37- About sexual life with Mel
I didn't tell the doctor that I was sure I had seen Paola in the last regression. I didn't want her to take away that feeling I had when she squeezed my hand. I wanted that memory to be only mine. That tickling sensation, so familiar, the caresses between two stars. My body still burns when I remember her and I inexplicably lose strength when I see her sitting there in that bar that was decorated as if it were the filming of Midnight in Paris or The Great Gatsby. Sometimes I close my eyes and imagine that I'm back, that I can kiss her and for some reason everything is perfect when that happens, as if she was waiting for me to kiss her. She no longer squeezes me tightly but with complicity, my legs no longer shake but I look at her confidently and I kiss her. I never knew who we were in that life, I only know that she was a bartender, maybe the bartender's wife? And she would order another drink and love me like that, even though I was married, with my feelings for her full of fragility.
\- You must know that when you do not heal from melancholy, love bypasses the connection in this way and you can put your self in a critical state, Anastasia. We already know that you have strong emotions of pain from other past lives, and that itself makes your energy stronger. When you finally free yourself from the love you felt for Paola that is now trapped inside you, you will be able to reason about your emotions, however, by not modifying the libido that has been installed in you because of the melancholic work, you can really become depressed. Mourning will communicate to you the loss of the object and will offer you life as a reward, then you will be able to live again without constantly relapsing into that melancholic state. However, in the same way, mourning can lead people to suicidal or self-destructive instincts. By not being able to remove your fixation on the object, it is very possible that you will attack yourself just to kill the melancholy. And that end has a notable influence in many cases of melancholy and pathological mourning. This is not your case at the moment – said the doctor seriously –, but you must accept that you are sick and if we do not work on the problem, it will get worse over time. You will fall into a melancholic state that you will adopt as a lifestyle, or you could even become self-destructive or want to end your life.
\- Suicidal instincts? – I shrugged my shoulders, still wishing to return to the regression to have Paola next to me. I looked up and looked at the resigned doctor – I love life, sometimes I get depressed like Bridget Jones but from an overdose of ice cream and Oreo cookies nobody dies.
\- Now we know that at least you do not have suicidal instincts – concluded the doctor. She curved her lips in a smile, without showing me her teeth. Then he picked up the glass jug on his wooden table and poured himself some water. He had talked a lot during my hypnosis sessions. He practically never stopped talking and asking me to describe everything to him while I had my eyes closed. I never told him that the woman I saw in that bar was Paola.
\- Of course not, my madness doesn't go that far - I said dryly.
Now we know that at least you don't have suicidal instincts - the doctor concluded. She curved her lips into a smile, without showing me her teeth. Then she picked up the glass jug that was on the wooden table and poured herself some water. She had talked a lot during my hypnosis sessions. She practically never stopped talking and asking me to describe everything to her while I had my eyes closed. I never told her that the woman I saw in that bar was Paola.
\- Of course not, my madness doesn't go that far - I said dryly.
\- You're not crazy Anastasia. You're just in a melancholic state and it's questionable to rule out any depressive symptoms, which fortunately you don't have. Now then... let's move on to the driving force of the conflict of not being able to be with Cristina sexually.
\- Oh, my God! Has Mel told you that? - I asked, shocked, covering my mouth.
\- Let me remind you Anastasia that Mel and I are friends, okay? She is also going through a problem of being in love with you and not being reciprocated as she yearns for it – She explained with a smile. Her eyes filled with a kind of mischievous sparkle. I remained silent while the doctor watched me with inquisitive eyes. Faced with my resistance to say something about the subject, the doctor continued speaking – Okay, currently, your sexual need is closely linked to your state of melancholy and you are repressing it because of those latent emotions. That is why you cry every time you are going to have sex. But we will work on that in the next session. – She told me firmly. But after what I saw that afternoon, I would not go to a session with her again. Having so much to work on mentally made me think that I could really lose control of my mind.
