It’s 3 o’clock in the middle of the night and before me is a guy who has just attempted to commit suicide. It’s late, I am sleepy, I don’t know what the hell I’m doing with me, with my life, with the man in front of me, with everything. It’s the third suicide attempt in a couple of months. The reason? He feels unloved. Well, just like most of us; it’s almost never too much love around. But for the guy in front of me, love is “vital”; he can’t go on without it. And because he’s pretty young, he can’t give himself a part of this love, perhaps in the form of a decent amount of common-sense and self-protection that could have protected him from committing suicide in the first place… but anyway… I’ve met old folks who don’t know how to love themselves so he can be easily forgiven.

– How are you feeling now?

And I wait… and wait…

– I feel ashamed.

– Why?

– Because I did this… I tried to kill myself…

I frankly expected him to say he feels guilty. Guilt is the first thing you expect to hear from someone who has just failed a suicide attempt. But he is a “shame-type”, not a “guilt-type”, so the others’ opinions about him are much more important than his own responsibility versus his own life. Well… people are different… you need to ask questions… you can’t know for sure what’s happening in their soul…

– I feel ashamed because now all my friends will know I am weak and tried to end my life for that girl. It was stupid. I don’t want to repeat this. She didn’t even call to see if I’m alive or not, although I know that she knows I’m in the emergency room now.

– You wanted to show your love for her, to prove it?

– I wanted to be present in her live… I guess I needed attention from her… I wanted to exist for her…

A phantasy that she might be breaking the bed with someone else right now while he’s here in the ER crossed my mind for a moment. People can be very nasty and he is a bit naïve.

– I am so embarrassed… this entire suicide attempt is simply pathetic…

I detect a self-esteem that is too low. He is right, he was stupid, or he did what he thought was good at that respective moment in time and now it finally appears stupid to him too, but he is making the error of exaggerating and generalizing: the fact that you are stupid in one situation doesn’t mean you are stupid all the time. Same for embarrassment: he is right to feel ashamed for the suicide attempt but I can’t tolerate a generalizing impression about him as a whole and about his entire life.

– You know… you are right to feel ashamed, but this is not a definitive proof that you are weak and inferior. There is something that you can learn about yourself from your suicide attempt, something a bit weird but nevertheless something that’s true. You do seem to be shallow in your own eyes but at the same time I know few people who would make a suicide attempt so as to prove their love for another person, no matter if that person responds to the act or not. The fact that you went so far and endangered your own life proves that you are very capable of intense and profound feelings for someone else, something that is so rare in the world of today that seems to be made pretty much of “robots” who are unable to feel. I can’t “congratulate” you for your suicide attempt, but I can congratulate you for that depth of your emotions; few people can do this. I only hope that at some point you could use on yourself this love you feel for your ex-girlfriend, so that you would not arrive in this delicate situation in which you’re finding yourself tonight.

While speaking I see how the eyes of the young man gradually leave the point on the ground that he was fixating and now look directly at me, in an attitude of awe. It seems that he “heard me”. Well, I just hope he learned something tonight. The nurse next to me also looks surprised.

The patient leaves the room; he remains under surveillance as he is still physically frail.

– What?

– I never saw this kind of psychological intervention, says the nurse.

– What intervention? What did I say?

– The stuff with emotional depth…

– It’s common sense… I guess… And it’s almost morning, for God’s sake!

Actually I know exactly what I did. But I wasn’t allowed to practice psychotherapy in this life… destiny is cruel… This doesn’t stop me from transgressing when and while I still can.