All of this hustle… only to avoid looking into our mortality and things we cannot control and probably never will.

I know, I know… that sentence might be triggering to some and relieving to others.

Our current state of affairs for various reasons that I won’t get into now, is such that we have achieved an immense level of progression as species that we are deluding ourselves into thinking everything has a solution and an answer… you just haven’t found the right one yet!

Maybe look closer into your childhood wounds, maybe do more somatic work, maybe embrace your “villain era”, maybe you have ADHD, maybe it’s generational trauma, maybe you need to change countries, maybe start a pilates class, maybe join a running club, maybe start intermittent fasting, maybe it’s Trump or Netanyahu, maybe you need to invest in crypto, perhaps adopt a dog? (always a good idea btw).

How many times have we done everything right even by the book? And that didn’t prevent things from falling apart.

My friend for instance became an expert in avoidant attachment style, he read the books, listened to all the youtube channels by coaches and experts, read the bible of attachment: “Attached” (which I had to buy to see if it’s worth it - coming from the field of Psychology) his conclusion? He did everything right and still his ‘secure base’ couldn’t be transferred to this avoidant man, his superb communication, his patience, his non triggering style, nothing in the end saved him from the imminent heartbreak of the avoidant discard followed by the famous magical words: “I don’t know what I want now, it’s not you is me” crap… only for the same man to start dating someone within a month and start traveling together. Pathetic really.

Was my friend not being able to attract well? Was he not secure enough? Was he not in his “best era” to attract the man and this one is a mirror showing him how much work he still has left to do with himself? Is it something he still needs to master so that he finds the man for him at last? What was he avoiding in himself that he attracted this avoidant? Was it a planet in his fourth house saying this was his karma?

We see where this is going right?

If one hasn’t found the solution, the answer is: try more. How shameful is this? Makes one think what Am I not doing right? Are my manifestation skills absolute crap? Is everyone aware of some hidden formula that I am not? Is the Universe some evil self-selecting entity with a magic wand on it’s hand cherry picking favourite ones? Am I casted out of paradise and forgotten here left to deal with avoidant men in perpetuity????? Aaaaaaaaaaa. Kill me now. Be done with it.

At this point the mental health advice and the strategies that come with it of the likes of “heal more” are starting to sound almost insulting. We have created sophisticated ways to avoid looking into something soo obvious which is: we are not in control, we never were.

Let’s rewind a bit. Let’s flip my friend’s story. After going through the horrendous dating experiences in the gay community, if my friend ended up with a non - avoidant man but a “secure” one, the story would totally different. He would hear: ohhh finally! He deserved it, Universe makes you go through hardships because there will be a reward. It was meant to be like that. Everything led him to this moment. All the growth he did now it pays off. He has done a great job at attracting a husband!

We are soo good with narrativizing our stories based on what serves us and what we want to believe, it’s almost infuriating.

The success stories are particularly preferable narratives, and for the rest? Hmmm just do it better next time. Check if you are operating from some limiting beliefs. Check for scarcity mindset! people pleasing tendencies! The shame that comes with it only those who are not chosen by the Universe’s magical wand know.

This tendency to think that we somehow can change the course of events, that we with our manifesting powers can alter the fabric of existence has been ancient, we do that constantly, as babies if we thought hard enough about unicorns, we were almost sure we will spot one, just as none notices we will notice it! and it will notice us!

Since there is no equal distribution of luck, sometimes goodness follows us and we delude ourselves into thinking we possess some sort of omnipotence. I remember when I was in elementary school and even later in high school, anytime I skipped school it just soo happened that the teacher was absent that day or that somehow classes were canceled, and I said to myself you see? My intuition is superb, I felt that I didn’t have to wake up at 7 am and hit the road, I knew it, I am in alignment with the highest power there is :))

And some other times as well, I would think of great opportunities, travels or people and somehow not long after I would be in the exact places, and situations as I had visualized and dreamt about. Again, further proof that I am part of the exclusive club of highly intuitive and fortunate ones! I did not even need the protestant church to indoctrinate me with this mindset, I apparently had fantastic manifestation skills! until I didn’t! and sickness struck, betrayal right left and centre, near death experience and so on.

But, myself aside let’s look at some more interesting people :)

Queen of manifestations as everyone now-days is calling my home town girl: Dua Lipa on how she closed the training season to manifest her now husband Callum Turner is a prime example of this idealism. And as awe striking as it is, it’s a bit envious isn’t it? Like, what formula is she using? And before we finish that thought we are like, oh come one, it makes sense, she is Dua Lipa - a super star, a world star, she is gorgeous and rich, of course she is part of the exclusive club of Universes favorites! Of course… why are we even talking about this… *eye roll*

But, wait a minute… once upon a time Emilia Clarke entered the HBO studios for an audition for playing Daenerys Targaryen in Game of Thrones series, it took directors only 5 minutes to decide amongst hundreds of auditions that they had found the right actress to bring Daenerys Targaryen - the mother of dragons into life. Stars were aligning for Emilia Clarke, there is no other way to explain it. Manifestation exquisite. All her unpaid hard work in theaters around England paid off! She became the most recognizable face world wide as Game of Thrones aired, at just 23 she was famous, young and rich - she made it!

With one minor detail… at the peak of her fame as she was shooting season 3 of Game of Thrones her brain shuts down, she experiences severe brain aneurysm, not once but three times! Her skull wide opened as surgeons try to save her life, sorrounded by the spotlight of the emergency unit and not the red carpet. Suddenly, none knows if she will survive let alone be healthy again to have a memory as to remember her lines. Fate and Universe left the room for Emilia Clarke. Universe withdrew its subscription for the mother of dragons.

Another example is Angelina Jolie, another superb superstar, the lips that had the world on a choke hold, the lips that were the blue print for the entire lip injection industry. But this is only a fraction of her greatness, she was at the peak of her fame, with a gorgeous looking husband (which turned out later not so gorgeous), with heathy children of her own and adopted, with great humanitarian work under her belt and then… breast cancer.

I can go on and on, but I hope where I am going at is clear.

We think that we are somehow chosen when life for periods of time rewards us, our manifestation skills are working! we have earned a privileged spot in the Universe’s special club. The luck is on our side, for some more, for some less. We experience confidence a sense of escaping the existential battle that we are all in, our mortality is suspended for a while. Somehow we could get into the Titanic’s saving boats, only us and a few chosen ones because us is special!

And once life shows us we are not that special and whatever luck or fate we possessed was totally random, that we are all at the mercy of forces larger than us, something in us changes. We become more humble and more humane. Less cocky and more at peace with our true mortal limited nature. More capable of holding mortal others.

Because imagine saying to a young girl in Gaza right now - you just have to manifest a different reality for you right now! Universe is expansive you can ask whatever you want! You just have to be in the right frequency!

This is the message we are giving to people let that be those who suffer under cruel systems of power, or those who put the best foot forward, do the work and still encounter irresponsible a.k.a “avoidant” people. One cannot manifest her way out of genocide, she only can try to survive somehow, and the other cannot really control what kind of people show up in his life, as the first dates and even the first months never fully reveal people, one can only leave as they become aware.

Funny enough again… one might ask, whats the solution?

I do not have that magical solution, but I do know that our pompous position as knowers and allies of a random Universe, might be incomplete. How pretentious of us to think we have reached some mastery over our human nature when people and philosophers smarter than us have been dedicating their lives into solving what this human business is about? And all they have reached is a point where: as precious as life is, it is also suffering. The same battles that we as human animals suffer today the same ones have been there for centuries: loss, sickness, heartbreak, injustice, unfairness, evilness, death.

We progressed greatly, but our human nature has remained the same. Our mortality has remained the same. There is solace in knowing that we are not alone in the vast random Universe which often throws a bone and often turns us into bones. Perhaps there is lots of wisdom to learn if we go back and see those who suffered like us how did they do it? the rituals and chants they used when loss and grief struck them, not to copy them but to remain with our humanity, to discover more, instead of trying to bypass an abstract random entity by “aligning more” and leaving everyone ashamed when they can’t get it right!

The same applies to the crushing, cruel, corrupt systems of power which can blow up an entire city with one button and turn everything to ashes, and no amount of our willpower can change that.

Allora, now that I have made that clear we can proceed.

Having conducted an autonomous anthropological “study” of my own, by observing the women in my life get “fumbled” and drawing from some personal examples that hit too close to home, the patterns that emerged were remarkably consistent. In order not to treat my own observations as full truths, I had to see what Foucault, Psychoanalysts and of course the Feminist thinkers had to say on this matter.

To begin with, what is epistemic authority?

By epistemic authority, I do not mean expertise or being right. I mean a person's lived authority over the meaning of their own experience.

Someone who has epistemic authority is someone who has cultivated and nourished a relationship with themselves. Someone who has remained in contact with themselves, with the bad, the ugly, and the good parts of them.

An epistemic equal is someone who affords the other the same inner authority about themselves, without wanting to control, dominate, diminish, rescue or idealize.

Why is the epistemically equal woman a fearsome thing to behold?

To begin answering this question we need to go back a bit.

Historically speaking, the process of socialization between females and males has produced social scripts which we carry to this day. The script for many women is to be relational, nurturing, soft, feminine, understanding, sacrificing and so on. The opposite of these qualities is dedicated to the male script; go getter, dominant, stoic, strong, capable, wise, intelligent, authoritative. In our mainstream culture and even civilizations, God itself - the epitome of authority - is seen in the image of man.

In that sense, most of us have an internalized image of authority in the shape of a man.

Judith Butler argues that gender is not simply something we are, but something we repeatedly perform according to social norms. This means that men know what to do with the gender script as do women. It’s an unconscious way of conducting affairs between genders.

This script even though is being questioned today, is still very much alive and thriving. This script still fundamentally determines who gets access to power. Who leads politically, who owns land and property, who has the final say in the important matters. THE important matters.

Women hold only 27.2% of seats in national parliaments worldwide. Only 25 countries have a woman serving as head of state or head of government. Only 10–11% of CEOs are women, meaning nearly 90% are men. World data indicate that in many countries most women do not own land independently, and those who do is often below 20%. Another review across 35 countries found that over 70% of women do not own any land.

Reading these statistics is like reading minority statistics but women make up HALF OF THE WORLD’S POPULATION!!!

That song that goes like: “All day, everyday, therapist, mother, maid, nymph then a virgin, nurse then a servant…” is playing in my head loudly as I write these statistics.

If gender scripts continue to organize politics, business, religion, and property, why would intimate relationships be mysteriously untouched by the same scripts? Public power does not stop at the front door. It accompanies us into our private life and in our bedrooms.

According to the gender script many men know their footing with women. Many know how to respond to the trope of the “crazy” woman, the “nagging” wife, the “too emotional” partner. They also understand the long-standing bargain between female beauty and male status - a bargain sustained not only by men but often by women themselves. Reminds me of that line in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice when the mother speaks of Jane who was to be married off to the wealthy guy Mr. Bingley, where she says: “I knew she wasn’t pretty for nothing”.

Rosamund Pike as Jane Bennet in Pride & Prejudice movie (2005)

The script has its conditions of course! You should be pretty but not too much! you should be successful but not too successful! otherwise you threaten the men! as Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche said. Asymmetrical power is part of the acceptable script. A “baddie” that validates the script is not a “threatening” subject. It is a favourable subject.

Since many men know their footing in this script with the woman that centers them with the “domesticated” woman that doesn’t challenge the script rather, submits to it willingly, with the “sexually liberated” woman whom they often diminish publically but secretly want, with the attractive woman that they want to possess… what if one rejects all of these categories created by a system that largely oppressed women?

What if one grows out of the idea of succumbing to the power of men? In a similar way Jane’s sister - Lizzie rejects the authority of Mr. Darcy who sees her as beneath him.

The first failed marriage proposal of Mr. Darcy vs the second one
(Pride and Prejudice, 2005)

What about a woman who is pretty, and successful, and powerful, and doesn’t care about threatening the man? What about a woman who refuses marriage and child-rearing as her sole purpose in life and chooses something else? What about women who own their desires and especially sexual ones? What about a woman who can be celibate for years and sexual if she chooses to? What about a woman who wants it all? the freedom, the meaning she makes herself, the power and the submission she dictates herself?

It is my observation that this kind of woman shows up as a glitch, as violating the script. The assignment mark for men with her is often: fumbled.

What makes her “fumble” material?

Perhaps it’s because she possesses something which patriarchy and the gender script has a harder time penetrating: the epistemic part.

Which looks like this:

Inner self: I know what I value, what I fear, and what gives my life meaning.
Boundaries: I am the authority on what feels safe, respectful, or violating to me.
Emotions: I inhabit my emotional world and treat it as my own. Others may interpret my emotions, but they cannot overrule my experience of them.
Desire & sexuality: I have authority over my own wants, attractions, and consent. I define my own sexual being.
Psychology: My memories, intentions, motivations, and sense of identity belong first to me.

I hope it’s clear by now that this has nothing to do with who is participating in house chores, who is splitting the bills, who is taking who’s surname, and who’s staying in with the kids. It is a domain much more hidden in relationships, often not seen from the outside and frankly, often not from the inside.

A couple can appear to be very egalitarian and far from conservative from the external signaling they emit, and very traditional in their inner dynamics.

So what makes the relationship with her soo different?

Many people have compatibility or familiarity because they are born in the same city, they speak the same language, they have the same career, the same friends, the same travel pins… but epistemic equality asks a different question:

“Who is treated as an authority when it comes to my psychological territory”?

This territory consists of our intuitions, emotions, values, identity, desires, and boundaries. As intimacy deepens, many people gradually lose sight of it. They begin to melt into one another until one person’s interpretation quietly outweighs the other’s.

The epistemic equal woman invites someone in her territory but she never allows the other to colonise it, not even out of love and sometimes the most insidious form of colonisation is the one that feels like love.
^{* I am not talking here about people who love surrender and submission and choose it consciously}

How does subjective colonisation look like in day to day?

Imagine a woman saying: “You are ignoring me constantly”.
The man says: “You are exaggerating, I am just too busy”

Another woman says: “I don’t think I want children.”
Her partner replies: “You’ll change your mind later.”

Another woman says: “That joke embarrassed me.”
He says: “You’re taking it the wrong way… a bit sensitive?”

Another woman says: “I don’t feel emotionally safe.”
He responds: “You always overthink things.”

I doubt that there is a woman in the world who hasn’t experienced this form of gaslighting in one way or another at some point in their lives. This move suggests that the man claims: “I know your mind better than you do” or “My interpretation has more authority because I said so” even if they never consciously realize it as such.

Now, let’s look into what happens when someone owns their psychological territory:

Woman says: “Thank you for trying to help, but I think I got it”

A man says: “I don’t want to hurt you, that’s why I couldn’t tell you”
The woman says: “I can handle it, do not assume to protect me and give yourself a nice explanation for your lack of courage, I can stay with painful emotions”.

Another man says: “Did you enjoy it”?
Woman responds: “Some parts, yes. But, I think I needed something different tonight”.

A woman cries over someone she lost, the man tries to distract her to eliminate the pain and finally she says: “Can you stop trying to make me feel better? sometimes I need you to let me feel exactly what I’am feeling”.

A man says: “I just want you to see yourself the way I see you”
She responds: “I love that, but I don’t want to lose the way I see myself”.

Now, for a man who has been trained by the script to be the helper and the “brains” when a woman doesn’t need his help, it disorients him. If men are used to be rescuers, to soothe emotionally distressed people around them, when one rejects rescuing, they may feel awkward and weird as they lose their footing.

If the script on the other hand, has taught men to be the providers, not only financially but providers of pleasure and a woman happens to know her body, her pleasure points, embraces those and has developed a language for those? Suddenly the role of the knower and provider feels shaky.

The script has also taught men to be the rational ones - who find solutions, but when a woman owns her painful emotions the role of the eliminator of pain is suddenly lost. And if a man is conditioned to confuse love with defining and interpreting someone’s world, a woman that resists interpretation may leave him with a feeling of exposure, uncomfortable one.

None of these women refuses care, influence, or perspective. They refuse to surrender authorship of their interiority. They aren’t “threatening” in this ordinary sense, they simply remove the roles assigned from the script. And this is precisely why the question is not merely psychological, it’s about power - as Foucault argued, power and knowledge are inseparable. Those with greater social power often shape what is accepted as ‘true’ or ‘authoritative’.

And power is one thing lovers tend to shy away from, it somehow ‘spoils’ the love story, it messes up with the fantasy of love, just as some married couples avoid prenups, and then often face the harsh reality of a nasty divorce.

On the other front, feminist philosophers like Lorraine Code and Sandra Harding have consistently observed that who is recognized as ‘the knower’ is shaped by social power. Historically women have had their:

• Intuition questioned

• Perceptions dismissed

• Boundaries negotiated away

• Emotional knowledge minimized

• Accounts of events doubted

This kind of epistemic undermining doesn’t come with a loud bang; it begins, as in every Disney story: with love, care, competence, or admiration.

This is why people say “I have lost myself in my last relationship”. They are not talking about sacrificing hobbies, friends or geographical locations. They lost their epistemic authority.

For women it has historically looked like this:

Doubting one’s own intuitions, feeling unable to identify personal desires without consulting the partner, confusing agreement with intimacy, gradually forgetting where one’s own boundaries originated.

Many cultures have described these power imbalances coming from the gender script in a positive way; through Yin and Yang, or the Feminine and the Masculine, as if one completes the other. There is truth to these metaphors, but they become limiting when they reduce the feminine to softness and the masculine to authority.

Femininity is not only tenderness but one of humanity’s rawest powers. One only has to look at a woman giving birth or at the females in the wild protecting their young. The feminine has the courage to remain present before pain without abandoning itself.

The same is true of the masculine. The strongest men do not weaponize authority or flee from difficult emotions. The man who truly loves himself cannot stomach being deceitful, incoherent and distrustful. One who’s word none can trust, not even he himself. He cannot self-delude. He hears the sound of the sirens, however painful, without fleeing.

Sirens scene from the “Odyssey” movie by Christopher Nolan (2026)

Women have been also placed in what our high priestess Simone De Beauvoir named as the “Other” - historically women have been defined in relation to men rather than as fully autonomous subjects. If a woman is financially independent, intellectually accomplished, sexually autonomous, and professionally successful, she resists the “otherness.”

I once met a dude with whom I was discussing the topic of pregnancy and motherhood, where I was not rejecting the idea of motherhood rather rejecting the idea of one-sided sacrifice which historically befell on women. The woman/mother sacrifices her body and her life (intellectual pursuits, career, meaning etc) for motherhood whereas, the man is not expected to give up any of those privileges.