Thinking that Melisa had a problem immersed in a relationship with me filled me with regret. I did not want it to be like that, I was the one who tried to have the first sexual contacts with Melisa. However, I couldn't go any further. I wish I knew why I was moving away from her, why I desperately wanted to get away from her or stop kissing her before crying in her mouth. When I have sex, I never resign myself to thinking that I can only shine with beings of another race, shooting stars like Paola and me. My skin sparkled when I was with Melisa, she was having fun and didn't even notice my glow as something supernatural. However, I had created a new tense atmosphere between Melisa and me. Now that we were more confident, she wanted intimacy and I rejected her. Melisa wanted to possess me, for my glow to belong to her completely. I gave in to her but realized that I was bored, with every gesture, every orgasm and moan. So I decided to stop it before I had to get bored or worse, hurt her feelings. On the other hand, perhaps Melisa had sought guidance in psychotherapy to calm down. Maybe she suspected it was because of Paola, but without fully believing that she had not managed to forget her. I was sure I wouldn't go back to see Dr. Mercedes, but I couldn't blame Melisa for talking about our sex life with the doctor without facing the root of the problem: the pleasure she didn't awaken in me. A distant, forgotten, abandoned pleasure that couldn't emerge with synchronicity, with beauty or with anything that was below the lightness of the soul.
\- I don't think it's right to talk about my sex life - I said with an indifferent air - I don't like that - I murmured lowering my head. I put on my jeans jacket and moved my hair behind my shoulder. I blinked, pressing my lips together without looking at the doctor, with a stretched, indifferent expression, broken inside by feeling exposed before my psychoanalyst.
\- Melisa didn't share anything about you that I didn't already know. When you are so melancholic about the loss of the object, you enjoy a feeling of superiority over the object, that's why it's natural that you refuse to establish sexual contact with Cristina without breaking into tears or expressing that melancholy. You have to accept that state first to work directly on your subconscious. Where your emotions were founded, in order to be able to abandon them - She continued talking and ignoring what I had just told her, that made my blood boil. – When I talked about your case with Cristina, she told me that sometimes you write letters to Paola at night, and you suffer from insomnia. I think it is advisable that you distance yourself from Paola even through writing. Since she is an object that you have lost, ideally she is not dead. By distancing yourself from her I mean that you stop writing to Anastasia. If you continue writing to her you will keep her in mind with the hope that she will read you someday. It will be a painful separation and you will probably fall back into that state of mourning and melancholy if you ever see her again, or continue to remember her when writing.
\- I see…
\- It is essential that you distance yourself from her, and do not harbor any hope of seeing her again. You must stop writing to her, okay?
I remained silent.
\- Only in this way will you be able to have a balance in your mind, body and spirit. Every time she leaves you, you will fall back into a state of melancholy. I know it sounds harsh the way I'm talking to you, but…
\- It makes me feel like an obsessive, and a maniac. – I admitted – And I never thought I was an obsessive manic person until today.
\- You shouldn't feel that way. It's natural for you to be confused, and your symptoms don't present any obsessive trait in which you couldn't concentrate or carry out your daily activities because you spent all your energy on the loss of the object. You don't have an obsessive picture, much less a manic one, where we would already be talking about madness and psychosis. That's when we medicate patients. You simply have to work with the emotions anchored in your own person Anastasia, those emotions that don't correspond to anyone else but the lost object.
\- I'm going to prescribe you some sleeping pills, take them at nine o'clock every night. – she began to write the instructions on the medical pad.
\- Believe it or not, many people in this world suffer from melancholy. They just repress the feeling and don't seek help, you're not the first person I've tried to help. Saying her name out loud is not advisable. Melancholics think they're fine, they think they're poets or artists, then at the least unthinkable moments they take their own lives or their reason is completely clouded by their feeling of loss. That's when you see them make big mistakes like going back to a person who doesn't really make you happy, falling into alcohol, drugs, even accepting a new job that you don't like but helps you escape your melancholic state.
\- Yes, I understand. I love Melisa, really. – I admitted shrugging my shoulders – I'm not using her as an escape – I said looking up until I found the doctor's eyes fixed on me like a hawk.