What moves me to live or what prevents me from jumping out of the window – 05/14/2023 – The Worst of the Week

Alberto writes to me to find out what moves me to “continue living”.

Perhaps an editor or proofreader would turn Alberto’s question into something like “what drives you in life?” or “what makes you bet on the future?”.

But, it is because I believe that in the apparently strange formulation of a question lies a good part of the fun in continuing to answer, that I decided to keep Alberto’s question exactly as it arrived in my email box.

Armed with a few lazy readings of psychoanalysis and some experience as a manipulator of the Portuguese language, I create a bunch of conspiracy theories about you, Alberto.

First of all, I don’t think you’re on the ultimate joy unicorn team. You are not asking what drives me in life. You’re asking what makes it impossible for me to jump out of the window on a daily basis.

I keep living because I don’t mix an Easter egg with Coke for breakfast and I don’t trade my warm bed with chamomile tea for synthetic fentanyl. This is a possible answer. But that’s not what you want to know.

I have clear goals that get me out of bed every day: bringing joy to people’s hearts, ending plastic in the oceans and getting to be a very old lady next to my partner.

Lie. In fact, I want more money, more power, and I’m addicted to flirting. But I think that’s still not what you want to know.

Would you be Alberto, even if a bit out of fashion, a bit existentialist? Between the lines of living that it’s not enough to be a gerund you still have to “continue living”, would you be asking me what to do to not freak out with the only certainty in life? For is it precisely by going to the end that an hour arrives there? Perhaps.

Another interesting madness, which I no longer know if it’s in Alberto’s head or mine, is that, taking great care not to burn down the house or drink hemlock by mistake, it would be enough to go with the flow.

Almost like it used to happen in college, changing at Sé during rush hour. Many times I would bury my body in the crowd and when I realized I was already in the living room at home. To go on living, for those who don’t think too much about it, that’s it.

But we think a lot, right Alberto? Oh dear, it sucks, but imagine how much worse it would be to be a unicorn of ultimate joy? A platitude replicant happy “play” idiot?

What Alberto wants to know is how to go on living when you’re a bit depressed. That’s what Alberto wants to know.

Look, Alberto, there are many good things in my life: my daughter, my mother (every other week), André on odd days (I also love him on even days, but with more difficulty), seven friends who don’t give up of myself being a demon (they aren’t much good either), writing, reading, watching good movies, watching good series and studying psychoanalysis.

All right, Alberto. It’s OK. I will answer. I take 75mg of venlafaxine. Have you heard the word about venlafaxine today, brother?

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