This dude responded with: “You are smart, not many women think like this, they just accept it”…. I wasn’t flattered, not at all. What struck me was not the compliment but the surprise behind it. He wasn't questioning the bargain; he was surprised someone had named it. It was as if I had scored a point on the gender-script chessboard, uncovering something that wasn't supposed to be spoken aloud. When he said, "They just accept it," there was no sadness or discomfort in his voice. He did not object to the imbalance itself, he merely acknowledged my ability to recognize it.

How are both genders experiencing this predicament?

As many feminist authors observed, women are conditioned to be relational. These are valuable capacities. But if they become the primary mode of identity, a woman may begin to organise herself around the relationship rather than around her own subjectivity. Her identity becomes relational before it remains personal.

But this asymmetrical system does not protect men either. As Esther Perel observes, masculinity is a weak identity as it must be continually proven. The insult “be a man” doesn’t have an equivalent of “be a woman” in any language. If a man’s sense of self is organized around being the protector, provider, rescuer, or rational one, his identity becomes dependent upon occupying the position of authority.

He no longer simply helps; he must become the one who knows. In losing the freedom to be vulnerable, he too loses himself - only not into dependence, but into authority. This leaves us with two distorted identities. You could almost think of them as mirror images:

The self that disappears into the other, marries the self that becomes responsible for the other’s reality. Neither is fully free.

But, perhaps that’s what marriage is for? - Indeed not for the epistemic woman.

Now, since men in general occupy a position of authority as said before, their identity as a sole authority holder clashes when it comes in close contact with the epistemically equal woman.

It is my suspicion here that the epistemic woman only becomes “threatening” to the men who haven’t cleared out with themselves what I would call: internalized patriarchal footprint.

Safe to say that once again, what makes this woman “fumble” material is her ability to grow beyond social scripts and inhabit her mind, body and psyche as her own, and not Simone De Beauvoir’s “other”.

For some men, the epistemically equal woman is a breath of fresh air since in her he recognizes a healthier way of relating both for himself and her. He sees beauty in inhabiting more roles and identities instead of just one. He expands his emotional repertoire by asking more and concluding less. Instead of “you are exaggerating”, he says: tell me more, I am curious to hear you. He sees an opportunity at conducting life with her outside of the rigidity provided by hegemonic gender roles rooted in inequality, power imbalance, sexism and gender performativity. He sees an opportunity to ‘dance’ with her, literally and metaphorically. Exchanging steps, often holding, often being held, resting and continuing again, holding tight and releasing, offering and taking, brushing against and brushing away, closeness and separateness.

All in all, it is my belief that these will be the men of the future, the dancers.

Henri Matisse, Dance (1909-1910)

To set the mood for dancers in audio as well, here is a song by a musician who is known as: “If Matisse made house music”
Berlioz, Ted Jasper: “Miro”

Without the dragons that’s the monologue of the exiled daughter.

Having to earn every inch of ground, the exiled daughter did not have the privilege of having psychological shields and buffers. A childhood made of ashes makes one dream of a better one, one of cotton feathers, but life rarely works that way.

The exiled daughter is the daughter of a peasant who couldn’t teach her reading or writing nor foreign languages, peasant he may have been but a man of word and honour like no other. He once told her “Do not let anyone offend your intelligence”, the un-scholarly man was wise. The advice was taken to heart but none prepared the exiled daughter for the harsh reality of never rejoicing in the aftermath of succeeding in not taking any offences to her intelligence. There was no glory in that, no triumph, but pain.

The exiled daughter is mistaken for someone who comes from cultural capital, from a lineage of academics, a cosmopolitan upbringing - this couldn’t be further from the truth. The exiled daughter built everything brick by brick, the books that were never read or gifted to her, the curiosity that was never modeled, the degrees that were never seen hanging in the walls, the languages that were never spoken, the foreign trips that never happened, the ideas that none dared to speak aloud, she did.

What did that make her? A defiant, an alien amongst peers, uprooted, an enemy of the structures entrenched in society: patriarchy and misogyny.

The exiled daughter never took ‘no’ for an answer, if there was an honourable way of doing things, she would find a way and do it, not because of virtuosity but because cowardice is not worthy of praise in her constitution.

“Oh you have never been to France” - I will she answered, “You haven’t seen the cool dad’s of Copenhagen” - I will, Sir.

Why the exile?

When there is nothing to gain and learn, one migrates to see how strong the wings are, like a bird, a butterfly or a dragon. But, without scaffolding and riches, one never knows where to land, thats Odyssey journey. No fancy ship, no titles, no mercenaries and institutions protecting your back, home is far away burnt and destroyed and nothing feels like home anyways.

One has to convince people every time for every inch one occupies, communities, belonging, all have prices for the exiled daughter. No door opens itself by default.

The exiled daughter takes the road to cross the mountain, water is running out, sun is nasty hot, exhaustion is real, she reaches the mountain finally, only to see the other landing there via private helicopter. It’s life’s way raising the middle finger at her. It has always been like this, she knows this because she reads, and if one reads enough, one sees the amount of pain people had to endure since the dawn of times. Nothing is unique to her, but her own sweat its salt she tastes.

She must keep going, home is nowhere to be seen and the view is foggy, no guaranteed bridges, ahh okay she must build one herself! How so? when the ground underneath her constantly shakes, without the promised childhood, stronger passport, an inheritance, a place to fall to - this is a battle. A very unglamorous one, one no one wishes upon their child. Neither would the exiled daughter, but she figures this is the human condition or better say: man made catastrophies that led her to this pilgrimage.

For the exiled daughter, exile is in fact a pilgrimage, never knowing what destination is uncovering in front of her. Privilege affords you a straight safe path and a map! which she doesn’t have. She never had.

Odysseus spent 25 years in exile, so far she is counting round almost 10. A decade. Home is still nowhere to be seen.

The fascination with Odysseus, Achilles, Jesus, Antigone, Socrates, Ivan Karamazov, Jon Snow, Jane Eyre, Viktor Frankl and the list goes on.

Is the hero story an antidote against human fragility? An idealized one at that?
What’s so sine qua non about the hero? Why is our entire human ethos centered around the hero? Why does this idealization fall short in real life? Admiration that rarely materializes? Why do people seem to prefer heroes in theory only? Are they heroes precisely because humans at large fall short into being heroes hence the special category of a ‘hero’ exists to begin with, like that of an olympic champion?

These are the questions keeping me up at night, so it’s the fate of the reader to grapple with me.

When thinking of heroes the ultimate saviour hero for many is the imaginary God irrespective of religion, for kids are the parents. It seems like none can live without a hero. States pick their hero when they select their prime minister or president.

Since we cannot do without heroes as a society at large, where are the heroes? Why is the present day politician failing to be a hero (perhaps with the exception of Zelensky)?

When the modern day usurper of power Donald Trump came to the white throne, there was not just the United States failing at establishing a hero story - United States became the anti-hero story.

Who was the biggest loser in all of this?

My answer is: Power.

Power itself lost it’s power. None remembers the small states and whatever prototype of power emerges there, but for the number one world power to place someone as incompetent, dangerous and amoral like Trump in the oval throne, the audience of the world saw first hand what a joke the throne itself can be. And once the throne loses its’ allure, its’ shine, power loses its’ power. Trump has managed to make the world’s most powerful man look like a joke. Who wants to sit in a throne that became a laughing stock to the world? Perhaps the next hero, which will have the easiest job after this colossal failure. Anyone after Trump will feel like a messiah.

One might argue: Power is power… at least Cersei Lannister from the Game of Thrones series did, and she was ‘kinda’ right. In her famous display of power scene where she is talking to Little finger where he says: “knowledge is power” she responds by commanding her guards:

“Seize him, cut his throat, oh wait! I’ve changed my mind, let him go” and utters to him: “Power is power”.

The might is right has been the modus operandi of Trump, usurp the Supreme court of justice, unleash armed forces like ICE, sanction countries that do not agree with him, and plan on seizing Greenland - an ally! This is power, power that Cersei talked about.

But let’s look closely…

Incompetent and evil people took thrones all the time - history is filled with stories like these, but we as masses only learned about their ways after they died or fell out of power. Only the closest ones could see the weirdos and sometimes the evil men those were.

After we abolished kingdoms, we formed democracies we elected presidents whom didn’t have satin long velvety costumes and crowns anymore but, power had and still has a brand - recognizable everywhere, in every corner of the world.

The fancy speeches, the suits, the entourage of diplomats - like the minions of Blair Waldorf surrounding the president all in suits and ties ready to correct his mistakes and write his speeches, the gestures, the body language trained to emulate power, the speech tone conveying confidence and conviction.

All of this show and effort put up by previous presidents went down the drain, with Trump the veil has lifted for the first time in history. Everyone now sees that the biggest throne in the world could be reached by an uncharismatic - convicted felon - sex offender. Power became easily penetrable, accessible, a house of cards instead of a fortress, a paper throne not an iron throne.

In here, I raise the issue of the European Union failing at its’ present hero story. European Union does not have a heroes journey at the present moment. And often in the past when empires failed at establishing a hero story they went and found an issue that they “solved” victoriously, such as burning the witches (burning women) to satisfy the masses and present themselves as rational and solid institutions. Considering the current state of affairs, I hope that the EU doesn’t take one such turn with migration as to appear heroic in the eyes of a few.

If Europe was to be a house in the Game of Thrones, it would be the Tyrrell’s house, respected, with fertile land for wine and goods but in a compromised position, surrounded by all, trying to streak alliances with whoever takes them maybe not with the main villain - Lannister house, but if push comes to shove Europe bends the knee to the Lannisters.

One way to see the profound almost visceral need for a hero story was to see the Hungarians in the streets of Budapest cheering the collapse and falling from power and grace of the authoritarian - master of illiberal democracy - Putin puppet - Orban Viktor in April 2026. I thought to myself what can be more embarrassing and mortifying than seeing your own kin cheering, drinking, and dancing deliriously to your loss? That was the closest I could ever be to witnessing the french revolution without the guillotine may I add, thank the heavens!

Politicians and politics aside for a moment, and back to the individual as that is my main speciality as a student of human nature.

Human beings grow up with quite contradictory stories; everyone at an early age is conditioned to dream and aspire to be: doctors, judges, teachers, firefighters, singers, usually these are the main domains young kids choose (working with them in my student years, I know), these are all noble professions, professions that strive to do the right thing, professions that serve as forces against the bad. Children grow up with moral stories and myths. Morality is the first language children learn way before their mother tongue.

Now, if we are to pick any hero from any story-telling across cultures and languages, they all contain themes of profound struggle and perseverance against odds. We will find the hero fighting unseen and seen forces. There will be morality play all over the hero story. Think of Jesus, he survives the desert and endures crucifixion.

But wait a minute, none wants their children to suffer through life and become heroes? that’s where the contradiction enters. We want to have the cake and eat it too. An optimal level of challenge and a lot of security is healthy. Developmental psychology supports this fully.

But, what happens later on when we grow up to be fully developed adults where the justification of youth and naïvety stops working? Why cherry pick on when to be moral and when to bend the structure of reality to one’s whims? Is it because we want to feel God like for a minute or two? To get away with it for a minute or two? Is this where our own narcissism lies?

What happens when life tests people and few pick the hero journey and choose the comfort and safety instead?

Do people fail to be heroes because we psychologically prioritize survival over truth?

Now, if that’s the case it all feels justifiable, in the name of our mortality and fragility in hell with the hero. So, a Machiavellian person or even someone who deems themselves smart - above average intelligence would say; only the smart survive, one must ensure survival at all cost, this is precisely where morality and ethics become absurd even un-intelligible notions.

Should we simply agree that due to our fragile nature and mortality everything is permissible in the name of survival?

I beg to differ here, and I think that’s why hero stories have persisted for soo long.

Take Little Finger for instance since we started with Game of Thrones, known for his diplomatic - strategical - calculating personality in the series, he creates alliances right, left and center. He is cunning, he betrays, he prioritizes personal gain to the detriment of others, he is using his mental faculties to survive! In this logic, why none remembers Little Finger as the hero or even as a respected character from GOT? Why would Barack Obama ask to see the season 6 of GOT before airing to public, so that he sees what happens to Jon Snow? Right, he wasn’t interested in the Little finger. No one is interested in Little finger.

Why is Jon Snow - betrayed, killed by those he saved, stabbed five times, a bastard son, fighting to his death remembered as a hero? Why isn’t Cersei with her schemes and plots exercising all her power and might for bad not remembered by the public as a heroine, but it’s the betrayed, the tortured Deanerys eulogized? Why did the Arya Stark episode when she kills the night king (the ultimate force of evil and destruction) scored 17.8 million views on HBO the most watched episode on the history of HBO?

All of this points in one direction: the hero story persists over and over because in it we recognize something profound about our human nature. The true essence and character of a person is shown when life offers the ultimate freedom of choice, the choice one cannot make in comfort, the choice fate forces one to make.

Fate reveals freedom.

Jon Snow doesn’t chose the storm in the north, the storm is fate or life itself. Some of his men run, some stay, some sacrifice, some betray. A hero is a hero also in love, especially in love! Jon doesn’t expect to meet the woman he falls in love with in his mission as a nights watch commander, she was there unplanned. She actually ruined his plans cause now he either has to kill her or save her, he chose saving her and loving her. A hero always moves with what reality and fate presents to them, instead of strategizing against reality and fate.

A hero accepts the death of their narcissism and limitation and still, beyond the powerlessness, the hero rises.

The hero captivates us because through the hero we are confronted with our uttermost existential tension. What do you choose when life corners you? When life doesn’t move to your whims? When your allies betray you? When sickness strikes you? When the one you loved stabs you in the back or in the chest? What do you do when life doesn’t shield you? When your morality and good nature doesn’t protect you? When fate is against you? When you have to survive another battle and another after that? When your entire family is perished, when killers march at you do you flee or do you raise the sword?

Jon Snow in the battle of Bastards facing a cavalry of 40 horse-men alone, standing in imminent death.

One doesn’t have to fight with swords but how often one fails to be the hero in their average lives? The one who refuses to speak the truth, the one who chooses self-interest effortlessly and calls that wisdom, the one who deceits and calls that necessary sacrifice, the one who lets shame have the last word, the one who bends the knee to the toxic boss, the one who never dares to think for themselves but relies on imaginary Gods, the one who doesn’t say nothing when the other is humiliated in a group setting, the one who never dares to go against their creed, the one who never attempts to make that dream a reality, the group of men who laugh at misogynistic jokes and those who remain silent without saying a word.

The list is long.

We admire the hero thats why we feed children with moral stories since we recognize in them the potential - the raw potential of youth, of a life of possibilities. And may I add, somewhere in our shared human DNA, in our collective unconscious we have recognized the hero journey as the ultimate journey of going beyond our humanity whilst remaining human.

Yet, some things are easier admired than achieved once adult.
Once adult the forces of fate expose the person underneath.

The parents who failed at their own heroes journey counsel their children to become heroic via cynicism even if presented as intelligence “this is how things work in real life” they side with; short cuts, keep the coherence, do not go against the grain, corruption, make use of the beauty, make use of the surname, cheat the system - all wrapped in the cloak of “wisdom”.

But, history is very clear: we do not remember the con artists, the Orban Viktor’s the Cersei’s, the Putin’s, the Adolf Eichmann’s and the nepo babies as heroes, neither as deserving of admiration even if their name is written in history books or in public squares.

One can be famous, but one cannot be a hero without being a hero.

Pain bends reality and time. Few minutes feel like eternity, just like in the movie Interstellar where 5 minutes on another planet means 20 years on Earth have passed. The pain is unimaginable, incomprehensible, the fear is not fear, its terror of the highest order. The body does automatic things to keep itself alive and it feels like a primordial, ancient ghost took over, you are not in command anymore, everything that your body is doing to survive it does it on its own. But, you remain watching everything.

We undress our clothes all the time, but leaving behind your body as if it was a piece of clothing? That was terrifying. Everything in you resists it vehemently with a force unknown to you before, it’s like the biggest adrenaline rush one can experience, remember these nightmares where you fall from a tall building? multiply that times 100… skydiving? times 100.

The cells collapse from the magnitude of it all, like a star that is dying and producing a tectonic shift and destruction on its path.

And then silence… “okay it’s happening, we are dying” such sentence I never imagined uttering to myself ever, not at that age. Full surrender, and after that immense calmness, no borders with anything - one looks around and everything is like a giant shape shifting penetrative structure as if one can enter the ground or the sky with their hand, as if one is without matter, without weight, one with gravity and air itself.

_{Anne Hathaway as Dr. Brand in the movie Interstellar by Christopher Nolan}

From the immense terror to the immense peace, for as much as I can remember I did not want to come back.

And then there I was awake with people whose faces I could recognize. What a disappointment, there I was… again.

I couldn’t really fathom the enormity of it, the scale of what had happened but it had altered my brain forever. The most difficult part after this event was to fall asleep. For one week straight I looked like a zombie tortured by the Russians deprived from sleep. If my eyes closed naturally, I would jump up almost like from a nightmare because last time I closed my eyes I was gone. It was really torturous to get used with the idea of falling back to being unconscious and wake up again. My sleep to this day remains disrupted, I have a what’s called ‘light sleep’ never fully able to surrender, the body hasn’t forgotten the fight for its life.

It’s only after almost a decade later that I could incorporate the lessons of this soul altering experience, prior to that I was preoccupied with continuing life as if nothing had happened.

Lesson 1. You will never experience time the same again. You will feel almost viscerally the passing of time. When death visits you unannounced you never take time for granted ever again, even if you want to - there is a clock inside of you ingrained that keeps on going even if you close your eyes or shut your ears, you always see it and hear it. You are reminded of the finite nature of yourself. Instead of feeling anxious about it, you learn to live with it.

Lesson 2. Meaning-making will become difficult. External sources of meaning: achievements, your degree, success at work, money, owning material goods, dating casually, being in relationships for the sake of it? Even if you want to push yourself in this direction to reach these “milestones”, there is a giant crushing weight you feel. It becomes impossible to go after things that lack the type of meaning that justifies existence. Meaning making now has to have weight, has to have importance for the time you are granted here on Earth. This doesn’t mean that one is meant to be in the temple of Budhha, zen - 24/7, outgrowing and transcending human needs and desires, nothing grandiose, you won’t save humanity from its perils but your way of conducting life will fundamentally change. There will be a clear direction moving unapologetically towards what really matters, be that watering plants, smiling at the old grandmas in the bus or advocating for human rights.

Lesson 3. You will come across to many as arrogant or at best… like the Cillian Murphy meme: bored, annoyed. Why? Because you know what’s important to you, who you are, the near death experience forces you to not run away from yourself, you wear your body again, so you learn to listen to it, and you are not afraid to walk out of the door when you don’t feel the place or people as right for you, nor are you scared to correct someone or speak out your truth. You listen to people, respect them, but you won’t feel the need to dance to somebody else’s tune if it doesn’t move you.

