15 years ago, when I was in college, I had a badly located tumor.
With it came several surgeries in a short time, pain, the distance from home, the corridors of the clinic.
The nurses that I insist on here now and always
are colored angels
.
But that also happened.
I came, it is seen, to the world to live long and to die rather little.
Finally, with an open wound, whose medical intent was to heal by secondary intention, I was discharged one Monday dripping with blood and tears.
So,
with more than 200 kg I got to know the unbearable fluctuations of my own breath
.
Hopelessness, loneliness, misery.
The condemning look.
He was suicidal, the doctors claimed to have the weight he had.
Julio Leandro Fernandez Froy.
"With more than 200 kg I knew the unbearable ups and downs of my own breath. Hopelessness, loneliness, misery", says the reader.
And once again, I discovered my only allergy.
My irremediable tirria to defeatism.
At that time I was missing about 10 subjects to receive a lawyer.
And due to personal problems, he had recently lost the course of one of them particularly complex;
so that Monday night I decided to see if I could give her up now.
The next table would be that Thursday.
And I signed up.
And I started reading the notes and praying almost as much as I read.
John XXIII was my study partner, San Expedito made me coffee.
And the days went by almost without sleep, between painkillers and books, difficult showers and more than one cry of pain and impotence.
That Thursday I put on my best suit (the only one that had an almost infinite size) and I went by bus, happily standing up to the faculty to introduce myself.
I remember each step to the classroom as an ordeal.
When the teacher called me to take out a ball, I approached complaining and in pain, and almost in a whisper asked for the teacher's attention.
Profe, I told him, would you let me give up?
I have just had surgery and it would be impossible for me to sit down, and I dropped my pants a little so that he could see the adult diaper I was wearing.
Julio Leandro Fernandez Froy.
"Doctor, I want to receive my degree, I told him. Like someone who begs the Valkyries that he at least wants to die fighting," Julio recalls.
- But, Fernandez, what happened to him?
And when I told him about it, when I handed out the medical certificate that I had brought in case the possibility of
using it as a weapon or excuse arose
, in fact, he looked at me almost tenderly, I suppose remembering his own children, and he told me that of course, that I could give up.
And she asked me a second question, dismayed, -Fernández, what are you doing here?
-
Doctor, I want to receive, I told him.
Like someone begging the Valkyries that they at least want to die fighting.
It is useless to ask my memory to bring here what things I told you in that exam.
I know that it was not the best of my life, I answered more or less assertively the practical cases with which he questioned me.
It was a matter of ten minutes.
Eternals.
But I remember when the teacher said that wonderful word to the ears of any student, that wonder of ten letters.
-
Enough!
And even more I remember that taking the form he drew for me to see a beautiful 8. And addressing the 30 people who were in the classroom, he asked for a round of applause for me.
He said something about how it was an encouragement for him, a hope, to see someone come closer in my conditions
to fight for my dreams
.
It was one of the three times that I have been applauded in an exam.
It was the time he has made me most proud.
Julio Leandro Fernandez Froy.
"Over the years, so many things have happened to me that sometimes a recount seems like a complaint. But whoever knows me knows well that I am not a complainer. Some have excuses, I have plans," remarks the reader,
Not for my exam.
Not because my parents were happy.
But because I showed myself once again that no matter what, how or when,
I could always challenge what was known about me.
What I myself believe about myself.
So much has happened to me over the years that sometimes a recount seems like a complaint.
But those who know me know well that I am not complaining.
Some have excuses, I have plans.
And since my children were born I discovered that this quality, this absolute vocation to try again and again, whether it comes out duck or coot, is the best of the qualities with which my parents raised me.
Perhaps the only one that has really served me.
Because as they pointed out to me by example,
falling is not prohibited, not getting up is prohibited
.
So this is resilience for me.
Each day brings its new hope, and that is enough.
Because, yes, God knows, I'm fucking allergic to defeatism."
.
It's not never seeing yourself destroyed, it's knowing how to rebuild.
It's not not getting divorced, it's believing in love again.
