Dady VS Dady

 

Do you know what it’s like to go and identify the love of your life at the mortuary after a train ran them over at over one hundred and fifty kilometres per hour? Do you have any idea what fifteen carriages, each weighing tens of tonnes, might leave behind of the body of the person you loved most? No? Well, good for you.

May all the gods of the Earth, the seas, the sky and the universe spare you from that.

Now, do you know what could be even more horrific than such violence?

No! Close your eyes for a moment and read what follows...

 

For several weeks now, the woman who had once been the light of my life had come to resemble nothing more than a gigantic black hole into which the stars of our shared sky were disappearing. She was the spark that no longer set our dreams alight. She had declared war on the demons of her childhood and had also increased the frequency with which she took her muscle relaxants. The psychiatrist she’d seen on my advice had prescribed her more and then even more, which he called anxiolytics or antidepressants. ‘What you must avoid above all,’ he’d said, ‘is combining different medications.’ That bloke seemed to know a thing or two about the subject. Two or three days after our first visit to his surgery, I’d phoned him to find out more about this treatment and whether I needed to keep an eye on her in any way. He’d started with a lengthy technical explanation. He’d had to convince me of the efficacy of his magic potions. With great eloquence, he explained to me that there were three families of antidepressants: psychotonics, which had a stimulating effect; sedatives; and finally, intermediate types, which, depending on the patient, could have either a stimulating or a sedative effect. I’ll spare you the meaning of those daft adjectives like ‘imipramic’ and ‘tricyclic’, or the Latin formulae listing the ingredients of Anafranil, Laroxyl, Stablon, Vivalan, Prozac, Déroxat and Athymil. 

 

All these names were, according to him, the result of rigorous research and, despite the impressive list of stated contraindications on each of the boxes, it was all simply a matter of monitoring and dosage. Again, according to him, it would only take a few weeks to restore my little angel to a normal state. I believed him. His timeline predicted a positive effect on Marie’s anxiety after three days. His treatment plan indicated psychomotor stimulation after just five or six days. Finally, what he called the effect on her pathological mood would show its first results after three weeks. I saw none of this. Like a child who, every morning, opens a window on a December advent calendar counting down to Christmas Day, I watched out for each of these events every day, but all I saw was the physical apathy into which Marie was sinking. The vivid blue sparkle in her eyes no longer reminded me of the vastness of the oceans, but rather a glint like a puddle of water harbouring only the morbid components of a devastating chemical reaction. You’d have to be a right idiot to still believe in Father Christmas at my age. Just one of those bloody pills would be enough to knock out even the mightiest of elephants. Without realising it, we too had lived through our own deadly summer. It had carved out the inescapable highway of melancholy and had veered us forever off the well-trodden paths of our ideals.
 

I forgot to tell you the most important thing. Our makeshift alchemist, the on-duty ‘medication ambassador’, had forgotten to mention one of the classic side effects of tricyclic antidepressants. This reluctant doctor failed to explain to me what the lifting of psychomotor inhibition was. Behind these two technical terms and the equally technical dosage he had prescribed for Marie – on top of her so-called neurovegetative disorders and hot flushes – lay the disappearance of my angel’s psychomotor slowing.

To put it more simply, in people suffering from depression who have suicidal thoughts, this mechanism risks leading them to act on those thoughts. Marie took her own life. A victim first of the rapes and beatings inflicted on her by the idiot who had served as her father, and then by the dosage – what a stupid name! – she refused to believe that I was strong enough for both of us. I reread, page by page, those bloody reports by Sganarelle, the king of ‘posologie’. Lately, Marie had been rejecting her own body because her mind saw in it the traces of her physical and mental wounds as nothing but sources of shame. If our story had been written and directed by Clint Eastwood, I’d have been ruthless and called myself William Munny. But I’m no Missouri killer and I’ve never thought of taking anyone’s life – otherwise, I’d have killed her father. I’d have kicked him back in the face until he dropped dead. For that

 

"My love,

I feel pain inside. Several parts of my body are causing me pain, and sometimes it hurts all over. This pain isn’t physical. I wouldn’t know how to explain it to you. It’s as if certain parts of my body had been taken away from me, and it gives me a headache. It’s silly, but I feel as though they’re crying. When I talk to him about it, the doctor says that there’s been a little girl inside me for a very long time who’s finally found the time to cry, but that her tears are on the inside. It’s a bit twisted, isn’t it, you rascal! He also tells me, when I ask him if this will last long, that one day the little girl will disappear and I’ll go back to being the person you love, just like before. He’s wrong, my darling. I know it, and the thought is unbearable. The little girl doesn’t want to die, and the woman I am can’t go on like this any longer. I’ve had so much fun with you, I really have. You’re my favourite thing in the world, along with my little girl. But my nights are eating away at my days and my strength too. I don’t want to wear you down or be a burden of any kind to our child. I ask your forgiveness a thousand times over for all my outbursts, my crying fits and my moments of rejection. I must have been feeling even worse on those days. I also ask forgiveness from all our friends and from those who didn’t understand my behaviour towards you. They must have thought I was betraying you. I carry with me the memory of our first kiss and all our tender moments. But the pain that gnaws at me remains too strong, and I can’t manage it any longer; I no longer want to try to live like everyone else. It has been beyond my strength for a very long time now. I died when I was six, and my soul no longer wants to drag this battered body around. Look after our little Iris and help her grow into a woman who finds joy in life.

Goodbye, my rascal, and forgive me once again.

Your angel"

 

I found this letter on our bed. She also left behind her bloody pills – pills which, I’m now certain, she no longer had any faith in. They’re here, in my pocket. Each of these pills marked her journey towards the train that took everything away. My daughter and I have just been dealt the final blow by that bloody father of hers, and we’re going to have to learn – as if that were possible – to live without Marie. Plunged into the darkest darkness of my life, I can think of nothing but that ‘fake dad’ and Marie’s thousand and one tormented nights.

Somewhere, he’s laughing, breathing, no doubt making the most of life, and perhaps, every night, killing the birth of another woman.

 

Stéphane Théri