Lesson 4. You will lose many people. It will be difficult to sustain relationships with people who will feel exposed in your presence not due to some super power death has afforded you but, simply because you will not be easily moved by their status, by their privilege, by their beauty, by their position, by their brains. These qualities matter of course, but they are more of an appetizer than the main dish, a sort of prelude, an important first act. You will return attention to presence, to their integrity, to their coherence, to their dignity, to their humanity, to their moral compass, and for many that will be too much, they will call you such, or even “too sensitive” and then they will see that nothing can be extracted from you besides these untangible-unprofitable-unglamorous qualities and they will fall off of the conveyors belt, and this will be your best filtering system that death handed over to you.

Lesson 5. Your presence and attunement will feel intoxicating to some and exposing/threatening to others. Being forced to look death in the eye leaves you with eyes that are not afraid to look. For many, being seen and witnessed with presence, attention, patience and honesty will feel like a precious gift. They will feel a sense of profound liberation, holding, relaxation - as if they truly matter to someone. For others, it will be precisely this ‘looking into’ that will serve as a mirror, an exposing one, which they are not comfortable facing. In their minds you turn into a persecutory presence from which they want to run away from. Let them go.

Lesson 6. Happiness will feel profound, grief even more profound. You will smile brighter, laugh harder, dance harder, cry harder, scream harder, sob harder and break apart even harder. You won’t corrupt aliveness, you can’t. You won’t be able to perform avoidance - to take what suits you and leave the rest. Nope, moments will count more heavily since you recognize how fleeting time is. You will feel like the luckiest person on Earth when good things happen to you or when you make them happen. When you notice beauty, when you love and equally devastated when mortality wounds you. You will say: I came back for what? to witness the banality of evil? selfishness? tragedy? injustices? But, that’s what it is to be a mortal, yin & yang, day and night - you can’t have one without the other. Let’s say you manage to avoid pain somehow, bury yourself in work or in fantasy, you know death visited you and you had no where to escape, your own body left you, where are you hiding darling? you will face yourself in the end, do not prolong the bill it will compound honey. This is the voice you hear when you try to bypass life. So, you sit with pain for how ever long it may be needed.

Lesson 7. Your tolerance for injustice, will be nonexistent. Your bullsh*t radar very attuned. Your reverence towards life and truth will be unbound and unbending. Once you have seen yourself die, you value the other’s life just as your own. You know you bleed the same red blood. So, when someone tries to take away either by traumatizing, wounding or manipulating, there will be no tolerance policy. You won’t remain silent, you won’t care to preserve someone’s ego, you know exactly how precious life is to be wasted and taken from someone. You will be a menace for individuals who act on their self-interest and selfishness to the detriment of others, even when someone tells you ‘let it go’ you won’t. You don’t obey the social contracts anymore set in motion to preserve the egos and self-narration of few individuals especially those of men, because guess what? Once you have seen death, you won’t care to remain dignified in the face of someone else’s indignity. Be that a king, an ordinary man, or God itself.

Lesson 8. Everything will be felt fully. There won’t be much dullness in your life, what people may often overlook you won’t, you will understand why Monet stood in front of the water lilies and painted them for hours. The world around you is special because you never know for how long you will be witnessing the sun shinning again. The beauty around will be overwhelming but, since your body clinically died and collapsed you will feel the stretch of your heart, how much bigger your chest became. You will notice the purple in the lavender, the light strokes of wind brushing against you when you are alone in the balcony smoking a cig in silence. You really will be in contact with life not just a passer by. You will be alive. You will listen to ‘‘Nina Simone - feeling good’’ and you will understand every word. You will be in the south of Portugal soaking the sun that will shine only for you and you will start the day dancing to Sade. You will consume life and life will consume you back. You will be a lover of life and existence, as if there was no other, because now you know there is no other but this one here and every second counts.

Lesson 9. You will have a deep hunger and lust for life, not cherry picking on life, no check lists. Intense hunger to see and witness people that look nothing like you but your shared mortality brings you now together. You dream of Africa of dancing in Ghana with the Ghanian women to the drum beat. Mom will say Elsa are you crazy? none from Kosovo goes to Africa, I almost lost you during the war, why don’t you go elsewhere? Mom, I will go to Africa. I will send you the beautiful sunset pic from the other side of the Atlantic. You will have one hell of a good time at the underground jazz bars in Paris, closest thing to the 1920s Paris you will ever have. You will dance with the Algerian and Senegalese people in Paris, and you will try out their amazing food. You will dream to dance the samba in the Brazilian favelas until 5am in the morning and take a dip in Bahia. You will dream of setting foot in New York City, avoid Times Square and go straight to Harlem and let your soul there where your jazz icons left their soul. Ultimately, you will understand Anthony Bourdain, oh yeah you will darling.

Lesson 10. Your relationship to shame will fundamentally change. Once you have seen yourself dying and accepting your instant decay there is nothing that makes you look away from what’s human. Once found in mistakes, in misunderstandings, you won’t have an issue with asking for forgiveness, correcting, repairing, sitting with pain - yours and others. Your greatest fear will not be: will the other hurt me (you know they will), but the standard you now have for yourself and how you conduct yourself will fundamentally change. You don’t want to subject someone else to unnecessary pain if it can be avoided. In this fleeting existence you want them in your presence to find beauty. So you tell your dearest: “If my humanity fails me one day and I am found in a weak position, please remember I love you way more than this moment may make you believe and help me get back here, if I can’t help myself”.

Lesson 11. There will be no governing power over you. You will be self-authored. You won’t obey the authority of a person, a group, an institution or a state. You will obey only your mortality and time. You will be free. Funny thing is that when you nearly die, you see how irrelevant everything and everyone becomes - especially those you assigned power to, your own-self included. Not in an arrogant way, rather informative way, you see everyone for what they are: mortals. Celebrities? philosophers? writers? artists? your parents? politicians? none is beyond mortality. You understand these old sayings “You won’t take anything with you in the grave” . Idealizations were present due to lack of knowledge of our own mortality, after the veil lifts you notice that most idealized people live from the light that other people shine on them. If one isn’t a dictator one will be forgotten within 2 generations, that becomes very clear when no spotlight follows you in your death bed, so either be a revolutionary Jesus or Mandela or use your very limited existence in such a way that for as long as you live you feel proud with your choices.

Lesson 12. Death will give you a backbone that is rock-solid one which you did not ask for, but there it is. Once you experienced your own loss, one doesn’t back away from life’s vicissitudes easily, not without a fight at least. Friends and loved ones around you feel that they can count on you. You will have an ‘un-f*ckable with’ aura, a certain gravitas that can be felt in a room. Earned through death, you learn to wear your body as your costume again and this time own it, fully. Like some old people who have earned their ‘vintage’ and wise status, you have earned the fire you walk with from your own once collapsed cells.

Lesson 13. Trends and fads will not phase you, participation in main-stream culture will not feel necessary for inclusion and acceptance. Selectivity of your time and attention becomes paramount. Wearing clothes that speak to you, back to that classic Giorgio Armani tailoring, to that Chloé & Alaïa fluid pieces that make your body dance - that remind you of the beautiful flowy river you left at home. You like a nice leather belt or jacket because it reminds you of your horse’s leather saddle, the creature you love most. This aesthetic won’t be found on IG, it’s curated by a lived life. Quality music that makes you feel, that moves you in all the ways, the soulful one, the Marvin Gaye one. Literary pieces that enrich you. Philosophers that have been forgotten, as dissidents their intellectual wings were cut off. You understand David Lynch appearing with his black glasses on a video telling you what music was he listening that day and giving you a motivational quote, that sort of spontaneity becomes your jam.

_{David Lynch on his weather reporting: “I am wearing black glasses today because I’am seeing the future and it’s looking very bright”}

Lesson 14. Love becomes more than a feeling, an emotion, an ideology, a philosophy, an abstraction, it becomes a modus of being 24/7. Not love as in a 70’s hippie song, but love as in: a very serious - differentiated moral stance and ethical one. To harm someone when harm could have been avoided, to subject someone to one’s unfinished business becomes not merely unfortunate but a misuse of another person’s finite existence. Therefore, the biggest fear you face is: Am I showing up not as perfect but as someone who takes someone’s finite existence as serious as it is? That requires keeping yourself in check. In love, people alter each other’s finite existence for better or worse. If you love them consciously and with responsibility you add to their life, they drink the morning coffee differently, they speak to people differently, they notice butterflies but, on the other hand misuse of love makes them miss the butterfly, drink the coffee to wake up, make it to work and avoid people. So, one who has peaked through death says: if you have the power to alter the finite existence of someone, you owe them seriousness.

Lesson 15. The pain caused by humans will always be greater, why? Because death has a certain dignity, death doesn’t betray, death doesn’t pretend. Death doesn’t say: I choose you and then leave abruptly in the most dis-honouring way with a message or ghosting. Death simply arrives, death is devastating but it doesn’t deceive. Death doesn’t ask you to reinterpret reality. It doesn’t recruit and abuse your trust. It doesn’t cause ontological shock. It doesn’t leave you wondering whether you imagined everything. Death is not cowardice, people are.

“Everything is more beautiful because we are doomed. You will never be lovelier than you are now. We will never be here again.”
― Homer, The Iliad

People do not notice the semantics it seems to me.

Semantics tells us exactly where the egoism of the human sits, “I am having or I am making” are both statements that tell us the speaker - treats this matter as self-extension.

My contention with this “having children” statement lays in that - assuming adults have choice and they can consent to choice (not talking here about violations), children are the only human creatures that cannot consent to be born. The lack of consent to life is what bothers me, which I do not treat lightly.

Children, for the majority of our human history have been brought into the world for a purpose that served adults as much as we don’t like to admit our selfishness in this.

During the era of empires and kingdoms they had to have heirs to preserve power within the family, and as for the peasants they had to procreate so that the tribe and the kingdom had enough men to fight inevitable wars. It was survival.

Later on, in the pre-industrial era 18th and 19th century children were brought into this world for: labour. Yeah, child labour.

Mortality remained high, more children were needed to produce and to work the fields. They were small, easier to control, took little space in factories and mines, were paid ridicilousily low and they could start as young as 6 and 10 years of age. Solution found. Child-labour by the way still exists in parts of the world today.

Now, we live in the 21st century were that’s not the case anymore for children to be used for labour, what is the case now however, is that people want to have the ‘experience’ of having children.

We have switched from a practical reason (labour) to a much more sophisticated reason: personal fulfillment. Okay, so far so good.

The ‘experience’ of being a parent includes the desire and wish of two adults who, for much of their life are not concerned about the lack of consent that their unborn baby is subjected to by them. They are most often primed even by biology to think in terms of “how much the unborn baby will appreciate the life they are about to give and provide”, awesome. Very good idealism.

For many parents that is very much doable, yet, no matter how much stability and riches a child may have, they will be subjected to reality and existence which none has full control over. Heartbreaks? Bone cancer at 12 months old? Second handedly witnessing and experiencing human suffering? Tragedies? Wars? Human made catastrophies?

The list goes on, none of us are spared from these, some less, some more. Humans have different levels of resilience and strengths, parents sometimes forget this, they assume all will go well because they have everything already in place.

So what? I can hear you say, stay like a coward afraid to make babies because of life, life has always been hard???

Stay with me, this is not some black and white type of situation where one answer is correct and the other is sh*t. This is more of a grey sh*t situation.

Life cannot be lived without meaning as Viktor Frankl said, we derive meaning in different ways, and those change throughout our lives.

There comes a point where many people find themselves with unsatisfactory meaning, say their marriage or relationship is not as satisfying, not horrible just… not alive enough. The solution we often see: have a baby.

In other cases, social pressure gets the best out of someone and voila; have a baby cause the biological clock is ticking! In other cases, one may have all the meaning in the world, status, money, power, fame, good enough family, but none can escape themselves in the end, so existential questioning starts, fear of death emerges, old age approaches, psychologically one knows that procreation saves one from psychological annihilation and figurative suicide, solution? Have a baby. A woman cannot find her footing in society, dissatisfied with her career? Girl bossing has been ruining her life and her cycle? Dissatisfied with her love life? Neglected by her husband? Have a baby - it’s the safest and most socially rewarded identity and role a woman can occupy. Everyone who has a womb actually is expected to produce a baby, it’s seen even as morally offensive if one doesn’t as well as selfish, even the government of France has been recently pushing women to procreation… kinda pathetic but, I digress.

Some other couples are very much in love that - just like they would go and marry in Vegas, they decide to have a baby in the heat of love, during their honeymoon, their love somehow eclipses everything else and justifies everything else. Baby justifies the means.

There is no judge in this world that would scrutinize these people’s choices because we treat our own selfishness as a given, as existentially and morally righteous. In all of these examples, these parents are chiefly occupied with their own desires and anxieties even if those are labeled differently.

Perhaps the most touching movie I have seen dealing with this issue is: ‘Capernaum’ (2018), where a young boy sues his parents in court:

His daily life consists of struggles to survive that no child should be abject to. It is a classical example of how adult selfishness touches a life that never consented to be born in a man-made misery.

It is precisely this lack of regard for consent that in my view is not justifiable, not ethically, not morally. I mention selfishness a lot here, and it is not loosely used even though it may seem so.

I have been the harbinger of uncomfortable moments in dinner tables where a simple question I posed has made one “child loving - soon to be dad” contemplate with themselves. Question being: “Would you love your child if later they turn out gay?” - Silence from the soon dad to be, uncomfortable silence… followed by: “Not that I could help it”.

Here I often noticed a pattern, children for many people are personal projects even if they do not admit it because none would frankly admit it to render ourselves fallible. But, you see it in how they refer to their children, “one day he/she is going to be this and that, and make mommy proud”. Many parents live off of their children, cause that’s how they extend their psychological existence, that’s how they bypass existential questions via someone who looks like them and often does what they do.

This selfish project often leaves them bewildered when the child does something totally different from what they imagined and bursts that magical bubble of the parent, hence we have the estranged kids.

My point here through this essay is not to oppose bringing children into being. My problem is the lack of regard towards human life. The failure as an adult to see beyond ourselves and to subject existence before having at least done the duty of understanding the reasons and motivations behind it.

A friend of mine who works for a big finance company, a very important one, when he heard my argument said: “You would make a great risk management employee at our firm” . We both laughed hard.

Apparently according to him, I take into account risks, dwell on them too much, and my response was: If not to dwell on this - LITERALLY - on human life what in the hell to dwell on then? Am I the only one with this kind of regard for human life?

I hope not.

I will stand court all day, any day, in defence of human life - as to me - my human selfishness cannot come before the consent of an unborn human who will live the consequences of my doings, no matter how well I have constructed and justified my choice in my mind to abdicate myself from any self-questioning or even guilt.

This may as well then be a matter of intelligence, or emotional intelligence one could argue, a matter of ethics and morality even… could be. If that’s the case since intelligence isn’t distributed equally in society, the case is doomed? I refuse to accept this premise. It’s a lazy argument that gives one a free pass.

What about human nature? Is this just who we are? In some deep unconscious level we leave these questions un-scrutinized because in some deep cave of our soul we know that there is no other way out from ourselves? Someone gave birth to us, we must continue the survival game. Again, that would be a lazy argument in my view since it never touches the core, it brushes off.

So I ask: in what conditions are you continuing the game of survival?

You buy a vacuum cleaner and you read a manual on how to use it, you take medicine and you do the same, there is a giant paper on side effects you must consider, you undergo surgery and one has to give written consent on 1% chance that the surgery may go wrong, we undergo tests upon tests for our driving licences, we study years and years to obtain a degree, YET, when it comes to contemplating about our motives, our hidden motives, our capacities in bringing children into this world, many skip this part entirely without a second thought. And we find the most self-soothing justification, the most famous one being: love.

I hear the objection: So what? Love ends, humans still stay as fruits of the love that once was.

Despite people divorcing all the time, despite people committing murder on those they claim to love (crime of passion), despite people breaking the trust of their loved ones all the god-damn time. Yet, that remains the pre-condition for un-consented life?

The bar is in hell I conclude ladies and their creations.

I honestly do believe that if people can spent years in finishing their Masters and Phds, and other professional endeavours, they can also at least, at the very least inquire and introspect on their motivations on having children as they owe it to a human being - an unborn one. On their capacities of being parents that includes emotional and psychological. And then spending time preferably building those lacking skills if one has to. And no, I am not talking about taking a crash course with your wife before the baby is born on how to hold the head of the newborn and how to feed them.

Jesus, the bar is in hell, again.

Children are not mere tools to satisfy our inner existential cravings, to shield us from our own existential reckoning, to shield us from our own loneliness, we do that with lovers? partners? alcohol? status? work? shopping sprees? fancy cars? philosophies? fame? side quests? humanitarianism? Fine, all these are choices affecting the adults only. More or less adults consent to these choices.

Unborn humans don’t.

One can say well, humans have babies for different reasons so what’s the issue? we are not perfect? (Again, human nature)

In case the issue isn’t clear enough, it is about an innocent human that cannot decide for themselves and consent on these ‘different reasons’ and the ‘imperfections’.

Now, where does all of this riddle leave us? We are circling without landing…

Procreation often times is seen as a natural act, therefore is taken as a given, rarely questioned and if anything was questioned was: do we have enough money to raise the child? Do we have enough space? Can we send them to college? Who has to stay home and deal with care-taking?

All of these are very important questions, yet studies show over and over that the quality of life, well being, longevity and survival is determined by the quality of relationships, especially the very close ones (parent-child) when the basic needs are met, relative to SES (Socio-economic status). Meta-analysis: Strengths and Satisfaction Across the Adult Lifespan

Yet, here we are rarely asking the questions of quality… rarely one says wait a minute, I am going to bring a human into this world, a human that cannot consent to this life, why am I doing this?

If this child later asked why did you have me how can I respond to them in a way that tells them I honoured you before knowing you? I valued you before I saw you? I held you in the highest regard before I had you? I made the best humanly possible judgement before bringing you?

The woman with the womb who cannot wait to be a mom always failed to give me a reason of why? besides “Oh I cannot wait to have a baby and dress her up and play with her, babies are amazing!!!”. Sadly, more often than not, I looked at these women with disdain that knows no bounds, uttering under my breath - this is not a dress up game we played on our computers growing up. A disdain that I could not hide nor contain. My reaction was often taken as “she doesn’t like babies” … meanwhile I found myself over and over again asking the hard questions precisely because of my utmost regard for human life and I was no-where near making such commitments. Isn’t it ironic?

We haven’t landed yet to a satisfactory response that puts our brains at ease. So let’s not drag this further.

I think the question: ‘To have or not to have babies’ is an incomplete one. For as much as one can handle to bring oneself to face themselves in the mirror and ask a question that goes beyond themselves, beyond their needs and fears, and do their best to answer without bypassing, rationalizing, minimizing and a bunch of other mental gymnastics, then I suppose once honesty is established - one can have a more complete question and even more complete answers.

