When you were 17 your parents had sent you to an asylum because they thought you were psychotic. And now you are the world’s biggest-selling novelist! How has been the journey?
My parents locked me up three times in a lunatic asylum. The reasons in my medical files are banal. It was said that I was isolated, hostile and miserable at school. I was not crazy but I was rather just a 17-year-old who really wanted to become a writer. Because no one understood this, I was locked up for months and fed with tranquilisers. The therapy merely consisted of giving me electroshocks. They were intended to clear the uppermost layer of my memory in order to bring peace to my head. I promised to myself that one day I would write about this experience, so young people will understand that we have to fight for our own dreams from a very early stage of our lives. The message in “Veronika decides to die” is that: dare to be different. You are unique, and you have to accept you as you are, instead of trying to repeat other people’s destinies or patterns. Insanity is to behave like someone that you are not. Normality is the capacity to express your feelings. From the moment that you don’t fear to share your heart, you are a free person. I was a rebel. I was opposite everything, and that is actually a good thing to be when you are young of age. My parents tried to make me behave properly. The tried everything from threats, to complain about how much I let them down, but nothing worked. They thought they had lost control, and said to themselves: “He is mad. He wants to be an artist”. And then they committed me to this institution and I learned at very young age that I had to fight. I chose not to look at myself as a victim but thought ” Paulo, now you are experiencing the difficulties that real artists actually should experience.”
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Where does the inner strength come from? Where does the belief in the self come from? I sometimes use my story when teaching students about resilience, as an example of how it is possible to survive and flourish against the odds, but I have a hard time explaining where the inner belief that I was worth it came from. So many young adults give up their sense of self to others. They give their hearts and bodies freely without thought, without honouring themselves. I try to show them how to find their inner strength, but it`s not easy. We can believe in them, but in order to live, they must believe in themselves.
Taste of life,
the fever of being,
so insane…
…
love to You - Paulo,
Agnieszka
This ’story’ of you, just goes to show how what can seem to be the most painful and negative events in our lives can turn out to be the most positive gift, even if it doesn’t seem like it at the time. You could have spent your whole life suffering and in agony if you had held onto your thoughts of how you had been mis-treated, but instead you used the experience to fuel your passion, to become independant and to think for yourself and follow your heart. You could say that your parents did you a huge favour and although their actions, undoubtedly motivated by their love for you, could have been judged as ‘wrong’, it has worked out to have been just ‘right’.
“They thought they had lost control….”
WHY do so many people think that they have the right to rule or control people, especially children?
and I’m not talking about courtesy, decency, respect etc. though there’s precious little of that either way between parents and children in this country today.
WHY do so many people seem to believe that these things have to be beaten or oppressed into another human being?
GIVE respect
GIVE courtesy
you nearly always get it back
GIVE people the right to choose for themselves
even at early age, so they can practice and have confidence.
People big and small are out of control because they do not know what control they have nor what to do with it.
I’d love to shout some more - but I have to go out, hehe
LOVE to my lovelies
xxxx
People usually mistreat the birth of those who give them Light and Pleasure later on.
In abandon and loneliness, life lead the artist to the Inner Essence.
For She is what is still, when we feel there is nothing left.