It's not not making mistakes, it's learning from mistakes.
It's not that betrayal doesn't hurt, but rather being able to trust again and again.
It is not to succeed, but not to settle for the stillness of someone who tries nothing.
The attempt,
if it is from the heart, is always a victory
.
You win or you learn, which is also winning.
Each day brings its new hope, and that is enough.
Suffice it to say that 9 months later I was getting a lawyer's degree.
Because, yes, God knows,
I'm fucking allergic to defeatism.
Until the previous line, this is one more article of the many that I usually write.
Full of pain and a vocation to follow,
not to be an example, but hopeful.
But it so happens that I recently started therapy, and I understood something.
Something infinitely painful for me.
In this story, as in many others, there is a detail,
the imminent urgency for everything
.
It seems that all my life I have lived under the urgent need to prove something.
If the main character in this story were my son, I would tell him that nothing is so urgent.
That he has nothing to prove."
.
The talks as my analyst, a lost question, has made me understand something.
That if the main character in this story were my son, I would tell him that
nothing is so urgent
.
That he has nothing to prove, I would take him to my house and take care of him with pampering and music until the pain disappears.
I would invite you to realize that graduating at 21, 22 or 25 is more or less the same.
I would ask her with tears not to expose herself, to stop a bit, not to let anyone's gaze, not even her own, make it necessary for her to achieve the impossible,
taming improbabilities is wonderful, but not essential to be happy.
Knowing how to stop, knowing how to cry, being able to ask for help.
They are also strengths.
And today I see that Julio, huge, tired, wanting, yearning, needing the approval of others, and I see my children.
And, my God,
I don't want them to ever feel that need!
I want them to dance, sing, read poetry, fall in love.
Not all windmills deserve a Quixote.
Perhaps life is more complex than pretty phrases.
So why am I writing this?
Neither as praise for my successes, nor as criticism of my excesses.
I do it because I need to say every word that is written here
.
And in the hope that it will help someone.
Finally, that's it.
Live, grow, learn and share what you have learned.
That has taken us from the steppes, to the pyramids, to spaceships.
And it all makes sense if reading me makes you feel a little less alone.
A little more human, a little more brother.
Owner of the most human right of all, to be wrong, and learn from your mistakes.
Julio Leandro Fernández
Froy /
julioleandro@gmail.com
THE EDITOR'S COMMENT
By Cesar Dossi
Reconstruct oneself, from the couch
Julio is about to turn 37, he is a poet, general secretary of the Argentine Society of Writers of Formosa and a delegate of the National Writers Congress.
On October 2, 2018, in this section, one of his letters was published and it was one of the Best of the Year:
Obesity: "People perceive that the one who suffers from it does so through his own fault."
There he stated that this disease
"is closely linked to the activity of the patient that causes a stigma, a stain on the person."
Today he captivates us again with his pen.
And he displays in his chronicle that tenacity for doing
“without excuses, but with plans”
.
He does not give up before the vicissitudes that shake him dryly, his fight is constant although he confesses that he gained weight in a pandemic
and that battle is not linear
, that is why his strength strengthened over time.
But this reason does not keep him awake when faced with the new challenges that are planted squarely in his daily life.
It is that his resilience, made cult,
seems to have played a trick on him on the couch
.
In other words, he would tell his three children not to do what he did, but rather what he learned in therapy, that the search for happiness is not always in the
paradigms that life imposes on us.
Being encouraged to fail before that law, getting rid of the tiresome habit is also the key to success to
achieve that emotional enjoyment
that produces happiness.
Perhaps, with these lessons that life injects us at the least expected moments, Julio can rest on that learning
what intimidated him to break
his most iron convictions.
Let go, let go and not look back, but without forgetting.
Reconstructing yourself
before the reflection of your children is the culmination, it is perhaps the finishing touch of our purpose as parents.
And the objective, as the reader says in his letter
"is to hope that it will help someone."
look too
He overcame his obesity, published a book and today surprises with a reflection on the pandemic
look too
Obesity: "People perceive that the one who suffers from it, does it through their own fault"
