…madness is the inability to communicate your perception to others. It’s as though you’re in a foreign country — you see everything, understand what’s happening around you, but you can’t explain yourself or get help because you don’t understand the language spoken there. – We’ve all felt that way. – We’re just all a little bit crazy in one way or another.
… I wanted to kill the part of myself that I despised. I didn’t think about the fact that inside me there were other Veronikas that I never managed to love.
To her acquaintances, she made the impression of someone everyone should envy, yet she wasted her energy trying to fit into the image she’d created for herself.
I started to understand that the lack of meaning in life is entirely my fault.
Am I cured? – No. You’re a different person who wants to be like everyone else. And that, in my opinion, is a dangerous disease. – Is it dangerous to be different? – No. It’s dangerous to try to be like everyone else: it leads to neuroses, psychoses, paranoia. It’s dangerous to want to be like everyone else because that means you’re forcing nature, going against the laws of God, who has never created two identical leaves in all the forests and groves of the world. But you think it’s madness to be different… Do you understand? Marie nodded. – Not having the courage to be different, people go against nature.
Love is the great madness of men and women.
She imagined herself as both queen and slave, ruler and servant. In her imagination, she made love with whites, blacks, yellows, homosexuals, kings, and beggars. She belonged to everyone, and everyone could do whatever they wanted with her. She experienced orgasm, two, three consecutive orgasms. She imagined everything she had never been able to imagine before, giving herself to the most insignificant and the most pure. Finally, unable to hold back any longer, she screamed loudly in pleasure, in the pain of several consecutive orgasms, of all the men and women who entered her body and left it through the doors of her mind.
She knew no panic, no depression, no mystical visions, no psychoses, nor the limitations the human mind can impose. And although she had known so many men, she had never experienced the deepest of her desires — and as a result, she didn’t know her life even halfway. Oh, if only everyone could experience and understand their inner madness!
…answer me: why have I never done this before? If I am free, if I can think about anything I want, why have I always avoided thoughts about forbidden situations?
Forbidden? Listen, I was a lawyer, and I know the laws. And I was also a Catholic, and I knew most of the Bible by heart. What do you call forbidden?
Marie approached Veronika and helped her put on her sweater. – Look into my eyes carefully and don’t forget what I’m about to tell you. There are only two forbidden things – one by human law, and the other by Divine law. Never force anyone into a relationship, as that’s considered rape. And never engage with children; that is the worst sin. In everything else, you’re free. There’s always someone who wants exactly the same as you.
Doctor, I discovered that I am a depraved woman. Isn’t this one of the reasons for my suicide attempt? I knew so little about myself.
Well, here’s the simplest answer, he thought. There’s no need to call the nurse again to be a witness in order to avoid accusations of sexual violence.
– We all want to do different things, sometimes quite unusual things, he replied. And our sexual partners do too. What’s wrong with that?
– And what do you think?
– From the very start, everything is wrong. Because when everyone dreams of the so-called forbidden and only a few carry out those dreams, everyone else feels like cowards.
– Even if those few are right?
– The one who’s right is the one who’s stronger. In this case, paradoxically, the cowards turn out to be the bravest, and they manage to impose their ideas.
With a psychiatrist, people speak more openly than with a priest because the doctor won’t threaten them with hell. Throughout his long career, Dr. Igor had heard almost everything they could tell him. Tell him. Far more rarely – act on it.
Even after many years in his specialty, he often wondered why people were so afraid of their individuality. When he tried to dig deeper, the most common response was: “My husband will think I’m a prostitute.” Or the patient sitting in front of him almost always emphasized: “My wife must not know.”
This was usually where the conversation ended.
Needless to say, everyone had their own unique sexual profile, as distinct as fingerprints: yet no one wanted to believe it. It was very risky to maintain freedom in bed because another might remain a slave to their own prejudices.
– There are people who have drunk from the same well.
– Exactly, said Zedka. They think they’re normal because they all act the same. I’ll pretend I drank from that same water too.
The state of most patients improves significantly as soon as they enter the clinic. Because they no longer have to hide their symptoms, and the “family” atmosphere helps them accept their neuroses and psychoses. (About the psychiatric clinic)
As someone once put it, it’s enough to maintain “controlled madness.” Cry, worry, get irritated, like any normal human being, but always remember that up there, your spirit is laughing at all this fuss.
“You, sitting here, are the ones who are meant to hear me,” he said. “You have endured the two hardest trials on the spiritual path: patience in waiting for the moment of truth and the courage to accept what happens without judgment or evaluation. I will teach you.”
This is all that any person has, and it passes quickly, though some think they have a past where they accumulate things, and a future where they will accumulate even more.
It should be the same for you. Stay crazy, but behave like normal people. Risk being different, but learn to do it without attracting attention.
And what is the “true self”? – Veronika interrupted him. – It is what you are, not what has been done to you.
…free your mind, stop thinking about anything – just BE.
Veronika surrendered, she gazed at the rose, she saw who she was, she liked it, and it was a shame she had been so careless.
I’m going to start living again, Eduard. Make the mistakes I’ve always wanted to make but never dared. Boldly accept the panic that may flare up again, but at the same time, I’ll only feel boredom because I know I won’t die from it and won’t lose consciousness. I can make new friends and teach them to be crazy to make them wise. I’ll tell them not to live by the etiquette books, but to discover their own lives, their own desires, their own adventures – and live! I’ll quote from Ecclesiastes to Catholics, from the Quran to Muslims, from the Torah to Jews, Aristotle’s texts to atheists. I don’t want to be a lawyer anymore, but I can use my experience to give lectures on men and women who knew the truth about our existence, and what they wrote can be summed up in one word: live. If you live, God will live with you. If you refuse to take risks, He will return to the distant heavens and become nothing more than the subject of philosophical constructions. Everyone in the world knows this. But no one takes the first step. Probably out of fear that such a person will be called a madman.
With young people, it’s always like this: they set their own limits, never asking whether their body will hold up. And the body always holds up.”
The world is exactly as we see it.
If most people believe something to be true, it becomes true.
Awareness of death gives us the strength to keep living.
Be like the overflowing fountain, not like the reservoir holding the same water.
On the supposed “sanity”:
When someone appeared with a more direct, more open nature, they were either immediately rejected or made to suffer, being labeled as naive and simple-minded.
And what, if you think about it, have her efforts been spent on? She tried to make everything in life go according to plan. She sacrificed many of her desires so that her parents would continue to love her as they did when she was a child, even though she knew that true love changes over time, growing and opening up new ways of self-expression.
And what is dignity? The desire for everyone around you to think you’re kind, well-behaved, filled with love for your neighbor?