31- Looking for A paola´s replace in my mind

\-   - It is absurd of course it is, if it didn't work with one person what makes you think it will work with someone with similar physical features? But cognitive memory, that is to say the immune system of thought works like that. It recognizes what is good by associating it with what is safe.

\- When you displace the libido love is transformed, that is why they say that love is never the same twice. However, it is the only way, even if it is very strong, that intensity can be absorbed by another person Anastasia. You can project your feelings on someone as well as retaining them inside yourself. And of course, through other areas of your life, work, friendships, and the creation and realization of sports are areas where the libido can be displaced to a lesser extent. Because you are sick with melancholy you have lost your ability to love, blaming yourself for the loss of the loved object, and believing yourself guilty of its loss. Anastasia, I have attended to many girls like you, they come to me with a broken heart because they cannot forget their partner after years of relationship. They focus all their beauty and creative power and all their energy on the relationship with the object until they develop opposite feelings of love and hate, which often originate from real experiences that do not allow you to let go of that “love for the object” because of your own melancholy.

\- I don't want to look for an object, a person – I said drawing some quotation marks with my fingers in the air – An activity perhaps. I like to go to the gym and I take modeling classes. What am I supposed to do in that case? Look for someone similar to Paola or put an ad in a catalog?

\- You must be patient, and focus all your energy on transferring it to that new object. Melisa has told me that she is your partner and that is wonderful. Open yourself to a new opportunity to love her and surpass yourself, let someone new caress your skin, ignite your passion, awaken new expectations in your life.

\- I do not conceive love as something rational, I am very passionate.

\- You're having trouble getting over that melancholic side that has taken root in you because of your loss. Partly you have an identity problem... - She said, writing my clinical case in her notebook - You tell me that you've closed your social networks and made some of them private, not wanting to be seen in public, nor to be seen by Paola, confirming that you care what others think... Ummm - The doctor wrote quickly with her pen and I watched her dazed - ... You worry about your image and you haven't fallen into low self-esteem, at least on the first level, since self-esteem encompasses more than personal appearance.

Believe me, Doctor, I don't care what others think - I corrected her while listening to her notes. I doubted very much that those notes were for Mercedes Pulido, something told me that she wrote them to later study my case when I returned for consultation. A woman as important as her probably wouldn't have time to review and follow up on all her patients - I care about feeling comfortable and confident, being pretty and feeling good for myself. Because I'm worth it, do you understand? I'm completely skeptical of humanity's thinking, and I'm not worried about seeing Paola again either - I added with feigned serenity.

\- You see? That way of talking about humanity, excluding yourself from them, is because of your own melancholy. You yourself become an object and you isolate yourself from the world in your feeling of desolation. - She murmured, writing again in her notebook. I rolled my eyes. "I isolate myself when I talk about humanity because I come from another world. My nature is different." I thought. I let out the air through my mouth in annoyance. “But of course I don't feel like everyone else, I'm a star. Fuck, I'm a star. Or I once was…” – I sighed.

\- Doctor, you're analyzing me like a thesis experiment but you're not taking the time to get to know me even a little. You can't stick all the theory in the books on my forehead as if I were a living work of Freud or Skinner and his personal behaviorism. I think it's unfair that you don't know me from my feelings but from my thinking. I'm sorry but I really feel like I'm wasting my time with you – I told her honestly, and the next second I was afraid of saying something wrong, but the doctor looked at me with understanding.

\- Melisa asked me to help you and that's what I'll do Anastasia. You have nothing to lose. You told me that you write, right?

\- Yes… – I admitted, ashamed of my bad temper.

\- You seek to project yourself and transmit your energy, which is quite intense from what I see. And that makes you also carry an internal mourning, that mourning makes your feelings of love towards that person keep you full of energy. Take care of yourself and be optimistic about life.

\- Do you want to bet that much optimism I have? Makeup, clothes and a smile from a dental advertisement are not indicators that I have moved on with my life. In my work I may find passion and a longing to help and serve others. But I think that without Paola I am really going in the wrong direction, I can't help but look back and see her walking away, and something inside me tells me that it shouldn't be like this. That we should be walking together. Because Paola loves me and I love her. Has she never been in love? Damn, I hate talking about these things.

\- I've been married for thirty-seven years Anastasia, I understand what you're talking about. Why do you hate talking about destiny? You're in love, it's natural to believe in destiny when you love someone.

\- Because I don't understand it myself, I don't understand what it was that I lost with her that hurts me so much.

The doctor searched for another cigarette in her purse.

\- Anastasia, the loves that could never be, are shapeless voids, full of lost illusions, of spilled innocence, that makes our soul age a little and lose innocence in a certain way.

\- Have I lost my innocence?

\- You have splinters in that place where there was love before, now there is only bitterness, and that makes it so that you can't welcome love again with that illusion of the first time. It will never be the same, you won't be able to live anything else like the one you lived with Paola. However, it seems to me that you still retain that innate freshness that is quite pure and innocent, to call it somehow, you are romantic and genuine, at least when you talk to me about Paola, and saving that is what we have to work on. Let me explain... happiness will always come in another look, with another person. But somewhere in your heart and your memory, there will be that emptiness, it is what is called eternal emptiness. That is why you do not understand why you suddenly think of her. This never happens to many people when they end a relationship, maybe during the first months, but after years they finally end up forgetting that person and do not remember them anymore, it is because they do not conceive those emptinesses in their mind that have settled in you. Only when they evoke the memory do they think of past love and that is not your case.