“I’m alive”, thought Veronika. “Everything’s gonna start all over again. I’ll have to stay in here for a while, until they realize that I’m perfectly normal. Then they’ll let me out, and I’ll see the outside world again.”
In the second book by Paulo Coelho I have been exploring, “Veronika Decides To Die” talks about a 24 year old Veronika who seems to have everything – youth and beauty, boyfriends and a loving family, a fulfilling job. But something is missing in her life. So, one cold November morning, Veronika decides to die. She takes a handful of sleeping pills, expecting never to wake up again. But she does…in a mental hospital where she is told that she has only days to live.
And as she thinks about her situation now that her suicide was unsuccessful, an inner monologue continues on in her head:
“Since people always tend to help others-just so that they can feel they are better then they really are-they’ll give me my job back at the library.
Since I only take sleeping pills, I’m not disfigured in any way: I’m still young, pretty, intelligent, I won’t have difficulty getting boyfriends. I’ll make love with them and I’ll feel a certain degree of pleasure, but the moment I reach orgasm, the feeling of emptiness will return. We won’t have much to talk about, and both he and I will know it. The time will come to make our excuses-“It’s late” or “I have to get up early tomorrow” – and we’ll part as quickly as possible, avoiding looking each other in the eye.
I’ll go back to my rented room, read a book, turn on the TV to see the same old programs, set the alarm clock to wake up at exactly the same time I woke up the day before, and mechanically repeat my tasks at the library. I’ll eat a sandwich in the park opposite the theater, sitting on the same bench, along with other people who also choose the same benches on which to sit and have their lunch, people who all have the same vacant look but pretend to be pondering extremely important matters.
Then I’ll go back to work; listen to the gossip about who’s going out with whom, who’s suffering from what, how such and such a person was in tears about her husband, Then I’ll go back to the bars at the end of the day, and the whole thing will start again.
My mother who must be out of her mind with worry over my suicide attempt, will recover from the shock and will keep asking me what I’m going to do with my life, why I’m not the same as everyone else, things aren’t as complicated as I think they are. “Look at me, for example, I’ve been married to your father for years, and I’ve tried to give you the best possible upbringing and set you the best possible example.”
One day I’ll get tired of hearing her constantly repeating the same things, and to please her I’ll marry a man whom I oblige myself to love. He and I will end up finding a way of dreaming of a future together: a house in the country, children, our children’s future. We’ll make love often in the first year, less in the second, and after the third year, people perhaps think about sex only once every two weeks and transform that thought into action only once a month. Even worse, we’ll barely talk. I’ll force myself to accept the situation, and I’ll wonder what’s wrong with me, because he no longer takes any interest in me, ignores me, and does nothing but talk about his friends as if they were his real world.
When the marriage is just about to fall apart, I’ll get pregnant. We’ll have a child, feel closer to each other for a while, and then the situation will go back to what it was before.
I’ll begin to put on weight. And I’ll start to go on diets, systematically defeated each day, each week, by the weight that keeps creeping up regardless of the controls I put on it. At that point I’ll take those magic pills that stop you from feeling depressed; then I’ll have a few more children, conceived during nights of love that pass all too quickly. I’ll tell everyone that the children are my reason for living when in reality my life is their reason for living.
People will always consider us a happy couple, and no one will know how much loneliness, bitterness, and resignation lies beneath the surface happiness.
Until one day, when my husband takes a lover for the first time, and I will perhaps kick up a fuss and think of killing myself. By then, though, I’ll be too old and cowardly, with two or three children who need my help, and I’ll have to bring them up and help them find a place in the world before I can just abandon everything. I won’t commit suicide: I’ll make a scene; I’ll threaten to leave and take the children with me. Like all men, my husband will back down; he’ll tell me he loves me and that it won’t happen again. It won’t even occur to him that, if I really did decide to leave, my only option would be to go back to my parents’ house and stay there for the rest of my life, forced to listen to my mother going on and on all day about how I lost my one opportunity for being happy, that he was a wonderful husband despite his peccadilloes, that my children will be traumatized by the separation.
