Entre la tierra y el cielo/ Earthing and Faith

 

Yrene Yuhmi 2018

Últimamente no he podido

escribir ni dibujar tanto como solía.

No sé por qué, algo en mi mente se rompió,

y me sentía perdida y confusa.

¿Cuándo fue la primera vez

que sentí absoluta felicidad y plenitud?

Sin contar con la Infancia,

fue cuando luché por mi vida

tras la pesadilla del verano del 2001,

en el hospital Vall d’Hebrón.

Después de aquellos infinitos meses

de maltrato físico y psicológico,

pedí el alta voluntaria y

con 29 quilos de peso nos volvimos a casa…

Cuando pisé de nuevo la terraza

de pizarra de mi hogar, y sentí el sol

de Septiembre en mi gélido cuerpo,

aprecié una paz liberadora.

En ese punto comenzó un lucha

que no fue nada fácil,

pero cuando en Mayo del 2002,

comencé a ver resultados en mi cuerpo,

me di cuenta de que había sido mi fe

y una fuerza desconocida,

la que me había devuelto

la paz interior y la felicidad más simple.

Simplemente vivir! Era sólo eso, vivir.

Poder respirar, comer, beber,

moverme libremente por mi casa…

Caminar desnuda por el jardín,

totalmente desinhibida…

Tirarme en el suelo de tierra,

abrazarme a los algarrobos,

los olivos y la mimosa,

que en aquel tiempo crecía bella,

símbolo de mi recuperación…

Hasta hace poco no supe

que aquello que hice

tiene un nombre: «Earthing»

y realmente es curativo y efectivo

hasta puntos ilimitados.

Volví a repasar mi pasado,

aunque hacerlo siempre sea doloroso,

y así volví a verme a mí misma

en las dos fases:

sin libertad y con ella.

Y entonces, recordé lo que es vivir,

simplemente vivir,

y comencé de nuevo a escribir,

poco a poco, frases sencillas,

pensamientos, anotaciones…

Poco a poco, poco a poco,

sobre una base de sufrimiento,

se puede crear un presente de Paz y Seguridad.

Y la Felicidad ya está en nosotros.

Sólo que no la vemos.

Yrene Yuhmi 2019 noviembre 18

 

 

Lately I have not been able

to write or draw as much as I used to.

I don’t know why, something

in my mind broke, and I felt lost and confused.

When was the first time

I felt absolute happiness and fulfillment?

Not counting Childhood,

it was when I fought for my life

after the nightmare

of the summer of year 2001,

at the Vall d’Hebrón hospital.

After those endless months of

physical and psychological abuse,

I asked for the

voluntary discharge and,

Weighing only 63 lb we went back home …

When I stepped back on the

slate terrace of my home,

and felt the September sun

on my icy body, I felt a liberating peace.

At that point a fight began,

and was not easy, but when in May 2002,

I began to see results in my body,

I realized that it had been

my faith and an unknown force,

the one that had given me

inner peace and the simplest happiness.

Just live! It was just that simple: To Live.

To be able to breathe,

eat, drink, move freely

around my house …

Walking naked through the garden,

totally uninhibited …

Throwing myself on the dirt floor,

hugging carob trees,

olive trees and mimosa,

which at that time

was growing beautiful,

a symbol of my recovery …

Until recently I did not know

that what I did has a name: «Earthing»

And it really is healing

and effective to unlimited points.

I went over my past again,

although doing so is always painful,

and so I saw myself again

in the two phases:

without Freedom and with it.

And then, I remembered

what it is to live, just to live,

and I began to write,

little by little,

simple phrases, thoughts, notes …

Gradually, little by little,

on a basis of suffering,

a present of peace and security

can be created. Builded up.

And Happiness is

already within us.

But we just cannot see it.

Yrene Yuhmi 2019 November 18th

Otoños pensativos

Dibujado con el dedo

 

Pasan los minutos, las horas, los días…y todo sigue igual.
Cada día pienso, «hoy me he encontraré mejor» «hoy volveré a escribir…dibujaré como antes, ¡a cientos!»
Hoy seré la que era…

¡Qué estúpida!

