Thank you so much for all the emails you sent me.

Things got soooooo much worse after I wrote you but they are finally getting better. Or at least I do believe now that I will be well at some point.

After spending 11 days in hospital I left hospital only to get well worse.

It all started with me not seeing very well. I had had some visual things before so I decided to keep it to myself imagining it to be only temporary. In 3 days I could not see anymore at all.

The world little by little became unexplainable to me. Not only could I really see anything properly but I no longer could read. I could see at first letters separately and eventually  it all seemed like a “matrix” world desconctructing.

With it came a loss of feeling that I belonged to this world, and a total despair.

I slept a lot… could not longer make any sense when i attempted to speak to people.

In my mind came sentences that had mixed words of different languages that I no longer understood very well what they meant. I also could not really understand “who” was thinking those sentences These obviously, aggravated  enormously my angst, making it impossible sometimes for me to understand what people where telling me.

I woke up everyday hoping to be better… but it just did not happened.

There were sometimes that people could understand me… and I also had a feeling I did not want to tell people I were so bad.

Eventually one day, I managed to call a friend and  asked him to take me out… since I had not left my house in a week. Basically rarely ever leaving my bed.

He did. I  was exhausted by the time I went to his house in his car. I attempted to explain him what was happening to me. And he eventually understood it. When I was finally in his house, his mother asked me whether or not I was taking some pills against allergy. I was. She suggested it might be it. She had also had really bad reaction towards these pills.

I cannot explain to you how much relieved I felt that day. It meant it was not me. It meant it was just me being once again poisoned by some medicine.

It took me still more 2 days to be able to start being able to read, and I am yet to be better entirely but I only have 5 more days of cortisone to take more and I finally do believe I will be better again.

I still cant speak nor eat properly… my skin is totally changing like a snake… but I am happy.

This was one of the hardest years in my life, and I do finally feel I am going to be better. After having reached rock bottom

Being sick in Brasil is very relieving. The amount of love and support I get here is incredible.

The syncretism is everywhere. I get prayers of all kinds of religions and when people ask you whether they can pray for you they never ask you to become of that religion. They always simply say ” Do you mind me praying for you. It is always better more prayers.”

It is relieving and I accept and thank them all. I have in my room now all kinds of tradition things.

I always was given a book by the Mozambican  Mia Couto and a week later here giving an interview. I heard it all in admiration…. these celebration of it all as just as alternative possibilities of narratives of the human experience. Mia is originally a biologist but he understands the world in biology but also through poetry..

I heard him understanding finally what it is that is in me that is Brazilian. It is this syncretims. This relieving  feeling of feeling that it all is incoherently fine in these worlds where we mix it all. Neurology and magic. Poetry and love. And how it is simply understood by everybody..

I finally walked these days. I went to hear music at Cidao. And music alleviated me. Having people I do not even know putting my name in their churches relived me to un extent that I am incapable of explain.

The 75 years old masseuse whose parents are japanese came even on a sunday to spend 4 hours with me doing all kinds of things to make me feel better.  Just before leaving she told me she would come back for my birthday to celebrate life.  She explained me that when she decided to live in Japan she understood how Brazilian  she was. We are happy people, we love, and we are flexible.  Just remember this… it does not matter much more…. you just have to be loved and love the world around!”

It was that night that I could again think clearly. It was again that I could read better. It was that evening that I finally understood that it was time for me to stay here. To be from here and accept all these love I  have around me, and be for them when they need.

I guess it was that day that I started to believed that I will be fine,

Love,

Jules