Tragedy, that was a tragedy they said. Why did God let this happen I asked?
No answer.

I was five when I realized people have to believe in something like God to survive psychologically or else be annihilated. Those who survived the war in Kosovo during 1998-1999 believed God saved them, and those who saw their loved ones burned alive, tortured and raped believed God was cruel and forgot about them.

Where was God then? playing hide and seek?

God… to me as a five year old at best appeared indifferent. It became my raison d'être to be proven wrong.

After all, according to Viktor Frankl - we need meaning to survive.
But, to the young me already introduced to the horror I couldn’t give it meaning and even more because God appeared indifferent in the face of evil, I risked annihilating myself in the process of being proven wrong. This was my own version of Marie Curie, dive in ma’am. It led me to studying Psychology for all of my adult life and practicing for the half of it.

My experience with studying human nature and being in close contact with it everyday has given me ample proof that a lot of it is… filthy.

As Fran Lebowitz says: “that’s why it’s called human nature and not human art”. It’s filthy and in this read I won’t pretend to make an idyllic impressionist painting of it. This is not gonna be a Monet but a Goya.

I will talk here about human filth.

Back in 1999 when a British journalist was reporting from then liberated Kosovo for a UK TV broadcaster (ITN), he utters these words: “The British forensic team have found a house which they describe as a torture chamber, where apparently people have been kept here for months and tortured with medieval tools, here you can see women’s clothing as well and children’s and the walls appear to be covered red in blood, here you can see a machete”

If it wasn’t for the footage one would think it’s exaggerated, thanks God it wasn’t AI back then, otherwise one would’t believe it. The thought of it, of people being able to commit such atrocities puts one in disbelief, the rational mind cannot compute the level of dehumanisation the human being is capable of, and no matter how many times we see it through history it never ceases to amaze in it’s brutality.

It put me in disbelief…

When I was very young my dad told me the story of how he escaped the Serbian paramilitaries (Irregular armed groups active during the Yugoslav Wars of the 1990s. Supported by the Serbian and Yugoslav state, these units were deployed to carry out ethnic cleansing and maintain plausible deniability for the Belgrade regime) with me in his arms as a baby and the road he took was filled with land mines, he said it was an instinct either run or be captured by them - either way we are dead.

I genuinely thought he is exaggerating not because my dad was prone to that, he actually spoke very little of war but, because if I believed him fully I risked facing human nature… until just recently I had to look into UN documents from the ICTY (International criminal tribunal for Yugoslavia) where I found this areal map from NATO where I saw Prishtina from where my dad had to run lit up in red marked as high mine contamination:

Couldn’t help but let out some tears in a full packed coffee shop in a central European capital.

This was a decent prelude to the filth I suppose, so let’s continue.

Last year I actually had the privilege of writing and documenting testimonials from survivors of torture and sexual violence from the Kosovo war, together with a team of mental health professionals we compiled these stories and turned them into a book. Hours upon hours of listening to stories of the most evil, barbaric and monstrous acts.

Humans can be very creative in their evil - macabre - ways of torturing and killing people. Nothing prepared me for these gruesome details even though I fled the land mines with my dad.

I began my research on some of these criminals, and to my despair found many of them celebrated in the country of Serbia as heroes, some of them holding political positions… and many of them shielded and protected from the Serbian state. Many of them wrote books and appeared heroic with no remorse over what they did.

On the other hand, I heard survivors and the horrors they endure even 30 years later every day… for many their lives remain painful there is still no God or saviour for them. As the Serbian criminals can enjoy a ride in the park somewhere in Belgrade with minimal to no consequences for their actions that destroyed lives, many of the survivors remain isolated inside their homes because god forbid they go outside and they stumble upon a harmless police person in uniform and they experience full on PTSD.

Reality, morality, universal fairness, karma, god and all of these notions that we use to protect ourselves from the absurdity of life, collapse in the face of these monstrous encounters with human filth.

Reality hasn’t balanced the score 30 years later, and neither are the perpetrators feeling remotely what they made others suffer, they did get away with it, unfortunately.

Politicians seem to know this, those in power who see first hand how fairness is not distributed equally, how dignity and honour are but mere idealisms, how those in power abuse power and still get the recognition they want; praise, adulation, fame and status, still live happy lives, their kids still end up with secured futures, they eventually become unbothered with doing the ‘right’ thing even though many of them may preach so. Masses sense this truth that’s why politicians are seen as deceptive and machiavellian.

The notions of morality, good and bad are left to be held and implemented by those who occupy lower sociological positions and those at the end stick of the power that is abused.

But, this human filth isn’t reserved for the war criminals, politicians and those in power who bend the structure of reality however suits them, in small and big scales.

Everyday in my psychotherapy practice I tend to people who have been deeply hurt and betrayed by those they loved.

By the cheating husband or boyfriend or lover who put their self interest first above the other, who minimized and denied, who comitted emotional affairs first and labeled those as harmless, who left the other to hold the entire emotional weight of their actions as they fled the scene to live happily ever after. Shielded by mental gymnastics of their doing, by supporters who only know the selected version of the story they choose to tell.

The capacity to hold oneself accountable is directly linked to the level of shame one can feel without collapsing and disintegrating, so they avoid it. There is no balancing of the scales when one believes a narrative that protects them and allows them to live a content life even one built on lies and half truths.

They get away with it by placing the bad experience into a locked mental drawer. Being shielded by a reality and a universe that is indifferent to the pain of others, their psyche being protected by defences of ugly taste like: “I didn’t mean it that way", “It just happened”, “I was not into her back then”. People survive psychologically by narrating reality and shape it like it was a fast food order; they find the most suitable narrative that lets them escape guilt and shame, just like the war lords in Serbia who say to themselves; we were fighting for our national interests that’s why we killed and raped Albanians so they can manage to sleep at night.

The bad parents get away with it by saying “We didn’t know better back then” or "I don’t remember” when their adult child confronts them for all of their terrible childhood shaped by their caregivers. Nothing the child says penetrates their thick defences which protect them from psychic disintegration and fragility. Their children not having had one good day without being haunted by the impact their childhood had yet, this kind of parent can brush it off with “I don’t remember it”… a life lived in lack of acknowledgment of harm done to others. They get away with it.

People escape morality and override reality all the time, and yet we have few stories of success and we make almost a myth out of those to imbue ourselves with hope, with optimism, lighting up a torch - a hopeful one, in the face of the absurd, a defense against nihilism. Yet, none should be blamed for not being optimistic enough in the face of a filthy human nature.

One is allowed to say F you to these unseen and seen forces, to the morality launderers, and even to the ignorant who didn’t mean malice and still their actions caused pain. As Hannah Arendt said: “The most catastrophic atrocities are committed not by monsters, but by ordinary, ignorant people who simply stop thinking, fail to question the systems they serve, and abdicate their moral responsibility”.

It’s quite a tough ask to remain in this absurd reality, one understands Camus when he said: one should imagine Sisyphus happy, and my interpretation of it is that the burden of being a moral human being in a vast sea of morally corrupt people and even vaster indifferent universe; is a forever one.

And if absurdism is heavy to carry, a very dignified human by the name of James Baldwin once said:

As for the survivors of the Kosovo war, we are still working on the recognition of their pain and suffering, still fighting for justice nearly 30 years later. And as for those touched by tragedies and human filth of different kinds, malicious and non malicious, we try to heal and be with the souls that never deserved the pain they received.

Perhaps, god and evil is only found in us.

In the end, I did not close this Pandoras box, I did not provide a solution because I do not have one and I do not even think there should be one. What I have instead is a model of love that I am afraid may be a sui generis for many.

As such, I do not write about it as superior… I consider it to be closest to the true nature of reality as I could conjure, analyze and perceive with my senses.

I wrote about how sticky childhood scripts can be, those rooted in family of origins. I wondered: do we necessarily have to go through these muddy childhood waters first with our lovers before we can emerge victorious on the other end? Is this a rite of passage we must go through?

This did not sit well with me as it evokes a sort of ‘carry on punishment’, a build in sort of sado-masochism, where we have to put ourselves and our lovers through unconscious tests, and mental games that we learned in childhood, and see if this time we end up with a different result and be like voilà! We graduated! Happily ever after.

I kept on thinking, maybe this is the equivalent of the “heroes journey couple’s version”… perhaps, perhaps, perhaps…

Still, a voice in my head kept saying: this cannot be it…or at least cannot be it for someone who understands these “tricks”… for the one who has individuated or is on that path.

In today’s pop psychology, infuriatingly so, we keep hearing about toxic this, toxic that, many of these influencers without degrees keep preaching about a mode of love that is void of desire and aliveness. It has been common to hear about limerence, preaching about “secure love”, how anxiety in the beginning is bad, how the boring partner initially is “the right one”, because otherwise it’s only dopamine guiding you into your own annihilation.

I am not disputing these ideas, there may be some truth there… yet, many concepts are collapsing into each other. I keep thinking to myself, what project one has started without idealizing it in the beginning? Dreaming, fantasizing, idealizing helps us start that phd, helps us start a movement, a political party, it helps us see and travel the world.

Imagine one dreaming and idealizing about Paris - all hyped up - heart eyes and someone comes saying: you shouldn’t dream and idealize Paris! one would ignore them in a heartbeat and that - with a bombastic side-eye. Or imagine someone telling you the same about that phd you want to start… every meaningful thing starts with desire, dreaming, fantasy, a vision, a hit of dopamine - it helps us move into action. It’s a necessary first step that self-styled experts are portraying as wrong.

What people do not seem to talk about is the integration of idealization, of aliveness and of raw love.

That phd otherwise won’t finish itself on the initial fuel of dopamine and novelty, and neither will that Paris trip happen by itself, if one doesn’t deal with the boring tasks of scheduling & organizing.

Now, my vision of reality based love includes both aliveness and the pain of being an adult in that aliveness.

The problem with integration of initial idealisation or the rawness of love, seems to stem from unconscious love scripts… again most likely inherited from childhood. Esther Perel knows how this blue print impacts later adult life when she says: "Tell me how you were loved and I'll tell you how you make love."

People rarely manipulate on purpose or play games on purpose, none wakes up one day (unless they belong to the dark triad of personality disorders) thinking; today I am going to ignore my lover for the rest of the day, or ghost them and hence make them feel miserable and unwanted by me. Whats likely happening is; unconsciously people are protecting themselves from perceived threats of closeness, that have nothing to do with their current lover and then they rationalize these actions in whichever way they can tolerate. This does not justify the dire effects this behaviour has on the other, let’s be clear on that.

Similarly, people rarely think that loving someone to the point of merging and fusing is harming the other person, after all haven’t we all been sold the idea of the eternal love, together forever, may God never do as part - Disney - Hollywood type of love idea? Yes… so, when someone bombards their lover with messages, and a constant need for closeness and protest behaviours, this to them is registered as profound love and not as suffocation. Once more, this does not justify the dire effects it has on the other, let’s be clear on that.

Many of these behaviours are automatic, formed before we could even speak, shaped by those around us, mostly parents and those closest to us.

Now, imagine if a couple spent years and years into playing these scripts and de-tangling them, with some happiness in between, fighting them together or with a therapist, and appearing victorious in the end? It’s exhausting in my imagination, eroding more than up-lifting.

Yet, many couples do that, even more so when this script of passion followed by pain is deeply seated in our story telling that still organizes love narratives around: intensity, fusion, enmeshment, rupture & reunion, jelaousy, power and control, “fighting for” someone, emotional volatility, surviving chaos together, transforming wounds through mutual struggle.

The love - attachment warfare becomes in itself an organizing principle of many enduring love stories. This phenomenon sparked my initial question: Must love begin in distortion in order to become real?

My vision of reality based love doesn’t bypass this stage as life naturally includes pain and trauma, rather people in reality based love live in congruence with those experiences, instead of re-enacting the emotional havoc the previous scripts leave behind.

I kept thinking about a depiction of the kind of adult - reality based love that doesn’t resemble the emotional warfare one. Recalling examples from the cinema or literature, but couldn’t find many such examples perhaps due to the fact that those are less glorious? less dramatic than Anna Karenina? less passionate at first sight? less intense? less tragic? less heroic?

And then I found one: it’s Jesse and Celine from the ‘Before Trilogy’ :)

Jesse an American visiting Europe, meets Celine a french woman on a train to Vienna. They hit it off from there, the story continues through the trilogies: (Before Sunrise, Before Sunset, Before Midnight) with separation, re-kindling and growth.

Besides the sheer fated encounter of the two, what is the most important in the entire trilogy, is the architecture of their dynamic - the skeleton so to say. From the beginning of their romance both of them emerge as self-authored, sovereign adults who have been shaped by life, heartbreak, lessons, relationships.

They come both bruised and polished by their own lived lives.

Yet, they both bring aliveness, that sense of child-like wander that isn’t naïveté but, a necessary balm to the harshness of adulthood.

Celine, bonds through consciousness, she is expressive, independent, most importantly psychologically independent, idealistic, romantic, bold… their romance unfolds mainly through conversation ranging from: politics, social issues, music, gender roles, silliness, cracking jokes, sad stories… and even silence.

It’s an intimacy emerging from two consciousnesses encountering each other seriously.

There is tension, tenderness, softness, fear in both of them, uncertanity, longing, time is scarce will their connection survive time, distance and their adult lives? Neither can guarantee each other permanence, the connection survives because they continue to move towards it freely, by free choice within constraints of imperfect humanity. No emotional cushions on either side.

They both face existential vulnerability.

The skeleton of this relationship is not organized around unconscious love scripts, classic gender roles, familiarity, attachment choreography or strategic insecurity.

Celine and Jesse are not perfectly healed either. They are not sterile. They are emotional, conflicted, wounded, nostalgic, desirous… and yet, in the midst of their vulnerability and attachment activation, there is mutual recognition, honesty, attention, existential openness, freedom and the willingness to remain psychologically present with each other.

They constantly move towards reality rather than control.

The relationship does not dance around managing the wounds through their reactive scripts. They stay inside fear and attachment instead of creating internal walls, or looking from the outside in, avoiding or collapsing.

Thats why the film gives a sense of warmth and subtle intimacy compared to other romantic narratives where one withdraws to provoke pursuit, one pursues to avoid abandonment panic, one uses jealousy to provoke the lover, the other keeps silent to feel powerful, one creates instability the other tries to sustain closeness… and so it goes.

Celine and Jesse do not engage in none of this, not because they are superior or have grown beyond their attachment, but because each honours their sovereignty more than their defences and past wounds.

They both implicitly understand that adulthood includes; prior attachments, mistakes, compromises, failed loves, grief, ambiguity… neither of them creates romantic absolutism nor absolute idealisation.

They do each other a great favour by not burdening one another with assigning roles of existential saviours and by not erasing each other’s humanity.

They do not proclaim that nothing before you mattered, we complete each other, you were always the one, we must merge together. It’s more like: meeting you awakened something in me, we are shaped by life and other people and now we are encountering each other as adults who have not shut down their capacity for direct emotional contact with life.

They are both practicing eroticism.

One thing that I also notice in Jesse and Celine, is the lack of emotional theatrics in which many people rely on, and so does their love.

They do not constantly test each other, they do not intensify uncertainty artificially, they do not weaponize each other’s vulnerabilities nor weaponize absences. They do not think less of the other just because they had a life before, they don’t need the other to affirm their worldviews or to emotionally regulate them, they do not depend on performances to remain open and alive to each other.

For many people romance tends to narrow down over time into:
“How do you make me feel”, “Will you stay, will you leave me”, “Do I matter enough”, “Will you remain the best thing that ever happened to me?”, “Will it be always us against the world?”

For Jesse and Celine the romance door is widened towards existence itself: aging, politics, memory, travels, humanitarianism, death, gender roles, feminism, fear of settling, missed chances, womanhood, disillusionments, disagreements, tenderness…

Love for them is a mode of shared consciousness not merely attachment management or childhood script replication.

They carry aliveness both inside themselves and towards the world around them.

As two adults they know no individual is perfect so they handle disillusionment when it emerges instead of collapsing, they do not freeze each other as ‘ideal’ or ‘perfect’. Yet, as Celine says they hold space for magic and mystery.

In all of this, Jesse and Celine do not ever appear fearless or untouched by anxiety, they keep metabolizing fear with dialogue rather than domination or retreat.

As two people totally different from each other, they do not have matched t-shirts or sneakers, nor mutual aesthetics, two people who have no prior knowledge of each other or mutual history to buffer their connection, recognition is the driving force in their romance.

It’s like they say to each other without saying: It’s not that you complete me, rather I encounter myself differently in your presence, you awaken aliveness, thought, softness and we remain distinct yet, deeply in contact. You allow me to be me without losing myself in you.

Jesse and Celine practice interdependence smoothly, it leaves one rejoicing in their individual humanity, honouring them both for having come soo far, and remaining open to a love that has that sweetness of youth whilst coated in adulthood and wisdom.

It leaves one believing that through all the trials and tribulations of adulthood, love can still be alive, charged, sovereign and erotic without resorting to either the idealisms of youth followed by painful childhood repetitions or a love that is too clean almost sterile, ‘mature’ with a flair of cynical transactionality attached to it - in a shape of a marital contract.

That did not happen unfortunately, so I learned it the hard way. What psychology though forces you into is living in reality. And that I judge to be a fair trade for me.

Now, this is no small deal, we prefer to think we live in reality and with reality but most often we are not. To be 1:1 with reality is traumatizing, reality is barbaric and random. Very few can sustain a healthy day to day living if they remain fully engaged in reality… why?

Let me just take a look at what is currently in front of me as I am writing this article to illustrate what would mean to live fully in reality. Let’s start with the phone placed next to me on my left side, an iphone made by apple inc. same as the device used to write this article by the way. Parts of this phone are made of cobalt and lithium by mining mines in the Democratic Republic of Congo, these miners include underage African children who risk their lives for less than 2$ dollars per day so that giant companies like Apple can mass produce.

Next to me is also a chocolate made up with 70% dark cocoa, probably made on the blood and tears of a West African child working under age who probably is not even allowed to taste the cocoa beans that he himself extracts. I am also wearing a cotton white t-shirt that on the label says: 90% cotton, 10% elastane, probably made by workers in some far away country working 14 hour shifts, severely underpaid and in dire conditions, mostly women of course.

One I am using to write and communicate, the other I am consuming and the last I am wearing in my body.

I can go on and on, but you get the idea - this is what it is to live in reality. It can make you sick to your stomach and at the most extreme suicidal.

Many of us never access reality like this, precisely because it makes one sick in the stomach, we just go on… never questioning things, and even if we do we face our insignificance in the face of the giant world, so we just continue defeated, some think that they are “facing” reality and say; well this is how the world works, I have no power whatsoever, this is a complex web anyways and that is called ‘rationalization’… a way our brains help to avoid the pain of reality. Some take action, being deliberate with their choices and consumer habits.