Cómo cambiar un destino ya escrito…una enfermedad que nadie espera, que viene con los genes y que ocupa tu vida convirtiéndola en un desierto infinito.
Me levanto como si tuviera plomo en vez de sangre.
En el baño, me cepillo los cabellos, muy negros, algunos de los cuales caen en la pica del lavabo. Mientras, en el espejo me devuelve la mirada una mujer de edad indefinida, ojerosa, de piel marchita.
Todavía queda un poco del brillo de los sueños que tuvo en su niñez, y La Niña que reía y jugaba con energía, todavía se asoma tímidamente desde el fondo de las pupilas de color noche.

Es fácil lanzar al mundo maravillosas frases de autoayuda…a mí leerlas me pone de los nervios. Puede que esté siendo pesimista, pero es que ya lo hago todo, todos los días: sonreír, aunque llore por dentro; disfrutar de lo que tengo, con todas mis fuerzas, porque es un tesoro que no debo malgastar; aferrarme a lo positivo, para no dejarme vencer; apoyarme en la amistad, disfrutar de la familia, no dejarme vencer por la adversidad…en fin, si tenéis redes sociales, tendréis muchas frases, vídeos, imágenes…que os recuerden todo este batiburrillo de sabiduría popular y literaria que parece ser descubierto por primera vez gracias a Facebook y los memes.

Las ganas de vomitar no me dejan seguir mucho más…quiero dibujar, quiero escribir, quiero viajar…quiero obviar lo que no puede obviarse, lo que es parte de mi: está enfermedad de la que no tengo derecho a quejarme.

Mi brazo derecho no responde.

Será el esguince del cuello, el que me hice cuando iba a la universidad.
O la caída de cabello en el 2000…No lo saben los médicos, ¿lo voy a saber yo?
Ser positivo no es tan difícil: basta con sonreír y buscar cosas chiquitas que te gusten mucho, que te hagan sentirte viva.
Lo que vaya por dentro, enfermedad del alma o del cuerpo, eso se puede ocultar…menos a quien te cuida, claro…
Si no fuera por mi madre, ¿que sería de mí?
Me lo pregunto siempre, porque es mi mayor miedo el no tenerla a mi lado…no porque me cuide, si no porque ella es mi todo, la razón de mi existencia. Quien borra mi soledad.
No puedo más…
Mañana será otro día, si Dios quiere…

 
Y pasa otro día, y leyendo lo que escribí ayer, hasta me sonrío.
Hoy he tenido día pancreático: lo llamo así cuando tengo tantas nauseas que comer es un suplicio, y tengo que ir tanto al baño que tendría que instalarme completamente allí.

No vomito nunca, así que las nauseas son como un nudo de comida en la garganta y un mareo general muy difícil de explicar. Si supiera qué es una resaca, la compararía, pero solo me imagino que pueden ser síntomas parecidos por lo que he visto en las películas y las series de televisión.

Siempre lo pienso: no comprendo por qué la gente sana quiere ponerse enferma, cuando yo y tantos como yo, estando enfermos soñamos con vivir sanos.

¡Este mundo es una constante contradicción!
Las contradicciones son la base de la mente humana. Y quizás la parte que nos hace crear, que nos hace artistas, teniendo en cuenta que nuestras mentes también son pura contradicción.

No hay blancos y negros, ni siquiera colores. Hay mil tonalidades, luces, sabores, olores, texturas…y muchas veces se superponen.
Qué contrariedad de mundo, y de vida, pero que bello es la más de las veces, contrariar.
Yrene Yuhmi 2016 octubre, noches extrañas.

 

Filosofando: citas, frases, pensamientos

Desde niña que me pierdo en los pensamientos, en miles de ellos.

Quizás es porque me gusta la soledad, y con ella es como me puedo sentir libre, en paz, plena, sin miedos ni ataduras…

O tal vez la Soledad es una necesidad procedente de mi amor indestructible e imparable por pensar.

Y el pensar me lleva a escribir.

En el  pensar está la cama dónde nace y se alimenta el ave multicolor de la imaginación, y también en el pensar se mecen y juegan las musas que nos inspiran.

No hay humano que no piense. En una cosa u otra, pero piensa.

Mi querida maestra de EGB M.Tena D.E.P, siempre nos decía: «lo único que nadie os puede arrebatar, que nadie puede controlar, es el pensamiento»

Tanto Ella como sus enseñanzas, se me quedaron grabadas…No sólo enseñaba Lengua Catalana, también nos enseñaba (mocos@s con la cabeza llena de pájaros) sobre la Vida…

Gràcies M.Tena, de tot cor.

Os dejo algunas citas, no son gran cosa, simples reflexiones, pero que deseo compartir.

