SPEM (« Hope »)
He received the announcement like a high speed boomerang in the face. A real shock. He is astonished, almost apathetic. The cancer would finally have gotten him, slowly insinuating into him, getting comfortable in a cosy organic nest, nicely warm, knitting his chaotic and malignant web. Thus, at this very moment, he feels like a bubble floating in the air. A cope mechanism left him with a lack of emotions, creating an empty and plain space-time inside him. He looks around, unable of acknowledging the situation. Images are blurry, sounds don’t have any rhythm, and smells have no flavour. No echo, nothing, just complete void.
Then come denial. He starts to realize. “It can’t be possible »! It has to be just a bad dream, an unpleasant nightmare that he can’t accept for real. He tries to protest, to verify the information, hiding behind a disguise, an imitation of a smile, a mask. He did not lose any vital force, power, or ardour. It has to be a masquerade.
After negation, anger appears. He is revolted, his impulses of violence almost leading to destruction are the expression of his feeling of injustice. He realises that this explosion is just the reflection that there is no coming back. “NO! You can’t take my health away from me… “Divine entity or symbolized ego, he trades with the wind, the water, the rain. This is it. He realised. Immortality was just an imaginary fantasy.
Sadness is overwhelming. He repeats to himself: “The good thing about the rain, is that you can cry it out and nobody can see, it’s just salted water…” He’s hurt. Violently hurt. « My heart is an open wound ». He doesn’t seem to recognize himself anymore. He is looking for a way out, asking questions, hopelessly. He thinks about hell, he feels cold, he thinks about death. His death.
It is too hard. He lets go. He is resigned and collapses behind his tragic mask, which he kept just in case. He wears another person’s skin, trying to leave from a body which is not his anymore. He is fragile, vulnerable, and weak.
Thankfully, he is not alone, and times passes. He let the malignant companion find asylum in his body, but now he will face it and beat it. He finally accepts. He is not fatalist, but has been told that « life is unfair », and that is the way it is. At night, he dreams about finding treasures, symbols of precious psychic energies, which are hidden deep down in him. It is hope’s vital strength, the Spem.
Then, he believes again, cherishing at every second this precious golden string of hope, which is growing up every day. He tries to rebuilt. He accepts his new him, without a mask or a disguise. His visible or unvisible scars are the proof of who he his today, of what he has been through. And they are beautiful. They are the proof of his willpower, his courage, his strength. They are marks of his Spem… He should be proud of himself. He won. They won.
Macha POIRIER, 2017