Besides these mentioned, I thought the things that we feel most deeply emotionally, say love and attachment, those for sure are rooted in reality and truth… and this was perhaps one of the hardest illusions for me to grapple with.

When we are little the idea of belonging and love is sorted out already, we are born in a loving family with others, even if that is a family of two. In other cases, these families are the reason why a person seeks love & belonging elsewhere, in both cases people are forced to go out there as adults and seek adult - chosen love.

For better or for worse both these camps of people have to cross that path, to separate from the familiar and into the wild. Not only to separate physically to find a job, or go to university, but also find a romantic script (and no, that doesn’t come with changing partners), it’s the neurological imprint inherited as a child that seeks maturation.

For some reason, I don’t know why, perhaps due to the harshness of this choice people and cultures hyped up the idea of finding love as an incentive to push people (it may as well be a PR stunt), that Disney and Hollywood presented, that’s why many seem to be waiting for “the one” and their match made in heaven.

Now, here comes Miss. Psychology with a harsh but necessary revelation that none warned me about, yet I am glad to receive.

People actually rarely to not say almost never, make an adult choice in love which is shocking to say, because as adults people buy houses, obtain degrees etc, and here I am not making the point that people always should strive for that, rather reflecting on this observation.

To make an adult choice in love means to go outside of the norm that one learned in their family of origin, it is to choose a totally different nervous system architecture, is to choose something that one has never seen nor experienced before, which to illuminate it further seems like knowing how to ride a car, but you decide to learn how to drive an airplane. Pretty big and scary jump, so people for their sense of inner peace and stability choose to remain with the car. This is not a moral indictment.

My observation has been such that these familiar choices often come with a price tag and that is a silent almost hidden discomfort of an un-lived life, a repetition of sorts.

My client who for the sake of this article will be named James, in agony and pain tells me how he is re-creating the same dynamic he learned at home from his parents. He loves a woman that looks nothing like his mom physically but, looks exactly like her psychologically. And his mom had a very unbalanced and chaotic psychological makeup.

James, now in his 40s is both captivated by this woman and hating himself on the other hand cause he feels he is taking “her sh*t” just like his father did with his mom… in other words, James is recreating exactly the romantic childhood script that he absorbed as a child.

From the outside they are couple goals, and few know that this couple is a match made in childhood, not in heaven.

James is only one in hundreds of cases that I have seen, observed and worked closely with. Romantic choices that do not make any sense from the outside yet, psychologically they are fulfilling a function, an important one: that of stability and coherence, even if that’s followed by pain.

The devil you know is better than the devil you don’t says the old adage, and many people choose the familiar they know, without even having a clue about it. They attach to it labels like; she was always there, he gets me like none else, it was always meant to be, the moment I saw her I knew she was the one etc… All of it can feel real in the moment, it’s genesis? debatable.

Its infuriating… when you talk to a child believing in Santa it’s cute, but when you see an adult living a familiar script for which they refer to as destiny, one wants to burst that bubble but one can’t. That one, is me.

Freud would say we make such choices as to finally give ourselves a chance to choose differently as adults and somehow overcome the asymmetry and powerlessness we felt as children… but why soo many people do not end up choosing differently then? Instead they go on and on in circles?

Does psychological knowledge need 2 decades to travel and reach people as if it’s traveling from Saturn? Or is the need to remain loyal to childhood scripts unbeatable, neurologically cemented for life?

Evolutionary speaking we are primed to preserve our resources, even psychic ones, not everyone can manage to grow psychologically or spiritually, shed their old identities, confront themselves via the other, create another romantic script from scratch instead of relying on the inherited ones.

Many are naturally drawn to self-preservation and identity consolidation - like clay that is glued and becomes hard to crack.

It burns a lot of psychic energy to re-arrange one-self when confronted with a new love script, someone who goes against the grain of what one used to do. If one had a psychologically fragile mother who needed a care-taker and that was the son, it will feel weird to be loved by a woman who asks nothing of him but presence… it will feel almost life threatening so what’s the solution? Find a romantic configuration that works similarly to the childhood one - a woman that needs him and centers him, just like mommy did, but now in a different way - the circumstances differ but the psychic function remains the same.

Funny enough this imbues him with aliveness and a sense of “I know how to be in this” it’s exhilarating and thrilling, reaffirms competence and identity… until it doesn’t.

In a strange way, besides familiarity and neurological sameness, human beings are also primed to evolve or in Carl Jung’s terms ‘individuate’, in plain words: grow psychologically not only chronologically. That includes - growing new love scripts.

It’s a leap of faith and courage that not many take… many people discover this reality inside the relationship and they ask consciously or unconsciously: “now that I found out I am attracted to you because I had unfinished business with mommy or daddy, can we survive moving to a new script that I am not even sure about myself”?

This is the point where couples confront reality, full force… psychology also makes it very clear: reality always breaks through defences, even decades after.

Couples that survive this reality test grow into adult lovers and experience an expansive love but, more often than not many couples break at this point, and many others rarely recognize the tension stemming from the lack of individuation. This tension and inner frustration is manifested in restlessness, betrayals of various kinds - emotional, physical… cheating, avoidance, anxiety, coldness and the list goes on.

The girl who chased the unavailable dad, grows tired chasing the elusive and highly charismatic lover even if on paper they are married for 7 years and share the same bed. The psyche seeks to grow and not remain trapped in an old script. Many make it, many don’t, many compartmentalize and decide they have it good enough, do not rock the boat.

For many the cost of changing the script and facing reality is higher than staying the same, finances, businesses and properties, kids!!! so they stay, many fear loneliness - peers getting married, social pressure mounts up, many have never even dared to look inside themselves and intimately know themselves.

To be in reality means to also know this about yourself, that your match is probably not one made in heaven but one chosen by your unconscious.

Choosing the familiar script has a dire cost and so does individuation. But, both lead to fundamentally different results.

By Hieronymus Bosch - This image has been extracted from another file, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=148816

Noticing patterns around me, I couldn’t help but spot how those who engage in questionable behaviours often tend to lack either or both: taste and literacy. Think of the MAGA signature look, think of the tech billionaires or technocrats sense of style; the Tesla car, Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg’s tacky fashion choices for fashion week in Paris and the horrendous botox on Lauren Sanchez, adding on this mix the Kardashian - Jenner family cozying up with the afore-mentioned and their signature curvatures enhanced by plastic surgeries and of course the synthetic look.

When it comes to taste, I tend to consult Voltaire who once wrote: “In order to have taste, it is not enough to see and to know what is beautiful in a given work. One must feel beauty and be moved by it.”

And when it comes to style I adhere to Bukowski who wrote:

“Style is the answer to everything. A fresh way to approach a dull or dangerous thing.
To do a dull thing with style is preferable to doing a dangerous thing without it.
To do a dangerous thing with style is what I call art.
Bullfighting can be an art.
Boxing can be an art.
Loving can be an art.
Opening a can of sardines can be an art.
Not many have style. Not many can keep style.
I have seen dogs with more style than men, although not many dogs have style.
Cats have it with abundance.
When Hemingway put his brains to the wall with a shotgun, that was style.
Or sometimes people give you style
Joan of Arc had style
John the Baptist
Jesus
Socrates
Caesar
García Lorca
I have met men in jail with style. I have met more men in jail with style than men out of jail. Style is the difference, a way of doing, a way of being done. Six herons standing quietly in a pool of water, or you, naked, walking out of the bathroom without seeing me.”
― Charles Bukowski

As Bukowski said, style has more to do with a mode of being rather with what someone puts on. Taste is an internal thing, style is an expressive thing and fashion is the thing that comes and goes.

In today’s heavily saturated social media as Maddy Perez would say - everyone can look ‘stylish’ - clean girl this, clean girl that, this aesthetic, that aesthetic. A movie about JFK Jr and Carolyn Bessette Kennedy that just recently came out this year was enough to have people on a chokehold about 90s minimalism which goes to show how today’s “style” is easily replicated and fabricated… and then it dies down just as easily to be replaced with the next viral trend that will last less than a month and so the cycle continues.

Coming to think of it, two years ago in every big European city I went to, from Budapest to Rome to Paris, there would be at least 10 people on a metro or tram who would have the hyped up Adidas samba or gazelle sneakers on. Now, for once I never owned a pair of those, they might be too comfy and that’s why people buy them, but something about the frequency of these shoes signaled to me that it was most likely because Dua Lipa and Bella Hadid, and a bunch of other influencers were seen wearing them and this created a chain reaction to the masses who want to emulate the same coolness and signal to all of us that they know what the zeitgeist is about.

Now, no shade in embodying the spirit of being cool, I remember when I was 12 years old when Rihanna obliterated the internet when she launched her famous bob, I loved it soo much that I made my aunt cut me that same bob hair style despite her resistance and her sound advice… which… in my natural curly hair looked disastrous… heinous really… nowhere near her perfectly sleek fabulous black bob. So, I get the spirit.

I get the spirit of my own mom who decided to pluck her eye-brows into thin ones in the very early 2000s because a makeup artist somewhere in America by the name Kevyn Aucoin decided to pluck the heck out of Cindy Crawford’s and Kate Moss’s eyebrows in collab with designer Isaac Mizrahi, which marked the start of an era emulated by masses world-wide, including my mom from a very tiny city called Prishtina in southeast of Europe. Needless to say, my mom’s eyebrows never came back as before after that, so she learned a hard lesson on cyclical fashion trends.

My critique is not here about the trends and how all of us fall somewhere in between, just like my 12 year old self and my obsession with Rihanna’s bob and what is now my obsession with Azzedine Alaïa under Pieter Mulier couture pieces, and Issey Miyake’s couture pieces from 1996 and 2006 - which mind you, I cannot afford.

Before all the social media fuss, celebrities and intellectuals curated their own style, which now looking back feels like a breath of fresh air because their style often reflects an authentic way of being which influenced art and politics.

Fashion is always a bit political as the now ex-mother of Vogue Anna Wintour emphasized: “If you look at any great fashion photograph out of context, it will tell you just as much about what’s going on in the world as a headline in The New York Times.”

Some of the most renown artists and intellectuals curated a sense of style that is unique to them, a canvas that often served to highlight what they stood up for or stood against.

Think of Sade and her sleek back hair with large hoop earrings and a bold lip, her clean tailoring and minimalism that defines her as an icon of smooth soul and sophisticated pop. In my eyes, one of the most un-problematic celeb icons. Audrey Hepburn with her minimalistic black dress and ballet flats, introduced in Hollywood complex femininity compared to fixed feminine archetypes as previously seen in Marilyn Monroe for instance. One cannot forget David Bowie, a trailblazer in fashion, a man of taste who’s style reflected his ideas towards LGBTQ+ rights and anti-racism. Fran Lebowitz, the true New Yorker archetype, a woman wearing the same uniform for decades mirroring her sharp, opinionated writing alongside her lack of need to chase novelty and trends. In the same vein, to a large degree - Susan Sontag’s understated style with heavy black clothing reflecting her resistance to trend cycles, decorative femininity norms and excess, which mirrors her views on her famous essay Notes on Camp. And my favorite philosopher to this day Albert Camus, his restrained style, clean lines, no decorum, that almost mirrors his philosophy of facing life without illusions: bare - clean - lucid, no fuss. I am closing this epic line up with the great Frida Kahlo and her traditional ‘Tehuana’ dress which wasn’t just aesthetic preference but political and cultural, mainly rejecting the euro-centric beauty standards, holding an anti-colonialism stance in support of indigenous culture and embracing her Mexican roots.

(Frida Kahlo found in the Tehuana dress, late 1920s)

Now, I can go on and on with examples but you get the idea. I am refraining from making generalizations yet, when it comes to figures like the ones mentioned above taste, literacy, and morality seem to go hand in hand (as far as I could check with my background research skills).

In other words, none of these figures have been spotted to be in the “wrong” side of history, either supporting harmful ideologies like fascism or right wing authoritarianism or as I put earlier showcasing morally corrupt or exploitative behaviours.

The stark contrast between the afore-mentioned and say for instance someone like Donald Trump who engages in harmful - illegal practices to put it mildly, which unsurprisingly is reflected on his own style and that of his followers; orange as a dominant color palette, exaggerated symbols, on your face kind of - repetitive logos, the golden gilded - ostentatious - kitsch details he covered the White House with and the list goes on.

The same aesthetic seems to be embraced by the majority of Trump’s cabinet and his MAGA base as perfectly depicted by photographer Christopher Anderson for Vanity Fair where he did some pretty good close ups, which if I was Caroline Levitt would piss me off greatly. The orange conturing makeup? Really? The lip injection marks?

(Caroline Levitt by Christopher Anderson for Vanity Fair, 2025)

The tacky fashion choices by the tech bros also aligns well with their exploitative practices in their respective fields, from the Palantir CEO Alex Karp to Sam Altman from OpenAI, nothing about their style hints at standing in the right side of history, more like the opposite.

For instance, Palantir, a software company that integrates, organizes and provides AI tools to companies and governments is found to help Trump’s government with ICE in their illegal anti-immigration acts by tracking and targeting civilians and raiding work-places. Palantir as a company found on immoral and corrupt values, also has been crucial in helping the Israeli government by providing advanced AI driven analytics and targeting systems for IDF (Israeli Defence Forces) in committing war crimes and genocide in Gaza, Palestine.

Similarly, Sam Altman from OpenAI, has been under fire for his company’s illegal practices using NDA’s that prevent employees in reporting safety risks and other illegal practices to federal bodies. As if this wasn’t enough, he has recently been accused by his own sister for alleged sexual abuse and rape.

I won’t go through all of the tech-bros and scrutinise their taste and style, it’s obvious by now that they have neither taste nor morals.

What makes this tragico-comical is that they seem to be aware of this bitter truth. Recently, as I was reading The New Yorker on my commute to work, I stumbled upon this article piece titled: “Why tech bros are now obsessed with taste", apparently according to the writer: “Taste is inherently profitable; it is the ability to discern what will make the most money”

and continues:

“Now A.I. companies are attempting to hitch themselves to a similar aura of artisanality, even as their core products promise to automate all that is human into obsolescence”

“We might call what’s going on now “taste-washing,” an attempt to give anti-humanist technologies a veneer of liberal humanism”.

In layman terms, these tech bros know how tasteless they are; both stylistically and morally, so now they want to desperately emulate coolness for profit. Needless to say a robot will never be able to look as cool as Marvin Gaye a.k.a prince of Soul looked with his orange beanie, the legacy of which now continues with Kendrick Lamar, Tyler the Creator, André 3000, and Donald Glover.

(Marvin Gaye in the orange/red orange beanie)

But, what about cases where one has great aesthetic taste and genius level literacy and abhorrent morals?

That seems to be the case with Picasso my darlings.

Pablo Picasso, who is considered one of the great giants of Art and of Cubism - as an art movement… few know that aside from the ‘genius’ Pablo was a prolific abuser of women, and especially those he called “muses” who served as sources of inspiration for his artistry. He was found beating them and mistreating them, so much so that it drove one to suicide.

(Pablo Picasso in his studio, 1956)

In this example, Pablo may have had full style - impeccable really, marking the 20th century with his artistic genius yet, fundamentally lacking moral literacy.

Unfortunately there are many examples like Pablo, which is a pity really… makes one shout in the spirit of Tyra Banks: “I was rooting for you, we were all rooting for you, how dare you!”

There is a bit of this and a bit of that when it comes to taste, literacy and morality… but if I was to bet on someone, the favours would be on the side of those who have an eye for beauty and a sense of style as described by Bukowski.

References:
Wintour, A. (2006, May 27). Quoted in Brockes, E. What lies beneath. The Guardian.
https://www.vogue.co.uk/article/picasso-sexism
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/infinite-scroll/why-tech-bros-are-now-obsessed-with-taste?_sp=fd32a9d0-6056-4ae0-8a06-cbe44a449ea3.1777660012259

One that lived by Eros when yearning wasn’t hyped up yet…

Real yearners are forged… often with pain with no volition of theirs, real yearners have no other choice but to cling to life for their dear life.

In Greek mythology the God Eros was the primordial force of creation… later on in Freudian psychology Eros came to be knows as the life force… opposite of death force (Thanatos).

To be erotic is to say yes to life one more time and another, and another. In Charlie xcx’s words: fall in love again and again and again…

The human condition is absurd… ask Sisyphus. None seems to get out alive.
For the woman that lives with Eros she imagines Sisyphus not happy, but in love. So much so, that the rock becomes a honourable task. Love’s labour.

To live with eros is not a glamorous endeavour, eros doesn’t mean glitter and pink hearts nor visible stars from tropical paradises. To live with eros means to live at the edge of everything that terrifies you and still shockingly whisper all at once: I want this. It’s an anti-fantasy position. It’s a silent prayer for more life, and life is rugged, unpredictable, wild, untamable, with twists and turns that can easily lead one to psychosis. The woman who had it all, has been through soo many dark nights of the soul, there is no coming back from there. Heathcliff says: “Let us both be damned”. And she is damned… Forever.

The woman that lives with eros has it all, the bliss, the boredom and terror, she wouldn’t want it otherwise. Once her heart cracks open there is no turning back to safe cushions, mediocrity and the predictable. Mind you, an erotic woman is not chasing chaos or destructive passion, she is the femme fatale’s anti-hero. She is not the sullen, cigarette between the lips, sharp black eye liner with a devastating stare like the muses of Jean-Luc Godard in film noir, nor is she the damsel in distress waiting in perpetuity to be chosen after proving her worth persistently as a domesticated icon. She is of the likes of Anaïs Nin… and she - Anaïs Nin once said: “I look quiet and consistent, but few know how many women there are in me”.

The erotic woman doesn’t belong anymore with love contracts that require her to perform emotional theatrics to secure one’s attention and to imbue her lover with meaning, purpose or identity; as a saviour, hero, or a victim that needs rescuing. She embraces eros that requires realness of its highest order, she knows that once you place a role to the lover, she is only as good as a puppet master is and the age of playing with marionettes is over.

She doesn’t go above and beyond to figure out what the man was lacking in childhood or what did he do best, so as to open a job position for him in her heart and give him a false sense of manhood, a ‘raison d’être’ if you may. She need not degrade and render her man in such infantile position to keep him. These subtle acts of control do not excite her anymore. She comes undone which paradoxically doesn’t leave much room for anything else but… truth.

The erotic woman through pain has trespassed the archetypes of the wounded feminine, still operating from societal scripts that cast women as eternal nourishers or the second sex, and any variations between the two. There are no scripts left that she hasn’t dismantled and torn apart in the search for truth. She is an insatiable beast for truth, this is perhaps her greatest sin. Dostoevsky can’t say to her: “And your greatest sin is that you have betrayed yourself for nothing”, because it’s for life itself, so she imagines Dostoevsky smiling at her - as best a Russian can.

