In my book “Veronika decides
to die�? which takes place in a psychiatric hospital, the director
develops a theory about an undetectable poison which contaminates the
organism over the years: vitriol.
Like the libido �?the sexual
liquid that Dr. Freud had recognized, but no laboratory had ever been able
to isolate, vitriol is distilled by the organisms of human beings who are
in a state of fear. Most of the people affected identify its taste, which
is neither sweet nor salty, but bitter. �?that is why depressions are
intrinsically associated to the word Bitterness.
All beings have Bitterness in
their organism �?to a greater or lesser degree �?in the same way that
almost all of us have the tuberculosis bacillus. However, these two
diseases only attack when the patient is debilitated; in the case of
Bitterness, the terrain for the disease to arise appears when we are
afraid of the so-called “reality�?
Certain people, in their
anxiety to build a world where no outside threat could penetrate, increase
exaggeratedly their defenses against the outside �?strangers, new places,
different experiences �?and leave the inside unprotected. It is then that
Bitterness begins to cause irreversible harm.
The biggest target of
Bitterness (or Vitriol, as the doctor of my book preferred) is desire.
People attacked by this evil begin losing their desire for everything and
in a few years are unable to go outside their world �?because they have
used up enormous energy reserves building high walls for the reality to be
what they wanted it to be.
When avoiding outside attack,
they also limit internal growth. They continue going to work, watching
television, complaining about the traffic and having children, but all
that happens automatically, without really understanding why they are
behaving like that �?after all, everything is under control.
The great problem of
poisoning by Bitterness lies in the fact that passions �?hate, love,
despair, enthusiasm and curiosity �?also don’t appear any more. After some
time, the bitter person has no more desire. They had no more will even to
live, or to die; that was the problem.
For that reason, for bitter
people, heroes and madmen are always fascinating: they are not afraid to
live or die. Both heroes and madmen are indifferent in the face of danger
and go on ahead in spite of everyone saying not to do so. The madman
commits suicide, the hero offers himself up to martyrdom for a cause �?but
both die, and bitter people spend many nights and days talking about the
absurdness and glory of the two types. That is the only moment when the
bitter person has the strength to reach the top of his defensive wall and
look outside a little; but soon his hands and feet tire and he returns to
daily life.
The chronically bitter person
only notices his disease once a week: on Sunday afternoons. Then, as he
has no work or routine to relieve the symptoms, he realizes that something
is very wrong. |