or something, my life is proof of that. I have never gotten over anything or anyone. The only thing I have been good at letting go of, though, is me. There is nothing more peaceful than letting myself go.
(You know where you are)
Hysterical and useless
(You know where you are)
Hysterical and
(You know where you are)
Let down and hanging around
Crushed like a bug in the ground
Let down and hanging around