The dance of love running away and she chasing after it in Carrie Bradshaw-esque fashion doesn’t do it for her anymore, excessive cryings and shoutings, dozens of messages sent in a row or sudden withdrawals to prove a point… neither satisfy her anymore, knowing the genesis of these crutches, they become boring and sterile. The woman who had it all says: I have no safe crutches to hold on to, no neural pathways that I inherited as a little girl to please mommy and daddy, I have grown new ones without killing the old ones, can you have both of me?

The woman who had it all, is not a sado-masochist, she has discovered what it is to love without projections, no past and no future ones, with no guarantees. Just as love comes with no warning, it can go but she won’t look away. She never says no to life, even if that means death in the process.

The woman who had it all knows that resting fully on the unconscious wishes for love means betraying the lover and love itself. It means reenacting roles she learned way too well. If she was daddy’s little princess she risks using her physical beauty and charms into securing love from men in the same way, if she was the emotional care taker, she risks winning the lover in the same way she won the distressed mother who in return told her: my precious little one. She is not blank, she has turned the page and the new one is all white, she refuses to ink it with anything else but truth.

So she asks: How many identities have you shed?
Do not spoil me she says by attaching to me roles I did not ask for, do not run away from me disappointed and disillusioned when I refuse to love you in your illusions. Do not turn my voice into stone and my words into spitting poison. Do not get the ‘ick’ when I don’t turn out to be the perfect woman you conjured of me, I am indeed a mortal.

The woman who had it all has already devalued society’s mores that give women roles, she refuses to step into those just to obey the times… Mmmm, no, not recklessly, not to prove a point, this is not a cheap fleeting rebellious act nor an ideological possession, everything is observed, thought through and carefully dissected. She refuses to live a life just to get by, to survive, to comply, which has proven to be a sufferable existence filled with its own chaos, unknowns and fears. Yet, profoundly erotic. Why? Because she believes true freedom lies in chosen responsibility and her responsibility now is Eros.

The woman that had it all lives seeing others around her settling, matches made in childhood not in heaven, people getting what they didn’t get from mommy and daddy without inspection and calling that ‘unconditional love’, trying desperately to change those scripts not knowing they are falling for the script behind the script… She lives witnessing the human fear of loneliness which makes masses cluster together in making use of their ‘prime’ time to secure a mate and satisfy existential needs. Don’t get me wrong, she is not above those, never was, she belongs to the animal race too - she is very carnal too, she simply wants those not out of fear but out of eros and eros is the life force, not the fear force. Fear contracts, creation expands.

Death is real… love is real… and she has tasted both.
The woman who had it all, lives for an un-orchestrated love, the love that one cannot call forth, love that shakes you when it arrives, not one you carefully plan out based on logistics and value systems that one dismantles in 2 years time or less, not one you crush over for ages and make a monolith out of it filled with projected infantile fantasies, not one you fall for out of habit. Contrary to popular belief, she doesn’t need ‘the safe’ lover - no matter how much this idea is shoved down her throat, she doesn’t need someone to just do life with, nor a partner in the La La Land where magical thinking reigns supreme. She needs a witnesser in bliss, terror and boredom.

Can you see me as I am she asks and can I see you? I promise we can still sit in the sun and entertain boredom with silence or a cup of coffee and make it grand, still.

The yearner knows that if you chose to love, you sign up immediately for loss and profound grief. There is no life hack for this one. Alongside bliss, the terror lies in the full knowledge that the other may die or hurt you badly yet, yearners do not insult love and eros by giving up. Yearners are not Orpheus-es giving up on their Eurydice. Yearners know that giving one’s heart away after it may have been shattered to pieces is a horrible insane move and a heroic act at the same time. An act that has defied the times since the medieval era.

The woman who had it all is a mad woman and the most loyal mistress of truth. Lunatic enough to embrace Žižek’s love as a violent event. That’s what yearners are for. Yearn until you choke, and then once more, if you have the guts.

To be the woman who had it all means to be leaning in to the most earth shattering love with softness knowing it will break you open with no guarantees of becoming whole again. And she says: yes, yes, yes, yes… several times with the same tone and pitch every-time getting softer and deeper, until there is no more voice left.

The woman who had it all is the woman who remembers and forges memories without taking them for granted, not for a second, life can be lost in seconds and she knows it. You only have now. Eros as a life force is not to be wasted. The heart who remembers grows with each memory, sensation, it expands far enough to be lost in the wilderness and to trust in its wholeness, even as it’s torn to pieces. The woman who lives with eros is a regenerative muse.

The woman who had it all remembers what it is to count floors before her lover gets out of the elevator in pure silent ecstasy, the pure joy of not saying much just rejoicing in the warm embrace of their arms. She lives in the glory and agony of seeing how marvellous her lover is, the burning brown eyes, the laughter, the strands of hair entangled in her fingers. The slight eyebrow raise when captivated, and the widened eye pupils when proud, the lower lip fuller then the upper one. The trembling voice, the concerned look that hides the terror of being found out lost in pleasure, the hidden glances shying away from love and coming towards it, the trepidations, the silences that shout more than screams.

The: “I become aware of my own body when you touch it, I am more aware of who I am when you touch me and introduce me to me” she knows what Emily Brontë meant when she said: “You are more myself than I am”.

She is alive to remember everything fully… a fully stretched out heart like hers receives everything when there is no point in talking. She steps in on the fire voluntarily knowing she will be burnt, that’s crazier than screaming on the phone “why didn’t you pick up” or causing a very vivid jealous scene… thats child’s game for her now. She says this not with cockiness or pride, just as a stated truth for her, as once upon a time she would give everything to stay and play that game, whilst the erotic one felt like death, like surrendering to hell itself.

The woman who had it all can absolutely marvel for ages at her lover’s smile lines, the tip of their nose, the grit in their voice, all the different eye-brow movements, the joy in their faces, all the colours of their spirit, she basks in it all and life smiles back at her. Her kisses are not a consuming act, they are little chants in each check and each arm. A kiss of hers is a prayer for preservation of life in all of its beauty. Her loves artistry lies in her boldness to reject everything and anything that mimics love but is nothing short of human frailty for a bit of closeness. Again, she is not above this primordial ancient need, she is not Nietzsche’s Übermensch, but she is heavily against debasement of love even when done innocently, which comes with a tiny bit of boldness in a giant pool of people who make no such distinctions.

It’s the same boldness that makes her able to look at the ugly with just as much presence, to look at the lover without trembling, in truth, as they set everything on fire, including her.

Those who don’t yearn do not sign up for the ugly, they innocently delude themselves whilst in the high of delirious infatuations, they claim that they can sustain the fire, but once it starts burning they run away. The woman who had it all asks: How old is your heart? How many times did you have to grow it back? How many times it died?

She knows she will get alive eventually from the burning fire because she has given and appreciated the life force which will replenish her even if she never reaches the end, even if she is burned to a crisp, even if there is no light at the end of the tunnel, even if no lover arrives. Yet, she is excited to the thought of it, of doing it all over again. Charlie chanting on her ear: fall in love again and again, and again, again, and again.

The woman who had it all, has it all because she hasn’t been shy on giving. And her only regret? She should have given more… said more… indulged more... loved more and then BURN!

All of the examples used in this series are carefully distorted without revealing the real details of people who lived them.

Alright, we are completing this edition with the last circle which happens to be the first, in Dante’s Inferno it is: Limbo, in this edition it is called longing and I will illustrate why.

After finishing college, Ben was questioning himself: what now?

A question we ask often after each major achievement or celebration… the dopamine kind of drops and with it the excitement we felt. It’s easy to mistake this stage for boredom.

Not knowing what comes next or what one should do next, makes for a very frustrating situation to be in. For Ben, this manifested in a sense of lost meaning, where he now doesn’t know what to do with his life, the finished degree wasn’t one that elevated his spirits, it was one he had to finish for the sake of having a degree… and he was so frank about it.

Now, Ben is really left wondering what comes next, but with each question he kind of suffocates inside the questions and finds no way of getting out… this is where self-analysis becomes hellish.

In all of us, there is a silent hidden unconscious wish to remain in an infantile position… what I mean? When we are children, the world seems vast and full of opportunities, we are joyful and optimistic, we are held by the belief that the world is a good place, our naivete flourishes.

As soon as we have to grow up, the disillusionment begins and growing up is not a task that comes with puppies and rainbows, it comes with dreadful responsibilities.

The most important of those being: figuring out a sense of meaning or purpose. For Ben, this created a feeling of vertigo, at least psychological vertigo. This is why he needed to talk to someone, that someone was me.

Everyone keeps talking about meaning and purpose but, finding those for some people is like searching for a needle in haystack.

Some are blessed with having found their purpose and meaning early on, some grew to be singers cause they loved singing since they were 5, some others liked skiing because they grew up near the mountains… some like Ben, still don’t know and maybe they will never fully know.

For him, this was a feeling of unfinished business, as if he has to find what he must do, but on the other hand he doesn’t even have a manual, a map… he is lost. The everlasting sensation of having to figure out and not knowing how… being hyper aware for the passage of time doesn’t make this process in any way easier.

With him there is a sense of loss also, loss of having had a map, a safe cushion from when he was a child… A sense of lost innocence.

In Dante’s Limbo people are there because they have failed to connect to the divine - God. These are the rational philosophers like Socrates even noble beings but who are disoriented and incomplete. They are in the first circle of hell because they are eternally separated from God.

Now, what is Ben doing here?

As you may know the psych. edition of hell often finds people with no fault or moral wrong doing of their own. Ben is here in the first because the sense of longing for a period that was certain for him like that of teenage hood and childhood has left him feeling disoriented. Similar to those punished in Dantes inferno living in a perpetual sense of incompleteness, young Ben, is feeling the same uncomfortable ache. There is no fire, no chaos, no rage, just a constant hum of ‘not knowing’ which way to go.

Ben doesn’t belong anymore in a stage of solid identity which gave him safety, he has embarked in a different journey, and that is accompanied by sorrow, longing for coherence that must be created by him now and it is dreadful.

With Ben, we embarked on a journey of welcoming the stage of adulthood as hellish and disorienting as it was for him, together we created some rituals. People need rituals when saying ‘goodbye’ to something, it helps the brain conclude and move forward. We did so with Ben, the journey is still to be continued… but safe to say:

…Welcome back Ben, you have made it out of the Limbo

William Blake: Illustrations to Dante's Divine Comedy object 3 Bulletin 812-2 Dante and Virgil Penetrating the Forest

All of the examples used in this series are carefully distorted without revealing the real details of people who lived them.

What damage can come from being too conventionally attractive one asks?

Ariana would disagree and have a lot to say, that’s why she came to talk to me. As a young woman who was battling a lot in her romantic relationships without knowing the source of such sufferings, the discomfort was excruciating and she has reached the tipping point.

Ariana would tell me how each of her close and romantic relationships ends pretty badly leaving her scarred for life. The genesis was unknown but we began to detangle everything together.

As each story of pain starts somewhere, Ariana’s started in her teenage years.
Being severely bullied for her looks, having had braces, being skinny as a stick with bangs that covered her eyes and on top of that having acne all over her face - this was a misery that none prepared her for.

She didn’t have it easier at home either being fully ridiculed by her siblings who were older than her, they would make her life in her words - a living hell, joking and mocking her looks in nasty ways just as siblings tend to do. She was loved by her parents but most of the time those were preoccupied with other things like work.

Ariana tells me that during teenage years she was in deep depression that she would cry everyday and would fail her classes, her depression was soo big that she would even contemplate suicide, but never acted on it.

Fast forward moving, Ariana is in her final year of high school where the brutal stage of puberty finally sets her free. She experiences a lot of changes all at once, hormonal and physical ones. She removed her braces, her skin cleared up, she added weight due to hormonal fluctuations and her feminine curvature also defined.

This change came both as a shock for her and her bullies. For anyone who has gone through bullying at a sensitive developmental stage knows the hurt and pain that comes with it.

Ariana wasn’t used with that much attention, suddenly people who would despise her and mock her started looking at her differently, some of them even expressed liking towards her. Female friends who would ridicule her, started becoming passively mean at her. In other words, she was being noticed and not anymore for her braces but for her beauty.

At first, Ariana was imbued with all of the good feelings of self-esteem and public validation especially coming from guys, however she never learned how to navigate this kind of attention and praise… obviously at her age she didn’t have the right tools to do so and the attention came in abundance, it was overwhelming for her.

Guys she crushed on for years and never noticed her started paying attention. It was intoxicating for her. She started leaning in on her new identity as a young attractive girl.

With time she would secure the attention of guys, go out with them, and engage intimately with them. However, often these guys would like to just experience her as this beautiful attractive girl and Ariana would be left heartbroken.

She thought this was just a phase, but later on the pattern kept repeating even in her early 20s. Guys upon meeting her would be smitten by her then retreat. She was almost convinced this is the curse of the beautiful, and none is able to meet her beyond her outside facade.

Being heartbroken each and every time, Ariana was exhausted, burnt out and disillusioned. Having been objectified for soo long, she was almost convinced no one will ever love her for who she is.

We are now here at Dantes circle 2 - lust, where those who placed pleasure first over all else were punished. They are unable to rest or control their direction as they are forever swept in an endless storm.

But, what is Ariana doing here?

She is not in the 2nd due to overdoing lust - she is here because she has been lusted to the point of feeling reduced to a pretty face and a nice body. She is here fighting with the storm of her identity which is fundamentally shaken and rootless. As you may know in psychology edition, people end up in hell often by no volition of theirs.

The pain of having been lusted over for a long time and leaning in to feel accepted and wanted, feels like hell now for Ariana. Needing the validation as every other human being, and getting rejection and bullying for a long time, have made her succumb to the slightest sign of admiration which turns into pain shortly after.

For her, this was a happening, a misfortune, her bad luck, but it never occurred to her that she is selecting these relationships influenced by previous traumatic experiences which are usually coping mechanisms that need re-conditioning.

It took us a while to discover a more authentic response for Ariana, one that filtered out people who only gathered around her like a moths to a flame - to her beauty, and train her mind/body to get used with meeting her needs and being with people who would also value other beautiful parts of her being.

…Welcome back Ariana, you have made it out of circle 2

Not Dante’s circle 2 illustration but, Rodin's The Kiss which depicts Francesa da Rimini and Paolo Malatesta, damned to the second circle of hell - Lust. (And one of my personal fave works of art).

This was the case with Mira, from joining marathons and half marathons, to samba dancing, to climbing, to acting, to fashion and the list goes on, she was trying to cope and regulate something… what was this something neither of us knew, but she came to see me in hopes that we would figure it out together.

Mira never considered that she may be avoiding or running away from something. All of the activities she was participating in gave her tremendous joy, until they didn’t…

She was convinced she is going through something, it was just a phase she said to herself, but this never went away really… she attributed her inner chronic dissatisfaction to everything she could think of; maybe it was the country she lived in, maybe her relationship, maybe the weather, maybe her diet… and so on.

When she ran out of rationalisations and explanations she was left with one option:
to dig a bit deeper into herself.

Mira was someone who was always on the go, always busy, always doing and rarely resting. This was energising, she felt productive and like a superwoman. If she finished the marathon, it was then time for a swimming competition - which she would nail.

Needless to say, for Mira compliments and social validation came in abundance.
Yet, what’s with this chronic dissatisfaction? Mira cannot point the finger at.

On the first look everything seemed quite alright for Mira, but with time the things she would be passionate about and energetic, would turn into flat and boring chores that she couldn’t stand and eventually people around her started noticing too.

Her restlessness was visible, and somehow she didn’t seem to be satisfied with anything she did, her happiness was very short lived and her life started becoming this pendulum swing - from excited to flat - and each crash left her burnt out in the end.

What started as mild dissatisfaction turned into existential questioning. For Mira, being one that never questioned her life but simply lived it, this sense of burn out didn’t make any sense. She had everything… so, in her words “why Am I acting so bratty?”

Mira, for the first two decades of her life had been listening to her parents guidance as she had a very good relationship with them, and hence her professional aims aligned perfectly with her parents wishes. But, later on Mira never questioned her choices nor her purpose in life.

As we talked together, she would notice her hidden wishes that she never told anyone. The lack of meaning in her life despite her achievements, the hidden emptiness that she managed to nicely hide with all of her hobbies and avoided like the plague.
Once you are awaken to that knowing, one can’t go back to hiding.

It was a painful sight for Mira to confront her un-examined life, the yearning to turn inward instead of masking with one activity after another with no brakes.

As a matter of fact, she was also being quite disturbed by the same repeated dreams that would mimic this inner dissatisfaction.

Dante’s third circle is called: Gluttony, where people who are governed by their appetite and over-consumption of goods end up and suffer.

But, what is Mira doing here?

Mira is not gluttonous in Dantes sense, but rather compulsive which manifests as overindulging in activities and hobbies to avoid inner discomfort, to avoid psychic confrontation with herself, and as a result she suffers in silence. Instead of being ‘filled’ inside, she is empty inside.

A feeling of wasting her potential and time, almost as if life is eating her and consuming her every day as she approaches death closer. She is restless but, doesn’t see know how to stop, there is a constant hum in her that only she hears and that’s the voice of dissatisfaction of un-lived dreams which she immediately shuts down by engaging in 2-3 or more activities at the same time just to avoid listening to herself.

Mira is overindulging in avoidance masqueraded as productivity, and that’s why she is in the third circle. Instead of these niches nourishing her, the overindulgence in productivity to escape herself has turned Mira into a shell of herself. She is lost not in Dantes icy mud, but in the numbness that she internally feels, yet avoids by doing more externally.

The search for meaning and purpose for Mira wasn’t easy, as time passed by she would tell me how she had been thinking about joining a volunteer group that works in helping abandoned children, something she never considered before, yet the thought scared her more than training for a marathon.

Safe to say

…Welcome back Mira, you have made it out of the third circle of Gluttony

From the William Blake Archives: The Circle of the Gluttons with Cerberus, Object 11

All of the examples used in this series are carefully distorted without revealing the real details of people who lived them.

In many instances what appears as a positive adaptation is coated with fears and hidden wishes, which only later become conscious.

This was the case with Willy, late in his 40s, with a successful career that afforded him 6 figures, conventionally handsome, with side hustles that also secured him high status in society. Willy had it all, on paper at least.

The reason he wanted to talk with me was simple; he couldn’t make his romantic relationships last and he doesn’t know why, he wanted marriage and kids… desperately.

For some reason he wasn’t able to achieve this dream, and the success he earns professionally wasn’t hitting as hard anymore since the locus of desire has shifted.

As per the usual ritual, we visited childhood, this famous place which therapists always like to consider first. Rite of passage I guess. We stoped by, and we figured that it was very important for Willy to perform in his early childhood, by being a good student, by winning medals, by being number one in competitions. After he would perform there would be the reward from his parents either in the shape of a nice word, a hug or a nice toy. This is how Willy learned he has value as a human being and as a son, other forms of validation weren’t present for him.