«El escritor sin lector es como un vacío sin su nada. Un absurdo»
«El amor que se alimenta
desde antes de tener uso de razón,
Es lo único que ni la distancia,
ni el tiempo, ni la separación física,
pueden destruir»

«Todo aquello que nos haga gritarle a alguien,
levantar las manos contra alguien,
demostrar el odio disfrazándolo de pacifismo,
es lo que demuestra
que nos falta mucho para ser humanos»

«Algunos humanos sanos creen
que los enfermos
somos una excepción,
Lo que no saben es que los enfermos
hemos sobrevivido y
ellos solamente han vivido»

«La familia es la base de la Educación,
Cuando educamos a nuestros hijos no sabemos
Que estamos educando al Mundo»

«La ley que nos hace más humanos
es la necesidad absoluta de proteger
a alguien»
«La humanidad tiene el poder de crear

y el de destruir en sus manos.

Puede destruir a partir de la decisión

de lograr algo bueno,

pero si destruye a partir del odio,

no crea más que nueva destrucción

y más odio»

Yrene Yuhmi (2011-2015)

Letters to Nowhere chapter 7 (Cartas a Ninguna parte, capítulo 7)

Since that confinement, I haven’t written a single line. It was a week but it seemed an eternity to me.   Just like if suddenly, that nightmare became real. Real and without time.
Now that I’m home I almost can’t believe it. I will never see a hospital in the same way. Not even the Life seems to me the same.
Four walls, a window showing a dark sky of February beginnings , and my drawing sketchbook.
The food was terrible and so the nights.
But surprisingly I don’t have a bad memory from those days. My Mother really supported me so much.
I realized that how much need of caring and love has a sick person.
Even now, being with my dears, I’m almost going to ask them for a hug, just like if  a simple and warm hug could get to end with all the suffering.
For any person, nowadays,  it can sound like a sissy silly thing what I’m trying to explain.
The old values don’t exist anymore, or they have metamorphosed into stupid masks of futility and superficiality.

Love that has a wide and incredible meanings, can not exists anymore.
The matter is that is one of the endangered species or it’s confused with just sex.
There is someone who feels touched and comforted giving Thanks during the christian liturgy? Maybe I must ask if there is someone between the catholic who goes to the Church for something more than false bless-faith (like some bigots)  or simple rutine.

If there’s someone who loves and respect their parents.
If there’s someone who doesn’t want to forget their roots.
If there’s someone who trusts their brothers protects them.
Someone who doesn’t feel the abhorrent need of broke a little orange tree planted in the street of our city.
Someone who doesn’t break the skull of a poor kid because of being different in color, culture or language.

The ones who left, who are quite a lot, go out and proclaim that you understand the LOVE! Don’t feel ashamed of being different, because on this dunghill where filth abounds sure can arise a green full of life outbreak. And so who can compare that large filth with the little outbreak?

My mother went out from the hospital room with Rosa María, to take breakfast, and I was left alone with Rosa, my dear room mate, mother of Rosa María.
Rosa was an adorable, young granny, with four daughters, every one of them were different but always getting along between them. They came from a place called Santa Coloma, on the north of Barcelona. My mother and I use to call them even now: «the roses of Santa Coloma».
They were a family to remember, bright, smiling, loving: just like a bouquet of kind, healthy flowers.

When I saw my Mother coming in with a big bouquet of red roses, I felt not worthy of that caring and I noticed the difference between the flowers cut off for the sick person, and the ones that anyone can enjoy on the Nature, without touching them.
Rosa María brought me a little dressed up basket of yellow daisies that I put on the windowsill.
«Thank you, thank you»…But it doesn’t fill this emptiness…
The first night I couldn’t sleep. I had to be face-up with the left arm as straight as possible, because the catheter annoyed me with any movement. All arm to the wrist hurt me, so because of the apprehension I left it still and rigid so it froze. I’m a disaster.
When the nurse came at 12:00, I commented it, told me to move it it at least a bit, so it will not cool and hurt that much.
My mother «slept» in a chair. The back of that chair reached only half her back. so because of it, to lean the head was impossible.
That new situation, strange one, with that damn blood tests, nausea, my extreme thinness…All was transformed into a impossible to digest ball that filled me with sadness.
I could stop my tears anymore. I felt sick, finished, both physically and morally. And every second I felt that the ball was becoming bigger and bigger.

It grew up more and more within my chest, and the spring of tears were crowding my eyes.

