The sanity.

Published in Alas de Albatros on July 5th 2007.
Translated by the author himself.

To the last abencerraje.

—Am I crazy, then?

—I believe that you have done already your own diagnosis.

—I do not do anything, I just would like to know if I am crazy or not, if I have the head screwed on or I am mad.

—You’re not ill, if that’s what you mean.

—I see, but neither sane, isn’t it?

—According to your definition of sanity, you are not, of course.

—So, I am insane.

—If you want to see it thus. But at no moment I have said that.

—Well, and what I am supposed to do?

—What are you talking about?

—You’ll say then, if I am nut as a hatter, they are not going to let me go that way, bothering to people or climbing the roofs, I guess.

—I already said to you short while ago that you are clinically in possession of your faculties.

—But, haven’t you said just a moment before that I am not sane?

—No, I said that you yourself reject it, according to your definition of sanity.

—Oh, sure, pretty way to slip off.

—Excuse me, but that is not the subject, here we come to talk about your case, and you insist on which this supposed sanity seems miserable, bourgeois and coward to you, according to your own words not long before.

—It’s funny, you’re playing dumb now.

—I am remembering your own incongruence to you, and trying to approach the subject with practical sense, that’s all.

—So that’s indeed what I want, to be pragmatic, to get straight to the point, and to know what the hell should I do.

—You can do a perfectly normal life.

—A «sane» life, do you mean?

—If you want to see it thus, that is exactly, if you are able to do it.

—Do you insinuate that I can’t? I must be for locking, then.

—I do not insinuate anything, I only indicate that, considering your conception of what sanity and madness are, you could do well to trying to assume the real thing just the way it is.

—Now I don’t know how to distinguish the reality.

—At least you reject it.

—That is, in addition to crazy, I am also an immature.

—Neither the one nor the other, but you take refuge in your own world, your letters and Utopia, and for that reason the real world, the one outside there, seems absurd and anodyne to you, boring, foreseeable, or too prudent, too sane, as you say.

—Something must be done with me, then, you know, weird people are locked in.

—I believe that you are talking to me about former times, you’re very confused. Now everything is different, more scientific and human.

—More prudent, more sane, sure, of course, everything politically correct and quite well planned.

—What do you want then, to rush yourself to the wind mills like the Quijote? You will get nowhere that way, just more damage shall come.

—But I will feel much better on the charge.

—How do you say?

—That the world is too full of Sanchos.

—Why don’t you try to make my work a little easier and allow me to help you?

—Because I am dotty, don’t you know? I always want to look beyond first face of things, to arrive where other people don’t even poke their nose, to devote myself to an ideal enthusiastically, to leave everything behind, to be faithful to my instincts.

—If you’re so self-satisfied, then I do not understand what do you do in this consulting room, let me tell you.

—Satisfied? Absolutely not, disappointed it’s what I am. And the only thing that I do here is to try to know if I’m really crazy or is the world the one that has lost the head.

—The world is the one it is, gentleman, and I don’t deny that sometimes it seems deranged, but you will continue seeing it always that way while you don’t assume that will and desire have their limits, and there are things that, simply, cannot be. You must concentrate yourself on small challenges, day by day, being a little more pragmatic.

—To resign, you mean.

—Not necessarily, but to mark a sustainable objective to yourself.

—To conform to, come on.

—If you want to reduce it to that, yes, at least you will stop feeling like that.

—Like that how?

—Desperate.

—What could you know what desperation is about.

—I work with it every day.

—But it doesn’t look like that, it’s as if a miner left the coal bunker with his hands unpolluted. You know about all those things from a distant spot, seems to me.

—I have been twenty years treating patients like you.

—Then I’m sure you earned a good benefit, but, about me, this consultation is being completely useless.

—I’m very sorry that you think thus.

—You’ll tell me, I’m the same way as the beginning, lost.

—I believe that, somehow, you are comfortable in that deviation. For that reason it’s more difficult to treat you.

—To treat my madness.

—To treat your case, nothing else. Don’t go ahead.

—So, you’re hefting the possibility that I am mad.

—I am studying your history.

—Don’t dive in it completely then or you’re going to stain, we never know.

—What do you say?

—That I could infect to you.

—Mental diseases are not contagious.

—Do you see it?

—What?

—Already said here, I am like a fucking hatter.

—But...

—Thank you very much, doctor. Have a nice day.