Willy was raised in a culture and society were men in order to be respected and valued they had to work hard, have the best car, nice house, and make good money which then would contribute in them making a name for themselves which then would lead to an identity consolidation which then provided them with status and power. This was the deal.

For some reason this deal wasn’t working anymore for him after he changed countries for work reasons as his business ventures expanded more and more. Willy, didn’t want the superficial attention that he could secure by dating casually, as he said before he wanted more.

Fast forward moving, Willy found himself in a marathon-like dating period, where he was going out with woman after woman to maximize his chances for finding in his words “a wife”, as time for him was running fast. The more he tried the more he faced set backs, ultimately he would find himself going out with women that he wasn’t even liking and would end up disappointed.

In a strange way, Willy was never fazed by women who tried to want him for who he was, as soon as he wouldn’t be praised for his titles and achievements something felt off and he couldn’t point the finger as to what. He knew logically that he would blow up very ‘good’ relationship, these women’s praise or love wouldn’t land for him, it would feel flat somehow, in an unexplainable way.

In his words, for women he didn’t have to “work for” or earn their affection he would feel unworthy of their presence, hence his impulse would be to end it, as this didn’t feel like love to him.

The relationships that felt most exhilarating to him were those were it was clear since the start that the woman was demanding of his time, his money, his presence all at once. That’s how he knew he is desired, but somehow these relationships never seemed to last since Willy would end up feeling resentful for being wanted precisely for the same reasons that exhilarating him.

Willy would find himself indulging his partners in lavish gifts, expensive getaways, and he would accelerate those anytime he perceived risk of his partner breaking up with him, which would leave him feeling used only for his resources. Willy has found a way to control and secure the presence of the women in his life yet, this has proven to be a very good recipe for self-abandonment in the end.

In Dante’s Inferno circle 4 is called “Greed”, occupied by people who are obsessed by material goods, where their fixation with material goods a becomes meaningless motion, where the love for wealth replaced their personhood.

Now, what is Willy doing here, this hard working gentleman who seems to have found a way to secure love and affection via the material goods?

Willy is here in the 4th not because he has given up his personhood voluntarily but because his personhood aside from the performative self was never recognised. Now, he almost blindly seeks affection and attention in the same way that once was give via: performance.

Willy is here because he suffers the self-abandonment that he keeps receiving in the end over and over again when he discovers that the early strategy of securing love proves futile

In Dante’s 4th people are seen pushing heavy weights with material goods as punishment for their excess, everyone rolling on top of each other painfully. Here is Willy who is not pushing heavy weights filled with money bags, rather he is fighting with self-abandonment over and over again, rejection that pierces through him and leaves him shaken questioning himself: what’s wrong with him.

For Willy, accomplishments and material goods have been advertised as a sure way to secure affection and love which all relational beings need, however, in pursuit of that he has created for himself a fixed identity organised around control through superficial goods.

It was hard to unlearn a mode of being which has persisted with him since he knows himself and has been carried out all the way into adulthood, it meant getting used to relating to people without control via the material, but showing up without ‘flexing’ and seeing how is he being received, beginnings are always the hardest but staying in the 4th is harder.

…Welcome back Willy, you have made it out of the 4th circle of Greed

Gustave Doré's illustration to Dante's Inferno. Plate XXII: Canto VII: The hoarders and wasters. "For all the gold that is beneath the moon, / Or ever has been, of these weary souls / Could never make a single one repose"

All of the examples used in this series are carefully distorted without revealing the real details of people who lived them.

Carl Jung once said “God enters through the wound”, yet for James only anger came from the wound, nothing else… really nothing else.

Probably one of the most insidious and boring idea one learns from Psychology is that we as relational species tend to organise our lives through childhood contracts that we never renew. Those contracts become identities and once that happens we call that ‘self’.

James in his request as to why he was seeking psychotherapeutic counselling highlighted that he is “an angry person” and he would like to change that about himself. Not to correct him, but those captions rarely stand true…

Upon receiving James, his presentation is immaculate - comes in the office right in time, very respectful and soft spoken and almost timid in his first presentation. Hard to imagine an angry person in him, yet one had to take James on his word.

As we begin conversing together, James tells me how his relationship with his boss at work is soo tense that he is at the verge of resigning, yet he didn’t want to resign, he loved his job in finance and had been working super hard for it, now he risks throwing everything, meaning years of hard work in the trash bin.

I ask James what his anger looks like? The question takes him aback… he says well; I feel my chest tightening, I feel red in the face, I have to isolate myself and stay by myself for as long as I can to clam myself down.

So, no punches I say?

He says no, I just eat myself alive.

Sounds like a hell of a strategy I say… the snake eating his own tail comes to mind I say… He laughs.

After a while, we cruised around childhood as usual - this famous destination… James grew up as the only son in a family of three with two lawyers as parents. (Aren’t we already onto a good start)?

Glee aside, James wasn’t raised by two lawyers, but by two people who had a very punitive style of parenting.

What I mean by that is that he had a very narrow window for self-autonomy and freedom. He had to obey as a child very strict rules, schedules and timings. Little to no effort was made to listen to his inner world and nourish it. Even if he made any mistakes they were overly scrutinized and no room for much error was left, just as no room for organic self-expression of negative emotions was left.

Growing up, James had a hard time standing up for himself, many times he found himself being bullied by other guys at school and went home humiliated. Disobeying parents in his teenage years was hard for James “the rebellion stage” in adolescence was never fully activated for James. In him, there was lots of anger harboured with no where to go he carried with him ancient wrath that became more and more corrosive as time went on.

In his relationships, when his partner would disagree with him, James registered that as deep profound rejection of him cause that’s what he felt from his parents; trapped, no exercise of his agency allowed, no freedom of thought nor healthy disagreement.

He would grow resentful and hateful towards his partners with no ability to separate the issue at hand from him being rejected as a whole being, there was no distinction for him. He would never confront his partner, but rather self isolate and allow resentment to fester along the way, until it lead to the collapse of that relationship.

Fast forward moving, with his boss things have been grave and almost beyond repair. James sees no way out, besides to leave his job. For someone having had no proper modelling of healthy disagreements, freedom of expression without conditions, liberty of exercising his own agency, navigating conflict big or small seemed an impossible task. In his words: “I would probably climb Mount Everest with much more ease than doing this”.

Dante’s circle 5 called Wrath consists of people who are angry and resentful, who lived in open hostility towards others and themselves, who were aggressive to others and themselves. They are thrown in the river Styx which is thick, muddy and swampy and they fight each other there.

But, what is James doing here?

As you may already know, the psychological version of Hell is one where you end up at, sometimes with no volition of your own. James, had never renewed the contract with his parents, therefore, he didn’t know that he can say NO to people, that he can negotiate his choices, that relationships do not have to end when disagreements appear, that allowing anger as part of the human emotional repertoire will be handled and regulated with the people who have the tools for that. In other words, safety was never an option for James.

James was never told that anger is a signal that something inside of him was being shrunken and dismissed, that his body was waving at him in desperation for him to notice it, instead he received punishment and never dared to exercise his right to: anger and repair.

In our meetings James was allowed to recognise all the times he was not able to exercise his agency, and encouraged to do so. There was tremendous grief for the missed opportunities as well as the un-lived life taken away by resentment and inner anger, this swamp was heavy and smothering.

James could for the first time shout, swear and say all the things he couldn’t before. At one point he even got angry at me for “challenging him more than what was needed” - which turned out to be a very productive thing in the end.

James is in the muddy swampy river Styx filled with all of the lessons he never got from childhood, opportunities that were never presented to him, a nervous system that was never regulated and invited to repair after rupture, relationships that felt suffocating as they were replicas of his prior familial conditioning. This was one giant muddy river with thick claws that we had to remove together one by one.

…Welcome back James you have made it out of the Styx

The fifth circle Wrath illustrated by Stradanus. By Stradanus - Own work, 2007-10-25, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2981888

All of the examples used in this series are carefully distorted without revealing the real details of people who lived them.

Many of us exercise several identities throughout our lives, some of those we hold on dearly and some we have to discard.

For Lizzie, one particular identity stuck with her and not in a good way. She appears joyful, vibrant a warm presence, very ‘sunny’ person. I call ‘sunny’ those who light up the room with no apparent effort on their part. Lizzie was one of those people.

For her entire life however, she has believed herself to be: a difficult person. She has carried this ‘badge’ for her entire 30 years of her life. Now, it had started making her life unbearable. Lizzie has lost touch with who she really is and her idea of herself, this is very disorienting and painful.

Lizzie’s life is marked by departures, by ruptures and by collapse of her relationships. Friendships and partnerships alike. Each time Lizzie is devastated even though she always hopes that this time will be different, and it never is.

As one is never surprised to learn all of this business started out in childhood. Freud would be extremely pleased to see how his idea on repetition compulsion stands the test of time. It will be clearer why Freud is mentioned here but that aside for a moment and back to Lizzie.

This identity given to Lizzie as “difficult” didn’t fall off the sky, this is what Lizzie has been hearing since she was a very young child.

Every time she woke up to have breakfast there was the usual: toasted bread, butter and marmalade waiting for her on the table at 9:00 am sharp. Lizzie has been telling her parents that she doesn’t like it and if she can eat something else but, they never listened, instead forced her to eat it all. Sometimes she would throw it away if they weren’t looking and pretend she ate it. Sometimes she would throw the plate away in anger, this never ended well. This attitude made Lizzie “difficult” for her parents and especially her mom.

With no way of challenging their absolute authority Lizzie felt her mom’s dissatisfaction with her, as every child she was inclined to please her and hence restore her image in her eyes, it never worked she got yelled and scolded instead.

Later on there were more things she had to comply on, like for instance playing the piano which she also grew to hate because her mom would force her to learn it and any disobedience would cost her. This didn’t stop there, she also had to do swimming and a bunch of others activities without no question.

It became harder and harder for Lizzie to cheat her way out of those activities as she sometimes would succeed with the breaded marmalade. She once sabotaged her piano play by not showing up for her performance which made her mom furious, but she failed to notice Lizzie’s anxiety and internal discomfort, instead she was as usual called: difficult and lazy.

Growing up and entering teenage-hood things got even more tense. By now, Lizzie was more grown up and filled with internal rage as someone who was never allowed to be… free.

Lizzie would play loud music even if that annoyed her mom, she would then storm her room and tell her how deviant she is and how much of a “damaged goods” she was. Lizzie liked punk and her choice of clothing reflected that, but for her mom she was not elegant enough and feminine so she poked her there in unpleasant ways which left psychological marks in Lizzie.

Imbued with hatred, Lizzie leaves home abruptly and enrolled to college in a far away country, everything was working well up until there would be compromises to make in friendships that triggered her and her response?
Leave, block, unfollow.

Compromises are often natural part of our relationships yet for someone like Lizzie who had to compromise soo much of her life, anything or anyone that didn’t accept her with open arms and with her full autonomy intact became a deal breaker.

For someone like Lizzie who couldn’t even choose her own breakfast or her own hobbies, moving away from home gave her an immense sense of accomplishment and inner strength as well as hope. Yet, the identity of being “difficult” kept being reinforced.

The friend would not call her straight out “difficult” but something like; “you are too much sometimes”.

Later on when she would date, anytime she felt subjugated or perceived a loss of her autonomy of choice and decision making, she would feel immense threat and danger to her psychological well being. She would burst out in tears or be visibly anxious that her partners would call her again “too much” or “too intense” or “too sensitive” and the list goes on and on.

Lizzie has lived an existence of someone that is not fully human, alien like existence. For her entire life she has carried out this feeling of ‘something is wrong with me’, a silent pain and discomfort that always followed her, she always waited for the other shoe to drop. Having never received unconditional love she yearned for a community, a friend, a lover or a partner who would finally look at her and say: You are exactly as you need to be and I want you and I choose you. This was a fever dream of hers that she never articulated out loud, but it was always obvious when after each ending, the ache would tear her into pieces.

We are here in the 6th circle of Dante’s hell (Heresy) reserved for heretics, those who held false beliefs about life, mortality, God and so on, for instance those who denied soul’s immortality. In other words, heretics for Dante are those who had fixed identities, and that’s why they are in inferno.

But, wait a second, what is Lizzie doing here?

As you know already, this is the psychological edition of Dante’s hell, where hell finds you with no volition of your own. Lizzie is here in the 6th not as a heretic, but as someone who inherited the false belief of being “difficult” from her own mother and throughout her life it wrecked her life and caused her immense pain.

Lizzie is here in the flames of the 6th, internally falling apart from the pain this false identity has caused her. Lizzie was never difficult, nor too much, nor too sensitive… she was a child like everyone else who deserved autonomy within healthy confines, who deserved a healthy model of choice and freedom, but she never got.

Lizzie has been in the 6th for 30 years now, blaming herself, bleeding profusely, never being met in partnership nor intimacy, never being mirrored as a soft human being but only as a difficult one, always encountering the same mirrors just like those she encountered at home.

Trying to escape this identity has been an impossible task, the more she ran from it the faster it caught up with her, just like that lion you try to escape on your worst nightmares. This is what being in the 6th feels like for Lizzie.

In slightly different words I said to Lizzie; you are allowed not to outrun this identity but to slowly put it down here, like a piece of clothing that you remove from your body and place it on the drawer. Lizzie, this identity was never yours to begin with, and it was never true either. Lizzie you were a small girl who did everything she had to do to get by life and survive. The “difficult” part remains with those who claimed it, not you.

… Welcome back Lizzie you have made it out of the circle of heresy.

Lower Hell, inside the walls of Dis, in an illustration by Stradanus; there is a drop from the sixth circle to the three rings of the seventh circle, then again to the ten rings of the eighth circle, and, at the bottom, to the icy ninth circle. Stradanus - Own work, 2007-10-25

All of the examples used in this series are carefully distorted without revealing the real details of people who lived them.

What does one do when Universe violates its own rules?

That was a question that stayed 24/7 with Monica.
It has been 10 years since Monica lost her son in a car crash caused by an irresponsible driver. The question never left her, and she brings it to therapy. It’s a loaded question with no answer, and I never once attempted to answer it but we observed the question together.

Monica was in her late 40s, finally in the house of her dreams, when on a lovely spring day she receives a phone call by a police officer telling her to drop by the nearest hospital where her son was being treated in the emergency unit.

On her way to the hospital, Monica doesn’t know but she is entering the psychological edition of hell. Time breaks apart, it slows down, minutes feel like days her body perceives the threat to such an extreme degree that everything else around her peripheral vision fades away as she is driving to hospital. She can’t remember how she found the keys to enter her car, nor how she is driving there. Monica could have been bleeding herself but she wouldn’t have felt a thing.

She enters hospital and she learns that her son is in critical condition and has very low chances of making it out alive. This blow doesn’t have a bang, it’s silent, all encompassing, like a collapse of a star that we don’t even hear or see, it happens soo fast that Monica is suspended in time and space - just hanging there. Her brain has started releasing endogenous opioids, which numb the pain. Soo many things are happening at rapid speed that for Monica reality doesn’t make sense anymore.

The state of disbelief, how fast everything is happening, Monica is still suspended in time, this erases the psyche, poof! like smokes. Yet, she stands there. Not long after she is told her son didn’t make it.

Still nothing, she is numb. None of this information is being registered - her psyche has collapsed like a crystal ball scattered everywhere, pieces of which can’t be assembled together…perhaps ever.

It’s only months later when Monica can scream and shout and experience the pain running through her veins.

Now, it’s been 10 years since this shattering event happened, Monica is seeing me because as an artist she hasn’t been able to touch a brush in 10 years. She feels yearning sometimes to paint but, she feels blocked.

For Monica, remaining suspended in time feels like the only way she can preserve what she had, if she continues like normal even after 10 years feels like she is forgetting her son, as if she is giving up on the love and memory of him, as if she enjoys life that and that is a confirmation of ‘life moving on existing without him’ and she never wants to let go of her son. Grief does this, even after 10 years.

From outside she looks fine, she decided to retire immediately after her son’s passing. She can be a pleasant presence to others; her friends and her family, she shows up for her old mother and takes care of her, she helps her community occasionally… Yet, since 10 years, Monica hasn’t been able to have joy and aliveness in her life. This has started to concern her, she is also getting older. For her, this has become a normal state of being, often not taking care of herself, refusing to wear nice clothes, besides being an artist she loooooves interior design but upon me mentioning the love for organic elements in interiors she shuts down.

Anything that used to imbue her with meaning has died down, and it seems very hard to revive.

Colours, brush strokes, the cool jazz of 50s, the large canvas ready to be used in her empty atelier room where sun light hits perfectly, the hand made cups she got from an Australian aboriginal lady, the necklace from her late husband sitting in a drawer never opened since then, swimming in the lake nearby in summer…

Monica mostly reads and eats the same food everyday, everything else requires effort and requires engagement with meaningful things she used to enjoy.

On the first glance it looks like Monica is almost punishing herself, yet, what do you do when meaning is lost? When Universe seems to break its own rules because that’s what Monica is feeling - universe violating its own rules. She never did anything bad to people she says, being an only child she lived a modest life with her parents who were great to her. After studying arts and design, she first worked at a gallery and then started painting herself. She met her husband during her trip to Europe, and it was love at first sight, just as she had kinda given up on the idea of love…

For a dreamy artist like herself it was painful to imagine life without love and companionship so, her lover arrived just on time! Universe kinda delivered. I didn’t say this out loud but hearing Monica talk she reminded me a lot of the passionate character Celine from Before Sunrise series. A lively woman, or the relics of what she used to be…

Her husband one day suffering a cardiac arrest dies suddenly, it devastated her, she went through everything I explained above, the numbness, disorientation, pain and so on… And then she went through that one more time with her son.

For Monica, life or Universe if you may, aligned her perfectly with things she wanted and people she would call her life, only to take them away when she wasn’t ready. This kind of shock and brutal departures leave someone with a total erasure of meaning. Life doesn’t follow rules anymore, the young die before the old, good people suffer tremendous pain and there is no payback for this pain, no meaning making out of it, no explanation, no catch in the end.

In Dante’s 7th circle of inferno lie people who committed violence towards other people, themselves or God, Nature, Art…

What is Monica doing here then?

She is here because in psych. edition of inferno hell finds you, and it has found Monica. She has been here in the 7th for 10 years now, because in this hell there is no moral order, no reasoning, it’s random just like her husband and son who died on a random day. There is no bad deed Monica is “paying” for, no deserving in all of this. Monica was just a young woman, an artist who loved her life, and both her husband and son loved her back, which made her the luckiest woman alive.