Two or three years later, another woman will appear in his life. I’ll find out – because I saw them or because someone told me- but this time I’ll pretend I don’t know. I used up all my energy fighting against that other lover; I’ve no energy left.
He will continue being a considerate husband. I will continue working at the library, eating my sandwiches in the square opposite the theater, reading books I never quite manage to finish, watching television programs that are the same as they were ten, twenty, fifty years ago. Except that I’ll eat my sandwiches with a sense of guilt because I’m getting fatter; and I won’t go to bars anymore because I have a husband expecting me to come home and look after the children.
After that it’s a matter of waiting for the children to grow up and of spending all day thinking about suicide, without the courage to do anything about it. One fine day I’ll reach the conclusion that that’s what life is like: There’s no point worrying about it; nothing will change."
For moment, it read like one of those Dear Thelma’s letter. A bitter, disillusioned woman who spent so much energy on trying to ensure that her life continued exactly as it always had. A woman who had given up many of her desires so that her parents would continue to love her as they had when she was a child, even though she knew that real love changes and grows with time and discovers new ways of expressing itself.
When she decides to get a job, she rejects a tempting but risky offer in favour of a job at a company, where you didn’t earn much money but was secure. She went to work every day, always keeping to the same timetable, always making sure she wasn’t perceived as a threat by her superiors; she was content; she didn’t struggle, and so she didn’t grow: The most important thing was that she gets her salary at the end of the month.
When she has achieved almost everything she wanted in life, she reaches the conclusion that her existence had no meaning, because every day was the same. And that’s when people start to die inside.
What would you change about your life if suddenly you found out that you had only days to live? Would you still continue to live exactly the same rountine as always? Or would you start to live your life to the fullest? When Veronika was faced with the only 24 hours more to live, she asked the doctor at the mental hospital for two favours:
First: For some medication or injection so that she can stay awake and enjoy every moment that remains of her life. She was very tired but didn’t want to sleep. She wanted to do a lot of things, things that she always postponed for some future date, in the days when she thought life would last forever. Things she’s lost interest in, when she started to believe that life wasn’t worth living.
Second: She wanted to leave the mental hospital so that she could die outside. She needed to visit places where it’s always been there but never had the curiosity to go and see it at close range. She needed to talk to the woman who sells chestnuts in winter and flowers in the spring. They passed each other so often, but never once spoke to each other. She wanted to walk in the snow without a jacket, to find out what extreme cold feels like, for she was always so well wrapped up, so afraid of catching a cold.
She wants to feel the rain on her face, to smile at any man she feel attracted to, to accept all the coffees men might buy for her. She wants to kiss her mother, tell her she loves her, weep in her lap, unashamed to show her feelings, because they were always there even though she hid them. She wanted to give herself to one man, to the city, to life and, finally, to death.
So do we only start living when death starts to stare us in the face? Or do we live our lives doing the things we’ve always been doing but never really lived at all? Well let me end this thought provoking post with a song by Steven Curtis Chapman:
Last day on earth
~Matthew 25:21; James 4:14~
I pull over on the side of the road and I
Watch the cars pass me by
The headlights and the black limousines tell me
Someone is saying goodbye
I bow my head and I whisper a prayer, “Father, comfort their broken hearts”
And as I drive away there’s a thought that I
I cannot escape, no I, cannot escape this thought
I can’t get away
Oh, if this should be my last day on this earth
How then shall I live
Oh, if this should be the last day that I have
Before the air of Heaven
Let me live it with abandon to
The only thing that remains
After the last day here on earth
If this should be my last day here on earth
If this should be my last day here on earth
If this should be my last, last day here on earth
And if tomorrow comes to find me
Looking in the face of Jesus
Will I hear Him say the words “Well done”?
If this should be my last day here on earth
If this should be my last, my last day here on earth
‘Cause this could be my last, this could be my last
This could be my last day
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