Finally arrived the time for the psychiatrist visit. He took everything out of myself, and of course he had to do a break to pass me some clínex – paper handkerchiefs-.
I remember we began for the very beginning.
_ I don’t know if they commented to you something…If you know about it…
I was expecting something new, surprising, unexpected…I don’t know.
_ …But, how was your pregnancy?
I was stunned.
_ What?
I suppose my expression was saying everything. If I don’t have even menstruation, to begin with…Maybe he had the wrong patient?

The doctor did understand right away and made me do so too: he was talking about my mother being pregnant of myself. So embarrassing!
But the truth is that after more than 2 years of docs and docs, the Mr or Mrs of the white coat and the Vademecum really scare me, and I expect anything from them.
The last time I went to the hairdressing salon – I hate them – They brought me a little coat without sleeves to wash up my hair, and I was putting my arms all straight, as if I was going to take a radiography and the nurse was waiting for me with that ridiculous coat with the back all open.

The good man (the doctor) asked me the formal, typical questions about anorexia nervosa. It’s said that it’s the disease that’s fashionable now. Just as if it has to be something you want to get.*
The persons who are affected with this disease are victims of a strategy of their own minds: they don’t need to be at fault, to be blamed. They need help. You see, nowadays, everybody wants to be thin at any cost. It’s obvious that every one of us must accept onself the way they are and try to be happy. But this is a too chewed topic here in my century. I imagine you don’t know it at all, Beatrix.

It became clear that, to resume everything, I needed an antidepressant.
And plus, it has to be free of lactose. This part was the most complicated.
Only a few tests were left. Once they were finished the doctors told that they will decide if I needed a biopsy or not. Because of their expressions and the way they were approaching the situation I saw that it wasn’t necessary.

That’s why I was so surprised when that day they told me that had decided to make the tests to discard a possible autoimmune hepatitis.
The liver tests always had shown little alterations since two years ago.
Right after they left, I apologized to Rosa and went to the toilet, and I cried again.
At that moments, my mother was I and I was my mother. Well, sometimes I think it has been always like that.　I’m so thankful I had her with me.

I must thank you «Mami«.

That night I accompanied her to the hallway, near the elevators, because she had to check in the cockpit in the lower floor if the card  was working. Being there, I insisted so she took something sweet to eat and a milk coffee at the vending machine.
I waited for her there. Beside the windows a middle age man with slippers and hospital coat, was waiting that hours pass and go, all alone. I saw him at mass of 18:00, touched by the words of comfort by reverend Fort.
We smiled each other and so needed of company he was, that began to talk with me.

He explained to me all they have done with him (he had big black stitches on his head, his chest, his tummy…) It made my hair stand on end.
He told me that a 20 years old young man had a biopsy of liver too, and being so very precise execution, they touch a vein and they had to made a liver surgery. He died.
It’s true that I was afraid, but it’s also true that  mentally I wasn’t ready for that damn test.
Neither to take decisions. But, even though, grabbing strongly my mother’s arm, my bestfriend’s arm, on that naked corridor, I decided with effort, to not have that biopsy, leave the semester and take my time to rest and recover. If this wasn’t going to work I would have the biopsy. And so I told to the doctors.

They let me that night to think about I and I really had a hard time. I wasn’t sure about what was the right thing and I felt literally «left alone from God hands», but that never happened to me.
The reverent Fort told me «I will pray for you».
Only Five words were needed to let me feel OK. I could sleep and when I woke up my Mother took my hand and kissed me.
_ What…- she asked to me.
_ I won’t do it.
I smiled because I felt with renewed strength that seemed to have been disappeared from my life.

When I stepped the streets again, and I felt the open space, the vestiges of sunshine sounded like a resurrection to me.
Of course the way in front of me, was not going to be easy.
But I had my family.
And that was my everything.

I have regained HOPE.

(year 1998-99, Saint John hospital, Tarragona)

* we are talking about the 90′ here!back then was the beginning of this terrible disease here in Spain. But there was not awareness at all.
Some of the (not psychiatrist) doctors that visited me mistook my Cystic Fibrosis with an anorexia nervosa. It was quite hard to deal, because I was treated like a disgusting convict.

After all, I had lots of medical proofs that tell I was not affected by anorexia nervosa, but it seems the bias remained quite a lot of time…

Originals in Spanish. Thanks for reading so much! Sorry for my bad English! (blush!!)