The violence here is caused by loss of meaning due to intense and excruciating pain that found her unexpectedly. By all means Monica is convinced Universe broke its own rules, broke her reality alongside her sense of meaning-making. Nothing makes sense anymore, it doesn’t make sense for her to use the brush strokes nor to put on 50’s Jazz.

Monica is in the 7th, with no moral failure of hers, undeservingly, unintentionally, forcibly smashed there by life and forces stronger than her. For 10 years she is there in a battlefield that never ends, with dark and tangled trees that block the sunlight, the atelier that she could never open the door of.

Monica is sharing this hellish space, as she describes it to me… sharing is no small thing when in the 7th… it may be just the beginning of a rope bridge in this treacherous hostile barren land.

… Welcome back Monica you have made it out of the 7th.

Harpies in the wood of the suicides, from Inferno Canto XIII, by Gustave Doré, 1861
scanned, post-processed, and uploaded by Karl Hahn - Pantheon Books edition of Divine Comedy.

All of the examples used in this series are carefully distorted without revealing the real details of people who lived them.

“Your worst sin is that you have destroyed and betrayed yourself for nothing” — Dostojevski

Antonio had never considered that perhaps in his quest of leading a good life, it was him who got in his own way. He didn’t come to see me because of this, he thought that all of his issues are stemming from people and life in general letting him down. His wife recently filed for divorce, he left his job and numbing with alcohol has only made matters worse. All of this he thought is mid-life crisis, that needs support… perhaps but, with some important nuance.

One has to brace strongly before turning into another person who can let him down.

As I listen more and more to Antonio, his despair was more than visible, the spiritual and existential dread was all over his face, impossible to miss. His speech was also filled with pauses that encapsulated his inner despair. Looking from outside it’s almost like seeing someone who barely made it out of the heavy waves to the shore. Antonio needed presence whilst he gathered himself back.

The losses that have accompanied Antonio felt soo grand that he was almost convinced this is fate, some grand force punishing him, he couldn’t find any other satisfying explanation. This left Antonio into the wild, with no guarantees; this state of not knowing is crushing. Our brains have evolved not to stay in constant threat mode but in predictable realities. Unfinished business is not something our brains do well.

Upon learning more about Antonio’s life; it was clear that he had led quite an un-examined life. He was a smart man who always excelled in his professional endeavours, goal driven and hard working. Coming from a craftsmanship family, he didn’t reject the legacy instead continued in the family’s footsteps. He himself became the head of his family’s legacy, he managed to grow his family business and even give it a fresher flair when he took over. So far, so good.

Doing so, he managed to have a stable identity for his entire life. Even when he questioned his choices — the legacy always weighted more therefore, every other option was pushed aside as worthless at the back door of his consciousness.

He lived in a safe cushion, he escaped the existentially dreadful stage in our development during adolescence and early adulthood where we question who we are and what do we want to do. For Antonio the road was paved and not following it was the real threat. Questioning the legacy was the real threat, as he would betray both his nearest and dearest as well as the family name.

He fleetingly lets me know that he always liked soccer, his eyes light up talking about it and the sense of satisfaction he experienced playing. It’s like seeing him for the first time recall something that lights up his soul. And then he goes back to talking at length about how lucky he was to continue the family name and the doors it opened for him. The struggle and pain he sustained to preserve it, and now that he has lost it, feels like losing his entire self.

He may have considered but never doubted his career path, his identity was never shaken or re-arranged because he didn’t even allow for the possibility of it.

The six figures also gave him tremendous relief anytime he tried to question his path.

Fast forward moving, we touch on romance… he tells me about his parents and how he never wanted to be like them… fights, thrown fists, shouting contests, stonewalling… misery, but in his words deep love nevertheless. He thought he had the perfect lived example of what not to choose… yet, somehow he married exactly someone who mirrors his mother not in looks, but in emotional likeness.

As Antonio tried to run, consciously thinking he is choosing differently, he ends up right with everything he was trying to out-run in the first place.

As we are sitting together and going through his lived life, it seemed like this is the first time he is giving his life a “review” — an honest one.

The feeling was that of following a character in a movie that leaves you in anticipation. After each meeting he was becoming slightly more concerned and perplexed. As we moved along together through the journey of his life, it was more and more obvious that the character is narrating his life but feels like he hasn’t been living it.

What do I mean?

For someone like Antonio even when life wasn’t perfect it was satisfactory, lessons didn’t come with loud bangs and harsh pain; each time he was convinced he is doing the right thing. For instance; jumping in to save the family business, without even questioning his desires, putting his romantic life second because of that, and every woman who tried to lead him towards his inner truth, who dared to see him deeply, he would cut them off as he couldn’t afford to be “distracted”, it “wasn’t the right timing” and such excuses.

Life went on, everything was justified, the death of his desires was done for a bigger cause, and so was the severing of many potentially life changing relationships for him. In a way, Antonio didn’t feel the harsh pain that sometimes is necessary for people to grow. He felt like a hero, doing the right thing.

He was almost convinced that everything was being managed properly he moves on, no crushing periods, everything in the name of his family’s legacy, he even felt wrong if he showed sadness since he didn’t have no reason to be sad according to him with everything good that life has granted him. He kept saying; I have no right to feel bad or sorry… this is just life he said, some losses here and there…

And yet, I said: losses here and there but nothing that could touch you fundamentally and to potentially change you…reveal you…to yourself.

Silence.

At another point he starts discussing his marriage and divorce… He tells me this was supposed to work! I say what? My marriage he responds. I can feel his layers of deep pain and inner breakage.

For Antonio being the one in charge was a role he had learned since being little, being the emotional regulator for his mother and father after each fight they had was a role he excelled at. Now fast forward moving, with every woman that didn’t provide him that role, women who didn’t need a regulator but an equal felt to him like the perfect cake without sugar. Something was missing, he never felt quite satisfied, there was nowhere to attach, these women reflected to him something that he never learned and wasn’t willing to learn: unconditional love.

Frustration and silent resentment had been growing for soo long that it became un-tolerable which led to filing for divorce. This has caught Antonio completely baffled, and confused, thinking that he had mastered life, did everything right — preserved family’s legacy, maintained identity, married someone who almost to a tee mirrored his early childhood role which felt familiar and safe yet, everything collapsed.

For Antonio, life seems to have forced him to self-examine albeit he doesn’t call it that way. To him its devastation and collapse… rightly so.

When someone lives an un-examined life especially with a grand purpose such as his, early challenges are felt like little bumps in the road not pit stops for self-examination and learning.

When one’s life alongside failures are justified in the name of something greater, pain doesn’t take shape it floats and never fully lands, until it does — harshly.

For someone like him who thought to have exercised full sovereign agency his entire life, being confronted with this reality is excruciating.

For Antonio uncovering this feels like being suspended in time — where he can’t go back and “save” himself yet, he is far removed from his true self. Who is then Antonio? what choices were truly his if any? How deep did the self-castration go and can we salvage anything?

We are here in the 8th circle of Dante’s hell — where the only fraud Antonio has omitted is the fraud against himself. When none else was left to put the finger for his un-realised potential, his un-lived challenges, his un-lived eros, the vision became clear, but it came with teeth - sharp ones.

Being in this circle feels like he inhabits his body and mind but those are not really his, there is a sense of patchiness, as if some parts of him work well; accomplishments, awards or hard work and yet beneath that there is an auto-pilot that takes charge and the pilot is not Antonio.

It’s everybody else he listened to, every childhood contract that he never renewed, every conditioning that he never questioned, a borrowed identity that he never questioned or did so briefly but never confronted it fully.

In the 8th, there are mirrors that point out to him, and the reflection is unbearable. In this circle of hell there is no morality at play but a single un-shakable reminder of how he never allowed himself to listen to his own truth. This being the gravest sin of this circle.

This self-betrayal comes with great exteriors and good will, and with a muted, silenced interior that can’t be ignored any longer. The distance between the two is enormous and louder than anything before. Antonio feels like time is slipping through his hands just like in Salvador Dali’s “the melting clock” painting, and with that his idea of who he is and who he was, with no guarantee of who he is becoming. It’s a stark pain, bone deep.

This cracking open leaves Antonio bare naked psychologically, one can’t invent a self on the spot and one can’t go back to the melting one either.

… Welcome back Antonio, you have made it out of Malebolge.

Dante’s 8th circle of inferno by Stradanus - Own work, 2007-10-25, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2981919

All of the examples used in this series are carefully distorted without revealing the real details of people who lived them.

“I don’t understand why it happened to me”
“Why, why, why me?”
“I can’t make sense of anything”

Sometimes I do wonder if we could see through an X ray the broken pieces of human psyche how would they look like? How can we see through the broke-ness that words cannot express because language breaks down?

Ana, was deeply in love with her boyfriend right before she came to see me, she was about to move in with him and adopt a dog. Having been together for some years, Ana created a shared reality with her boyfriend right up until he tore the structure of their shared reality on her face and left. Abruptly.

Now, for Ana’s friends this information is heavy but, it’s expected that she moves on eventually, they threw her the phrases: good riddance, you will find better, his loss, he is a coward, karma will get to him etc… None of these consoled Ana, and I am sure wouldn’t console anyone in her shoes.

With Ana, we went through everything that happened; was she passive in her relationship and didn’t communicate? No. Was she oblivious of obvious missdemenaours, mis-matches in needs, boundaries? No. Did she communicate her side of needs and wants? Yes. Did she invite vulnerable conversations and respectfully held her partners hand? Yes. In other words, she did her part in the relationship; being true, transparent even generous in her partnership.

Now, after having had a beautiful holiday abroad with her boyfriend, Ana was showered with the usual love, caring and good feels. Shortly after that, Ana received a text message from him saying he can’t be in the relationship anymore, provided her with some vague reasons filled with pseudo-vulnerability and discarded her.

No de-coupling, no de-constructing of what happened together, no-meaning making together. Sudden…abrupt… cut.

Now… this makes for a deep psychological wound, sharp, teeth deep, sudden, with nowhere to bleed. Psychological wounds are internal bleeds that don’t even show. Insidious, with no smell, no blood, no visible cracks. Yet, everything is hurting profusely. In every other situation medics would perform anaesthesia, blood transfusion, oxygen inhaling… yet with psychological wounds sometimes the person is left in anguish.

Without the possibility of meaning making with her irresponsible partner she was forced in a way to accept the uni-lateral decision he made and carry the weight of the breakup herself. With no shoulder to cry on, with no opportunity to shout in anger and grief at him, without no face to speak at, her partner protected his self-image and his emotional state whilst showing no mercy for her with his relational irresponsibility or immaturity or both.

Nevertheless, intent doesn’t justify impact.

Ana’s first 24 hours: Psychological bleeding

Unable to eat anything, unsettled stomach by the huge wave of anxiety and sheer shock made her incapable of digesting any food, her internal state is that of a “free fall”, like in those dreams where we fall from high above and can’t reach the ground.

She can’t cry because she is frozen and this bothers her because she needs release. Her mind is deeply fragmented to the extent that she doubts if she is going insane. Due to the unregulated internal state she can’t sleep because her stress levels are soo high the body is in constant state of alert with no return to baseline. Mind races soo fast it stuns her, she can’t seem to catch none of her thoughts, finally after her body is burned out of energy resources, she manages to fall asleep with no attempt of hers by the very early morning hours after the sunrise.

She manages to sleep for 3 hours only, right before her body automatically wakes up and starts the release of cortisol all over again. The deep psychological wound convinces the body that Ana is in constant threat and keeping her up will save her.

Ana three days later: The shock continues

By day three Ana has been shamed enough by her sister to eat something almost begged… She did eat something, but in a strange way her body doesn’t seem to need food, her levels of stress have blocked her natural rhythms of craving food or sleep. Ana starts to look visibly drained, but the crying has returned, at least she is releasing.

Internal bleeding continues but it’s starting to be outsourced externally. Ana is receiving support from her most loved ones, physical touch helps her. Only when she hugs someone she notices how tired she is and how good it feels to be held, suddenly the feeling of “free falling” when she is held dissipates.

Sleep hasn’t regulated yet, her body still keeps her awake and she manages to fall asleep for 3–4 hours and wakes up in a huge cortisol spike. The break she took from work ends tomorrow.

Ana 1 week later: The Numbness

She joined work, surviving mostly on coffee, lots of coffee. The levels of cortisol and anxiety have been all time high that caffeine isn’t felt that much. Ana’s “free fall” feeling has turned into drifting around slowly, which is felt in the body as numbness.

Her body has reached a high point of burnout that it starts releasing endogenous opioids (chemicals our bodies release in moments of intense pain) they affect the same receptors as morphine does. She seamlessly seems to navigate social and professional duties. A weird phenomenon almost akin to being on drugs like… well morphine…

Ana’s levels of alertness have surpassed normal levels of arousal that it feels like her brain has shut down beyond what’s normal where paradoxically she manages to move easily with her chores and with little effort. That’s psychological numbness.

Dante’s 9th ring of hell, is made of a frozen lake where people feel frozen and numb and that’s what Ana is feeling.

Ana a month later: Cosmic joke

All of what has happened has left Ana just baffled beyond repair. Nothing feels real but the body has returned back from the high arousal state, her biological rhythms have returned almost to normal, yet she still wakes up at night in panic and her body does her best to keep her awake and ready to fight. Ana’s sense of time has collapsed, due to previous numbness and hightened sense of shock, in this hell-like state time has stretched vastly… she feels almost aged, not physically but internally. One minute in this hell feels like 20 years. Pain collapses time.

Ana 2 months later: Re-integration

Almost all biological functions have returned back to baseline for Ana, she has managed to give the sudden breakup meaning by herself and integrate this shock into her life. As much as it didn’t make sense, she found sense in the senseless. Just as she was re-emerging from the deep pits of despair and anguish and back to herself… she discovers that her now ex has started a relationship with his long term… “friend”. Ana is served a blow larger than the previous one. This amount of fracture and second internal bleeding Ana cannot sustain or else she might collapse.

Ana comes to therapy: Psychological First Aid

Ana arrives to therapy barely holding her internal collapse together. It’s one of these sessions were you know 50 minutes won’t be enough, the damage is so severe. Ana’s despair and anguish doesn’t need words, it fills the entire room. The air is thick, the gravity has an unusual weight, it pulls you without even trying. You join the thick air and begin to see Ana’s fog, she welcomes you in as her last resort. Ana is held in presence, in words and in her silences. Ana now knows there is a place where despair, can be shared and one won’t look away but stay.

The 9th circle of Dante’s hell: Ontological injury

What hurts Ana the most is not his actions, his discard, his emotional/relational/moral irresponsibility or screwing his ‘sister like friend’ immediately after her, it’s something more insidious that lurks in her psyche like a real predator and keeps her silently in high alert. The root of this injury, where the psychic blood keeps dripping and dripping lies with “was it real”? Ana, has suffered two ontological injuries:

1. We were in love, and he left out of nowhere
2. The ‘friend’ turned lover after my discard

Both of these events bend reality and fragment it in thousands of pieces. Think of Ana’s psyche as splashed in multiple particles inside a black hole, nothing gets in, nothing comes out, perpetual anguish and distortion.

Ana can’t find her footing anymore in reality, and can’t trust her senses; what she felt, what she saw, what she sensed, what she perceived… all of those are now off and that’s what ontological injury does.

Reality as is, was kept hidden from her, and another version of reality was fed to her, crucial information withheld from her — her ability to access truth denied from her, now her psyche scratches and spirals to find a resolution.

As a therapist you ask; a reality needs to be established and how can we establish one whilst Ana is left in a black hole? This rescuing mission has weight, lots of weight, a wrong move and Ana’s anguish worsens.

Ana has fully entered the last and the most cruel ring of hell, but where is the moral failure here? Where is the error? Where is the deserving? Where is the free will used wrongly? The bad deed? Ana didn’t have to go through this, and she knows it, and yet her psyche is split in particles scattered around in this frozen lake that is her body, whilst her eye gaze stays intact.

In this ring of hell, trauma is random, with no particular order, no beginning or end, no moral weight and that’s what makes it extra helly.

As a therapist one begins to pick up the scattered pieces at no particular order. Damage control at best. Offer the handkerchief, sit closer, eyes locked in, tilt the head towards her, affirm verbally one more time and another… and another… let’s occupy the frozen lake together.

The 9th circle of Dantes hell, is about betrayal — those who betrayed. Ana here is the one betrayed and not the betrayer so why is she here? That’s the psychological edition.

Her head is cold ice from the disorientation of it all. Total silence and darkness that she has surrendered fully to it, if she goes back into the past she can’t trust her senses, what she thought, felt and experienced with him, reality is collapsed.

When she tries to make sense of it all, she cannot, feels like someone has taken her head hostage and what does one do without her head intact?

What Ana is experiencing is the consequence of the self-betrayal people omit to themselves first and second to others. Where others fail to stand corrected first with themselves and then with others, where even if there was no malicious intent, the impact is extra-ordinary pain of this magnitude.

“Stupidity is far more dangerous than evil”— Anatole France

Ana eventually got through this circle of hell. But, what I couldn’t say to Ana at that moment I said it later albeit in slightly different ways:

Ana, people who have cut themselves from a part of themselves, or have been cut, can split reality in two or three or more… Those carrying fragmentation themselves can lie & deceive, run away in cold blood irresponsibly. For if one is in harmony with self, one can find the way around without having to bend and break reality, to themselves and others.

For if one is in inner alignment with self, they can sustain reality as is without falsehoods, pretences and cowardice, they can remain in reality even imperfectly, even when it hurts, even if it costs them their self-image, even if shame arrives, they carry it, sit with it, they sustain the blow instead of making someone else a collateral damage to their ignorance.

For those who lie they first lie to themselves, for those who fear and don’t own up to human fragility the same fragility compounds over time. For the disorientation you feel, Ana, there is a high chance the one who caused it lives it internally drip by drip, it consumes their life silently if not all at once like it did with you.

Like a silhouette of an eerie shadow that always follows them, always feeling like something is up in the air, a melody slightly off key, that’s how they live their inner fragmentation. It doesn’t scream at them or numb them, it’s just there like an un-invited guest.

For if love is real Ana, it is not based on reality manipulation nor cowardice. And the one who loves Ana, is courageous even when it hurts, the one capable of love Ana, tells the truth even if it hurts and stays for as long as needed to mend the wounds, theirs or yours instead of discarding and disappearing. Love and grief are two sides of the same coin, if we can love, then we can sit in grief too.

Ana, you know this because your love was real, when nothing else was real your love was. The grief you feel is because you loved Ana, and that’s your gravity force which will help you return back from this barren, foreign and frozen lake. Your gravity force is yours and it will show you the way out of the darkness which was never yours to inhabit.

…Welcome back Ana, you have made it out of Cocytus.

Image above is inspired by: Cocytus - the frozen lake at the bottom of Dante Alighieri’s hell otherwise known as the 9th circle of hell, generated using artificial intelligence.