It’s been way too long since my last post. A lot has happened. First I went on holiday. It was really good. I have thrown away cell phone, laptop, and all I did was eat, sleep and swim in the sea. Second I finished my antidepressant. Yeah! 4 September 2020 is the first day off Fluoxetin. In June I had gotten prescribed half dosage for 3 months, meaning 10mg instead of 20mg, and then basta, give it up and see how it goes. My spirits are high, I am rejuvenated from the holidays and I like my job. It’s a good start to test my time off medicaments.

What I would really like to highlight here, is that I think familiarity was really key to this whole process. Alain de Botton says this about love. Have you heard any of his conferences? You can check Ted Talk. Great guy, a philosopher with lots of knowledge and a great look at modernity through the eyes of the Greek philosophers. He basically says that when we fall in love it is usually with people that don’t make us feel necessarily good, but familiar, as we unconsciously seek for the feelings we are familiar with. “We chase after more exciting others, not in the belief that life with them will be more harmonious, but out of an unconscious sense that it will be reassuringly familiar in its patterns of frustration.” (quote from one of his books, see it here). Sounds like a side track to my story, but it all makes sense to me! I had a great time at the beach in Italy, 2 weeks of bliss, without doing anything special, but I was at the campground where I have spent most of my summers since my first year of age. And that’s the recipe: I needed familiarity, I needed to go back to what I know and am accustomed to, the love of my parents, a routine, etc. Four years ago, when my life changed for what I thought was the worst, this is what I was seeking all along, without exactly knowing. When I left W., the love of my life, I was going in this direction, but I couldn’t see it then. I went through hell, to get where I am now; I had to leave him in order to find me. I had lost me on the way, I wasn’t feeling the earth under my feet. I had to go back to what was familiar; stay in one place, refind balance, finding a routine… all things I have despised for the last 20 years.

And here I am now, four years after moving back to Switzerland, leaving W., changing jobs, coming closer to my hometown (1’000 km instead of 9’000 km), having a stable job, paying retirement insurance, saving money to buy a house, visiting friends a few km from my place in Geneva, etc. I didn’t have to give up W., but that’s what it took in my case; I miss him dearly every damn day of the year, since 4 years; he doesn’t want to talk to me, 14 years together, and I threw that away; and he didn’t pick it up for us. He let us go as much as I did. But that’s another story. For another post.

I am happy and serene. Gained 4 kilo, but am sort of pleased by the extra “ciccia” :-). I want to get back in shape, it will come. For now I look at my belly and I smile. Abundance is welcome, also in the flesh. Anything, but not depression. Ok, no cancer either, thank you.