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Hi Dad, a friend of mine jumped off the highway overpass, it’s serious. Resistant to everything, this message from my son shattered me. I don’t know his friend but perhaps I know the state of mind that led him to such an extreme gesture. It’s the state of mind of someone misunderstood, perhaps too sensitive for this world, for his world, for those around him. Often bringing out what you have inside is difficult. Not so much because it’s heavy or tiring to do so but because no one can understand you. And I know it. I know that being “delicate” in certain things is seen as weak, as effeminate, as inadequate. But pretending nothing is wrong doesn’t stop the pain inside.

It reminds me a bit of the image of someone I know who worked in an environment of “real tough guys.” Dockworkers (not figurative, real). But this person is homosexual… and up to here… and has the typical effeminate ways of someone who approaches the feminine world more than the macho world due to a delicacy of spirit (the missing “s” is a poetic license I take to identify the macho male world). Essentially, this happened… he was always very careful to hide his true self (we’re talking about the 90s when there wasn’t the openness to the whole world of today) trying to have a more baritone than soprano voice, to intersperse rough and strong words, crude compliments to the fairer sex… but… one day a sack fell on his foot and instead of coming out with a string of curses as only that category can do, he let out a shrill squeal like a girl… and that’s when the stage fell. You can try to disguise yourself but your nature doesn’t change.

So if the people around you don’t understand your fragilities… even stupid ones for heaven’s sake, but yours and painful, they will continue, even unintentionally, to hurt you. An anemone retracts as soon as you touch it. Because it’s its nature, even if you just want to caress it, for it, it’s pain. STOP. But people used to pats on the back as if they were the piercing hammer of Great Mazinger don’t think about these things. They don’t exist. And even if you try to make them understand… they don’t get it because in their world that kind of situation doesn’t exist, they don’t have the neurons to process it… “what’s the big deal”… Well… damn… it’s a tragedy… Which can then materialise depending on the people. I would have liked to repay in kind those who “hurt” me even if for them it wasn’t. In the past, I even tried but the result was even worse. I came across as a “madman” with exaggerated reactions over nothing.