Natimorto

Categoria: Chronicle

  • Sixto Rodriguez

    I’ve lost my grandfather when I was in college. Strangely enough, I don’t remember exactly when it was. The year, the month, the day. It all slipped away into a jumble of half-remembered things that I tried to repress for so long.

     

    But there are things I remember: the smell of the hospital corridors and the sound of him in pain. I remember the morphine and me arguing with the doctors who weren’t treating him properly. The last album we heard together:

     

    ‘Cold Fact’ by Sixto Rodriguez.

     

    Don’t say anymore

    Just walk out the door

    I’ll get along fine

    You’ll see

    If there was a word

    But magic’s absurd

    I’d make one dream come true

    It didn’t work out

    But don’t ever doubt

    How I felt about you

    But thanks for your time

    Then you can thank me for mine

    And after that’s said

    Forget it

     

  • 8

    8.

    Eight. A small number, doesn’t even make it to ten.

    Eight.

    Oi-to.

    In Portuguese, it’s a short word with two syllables.

    But right now, it seems enormous to me.

    Eight.

    Not days, weeks or months.

    Eight years.

    Eight years ago, I gave birth to and held for the first time the kindest little boy I had ever met. The boy who would rather give his pocket money to someone begging in the street than buy sweets. The boy who cries when he sees injustice and asks me quietly, ‘Mum, why is the world like this?’

    Vico, I hope that the world doesn’t harden you, but that you learn to protect your heart. I hope you never abandon your dreams and hopes, but learn to adjust your sails according to the wind. May you continue to be who you’ve always been: sweet, intelligent and kind. The best chess player in our house, my partner in reading huge books in record time and a great lover of peach iced tea.

    I love you forever.

    Happy birthday!

  • Treatment-refractory depression

    Every morning, I wake up with a little grey monster seated on my chest.
    He starts the day being small, but he’s supermassive.
    It’s easier to try to ignore him, because he seems so small compared to the day that awaits, but he’s heavy.

    Sometimes I feel like I’m carrying the weight of a thousand elephants.
    Sometimes, I feel like it’s making a hole through my chest.
    Sometimes, he makes hard to see, and all the colours seem to fade.
    Sometimes, he makes me numb.

    Then, I start my day with a cup of Coke and four magic pils.
    They told me that these pils would make me feel better, but I’ve been taking them for more years than I can count and I can’t tell if I feel better or if I’ve just got used to feeling like this.

    During the day, my grey monster always finds ways to be noticed. He grows in a coordinated rhythm with the clock.

    The more the hours go by, more grey the monster makes me feel.

    My grey monster tries to kill me every day.
    I keep going because I’m quite stubborn.
    I know that my meds are helping me to carry the weight of the monster. But, like Sisyphus, it seems like an eternal punishment.
    It’s hard to wonder living a life without my monster — or without my meds. But then again, is it really worth living like this?

    Every night I beg my grey monster to let me to go sleep.

    He never agrees without reminding me of every little mistake I’ve made. Then he tries to make me feel anxious, paranoid, worried.

    He always succeeds.
    And then I fall asleep, exhausted.

    — AND IN THE MORNING, he is there again.