WHEN I LAUGH YOU WILL LISTEN TO MY LAUGHTER AND WHEN I CRY YOU WILL LISTEN TO MY CRYING

24.06.04


I was thinking of my confession the day before yesterday. All right, I am very satisfied now that I’ve admitted my selfish behaviour regarding everything that happens around the globe. I was impressed by the lightness with which I told you I was crying. When I thought about it again, the picture of a person came to my mind, a person who lives on a block of flats in Kypseli (as I used to, god bless me); this guy took his head out of the window that sees the skylight and decided to yell: ‘I’M CRYING, DAMNIT. DOES ANYONE HEAR ME?’.

I lived for many years on the 6th floor of a 10-floor (11 with the terrace) block of flats and I know very well how easily the whispers, the voices and the moans of those who live next to you, above or under your room, are spread. In that case, it might sound too much to speak of a community but it would be interesting to observe the ways with which anything collective mixes with anything personal and vice versa. From one point of view, even being exposed like that happens only with people’s consent. If they didn’t want to be heard, they would speak more slowly. If they didn’t want to be visible, they would pull their curtains. Likewise, if I didn’t want my feelings to be publicized, I would write to you only what’s necessary. This seems to be impossible for now. The strange thing is that I was being less honest than I am now when I was writing my personal diary in a notebook. It was easy for me to cheat myself, keeping everything that I wanted to ignore very well hidden. As for disability, no comment. This word isn’t written at all in my little notebook.

Your presence (even if virtual) makes me commit to confessing, yet without repressing me. It is impossible for me to tell you even a little lie or present things not the way they truly are. This doesn’t mean that I have to divulge everything, I just tell the truth when I decide to speak. Some people told me that what I write is too personal and doesn’t raise people’s interest. I’m sure that if they read my texts more carefully, they would find many similarities with their life. What on earth, I come from the same planet as well. We all live in the same world.
It’s natural not to give the same importance to their daily life. Those who let simple things pass by are those who never wrote a diary. I am often asked how I can remember my life in so many details. I live my life, I don’t just record it; this is why I remember. Furthermore, I am not afraid of memories. Sometimes one must have the guts to dig in your soul and bring things out. Let alone telling those things.

As I’ve told you, I always got the impression that everything I’ve lived is really worth of mentioning. If you ask me, this is a ‘virus’ that you can contract very easily when, especially because of the disability, you are used to the idea that everybody will have to do with you, even if this means that people will be looking at you on the street strangely. The only way to survive under those gazes of passers-by is to think of them as signs of attention that might help you when you need some reassurance. The same happens when your mother’s friends congratulate you because they happened to hear you play, some way or another, a tune on your guitar, or because they saw you speak on television or because they learned that you are attending postgraduate courses. It is then right to try not to take anyone seriously. Distinguishing someone even with positive attributes is still a kind of discrimination and the only way not to feel inferior when you undergo that is to suddenly get too big for your boots, knowing though that this is nothing more than a game to feel well.

You might assume that what I tell you is just a pile of simple words that try to justify my narcissist behaviour without success. Maybe it’s true. Nonetheless, I’m not used to blaming disability for all the bad things in my life. No matter what, the consequences of my decision to expose myself are rather positive. Being exposed like that would be truly unbearable for me if I hadn’t participated in the shows of the theatrical group of our municipality some years ago. The people who came to our performance were many (around 1,200 people). This experience taught me a lot, especially the way to keep focused on what I do without breaking myself into a thousand pieces amidst applause and whispers.