〔 YEAR 2000 〕
I did not know much about psychology at the time, at least not enough to properly explain what was happening to my mental state. Looking back now, I can only say that I was unstable. My emotions seemed to exist all at once, overlapping and contradicting each other until they became too heavy to carry. One moment I would feel anger, the next regret, then guilt, and then an exhaustion that felt deeper than anything I had ever experienced before.
There was also a quiet pressure inside my mind that insisted I should feel guilty for the choices I had made. Whether those feelings were justified or not did not seem to matter. The guilt remained there anyway, lingering like a persistent shadow that followed me everywhere I went.
Most days ended the same way. I would come home, close the door behind me, and collapse onto my bed. The room would fall into complete silence, and I would simply lie there, staring at the ceiling for what felt like hours. Eventually the silence would become unbearable, and the tears would come without warning. I cried myself to sleep more times than I cared to admit.
What frightened me the most was how different I had become. I used to be someone who enjoyed being around people. Conversations energized me, and I rarely avoided social gatherings. Yet during that time I began isolating myself even from Jaime, who lived in the very same apartment as I did. We were separated by only a few rooms, yet it felt as though we existed on entirely different sides of the world.
My body soon began to reflect what my mind was going through.
I started losing more hair than usual, often finding strands scattered across my pillow in the morning. Dark circles formed beneath my eyes and refused to disappear no matter how much sleep I tried to get. Even after resting for eight hours, my body still felt drained, as though I had run a marathon during the night.
My appetite slowly disappeared as well. Meals that once felt comforting now seemed unappealing, and sometimes I would skip them entirely without noticing. Over time I lost several kilograms simply because I was no longer eating enough.
Then there were the episodes.
At first they were brief and confusing. My chest would suddenly tighten, and breathing would become difficult for reasons I could not explain. The sensation was strange and frightening, like something inside my body had begun to malfunction.
As time passed, the episodes grew worse.
There were moments when the pressure in my chest became so intense that I genuinely believed my heart had stopped beating. The pain would spread outward, sometimes reaching my arm or jaw. My heartbeat would become irregular, sometimes racing wildly, other times slowing to an almost terrifying stillness.
I remember one episode particularly well. I had suddenly gasped for air as if my lungs had forgotten how to function. It felt like an invisible force was squeezing my chest from the inside. My vision darkened until everything faded into black for a brief moment. When I came back to my senses, my body felt cold all over despite standing beneath the sun. My hands trembled uncontrollably, and a thin layer of sweat clung to my skin.
It was hellish from every possible angle.
Eventually, the situation escalated to the point where I experienced a cardiac arrest. It was the first time something like that had ever happened to me, and the experience alone was enough to terrify everyone around me.
When I woke up in the hospital, a strange thought crossed my mind. I wondered if karma had finally caught up to me. Part of me believed that my past decisions had finally led me to death's doorstep.
The doctors, however, told me something unexpected.
My condition was temporary.
They explained that I had developed takotsubo cardiomyopathy, a heart condition more dramatically referred to as heartbroken syndrome. Severe emotional stress could temporarily weaken the heart muscle, causing symptoms almost identical to a heart attack.
Apparently, I had carried too many unresolved emotions for too long, and my body had eventually reached its limit.
Ironically, I began to feel slightly better when Éli arrived at the hospital.
She looked disheveled when she entered the ward, as though she had rushed there without stopping to compose herself. Strands of her hair had escaped from whatever attempt she had made to tie it back, and her breathing seemed slightly uneven.
The moment she reached my bedside, she took both of my hands and held them tightly.
Too tightly.
It felt as though she was holding onto me out of fear that I might disappear if she let go. Her fingers trembled slightly, though she tried to hide it. Even then, she never explained what had frightened her so much.
After that day, she began visiting me regularly, though never at predictable times. Sometimes she would appear in the afternoon, other days in the evening. There was no schedule. She simply came whenever she could.
When I was finally discharged, she insisted on driving me back to my apartment herself. During the drive she scolded me gently, reminding me that I needed to rest and that I should stop dwelling on negative thoughts.
For once, I tried to listen.
I began by allowing myself a little peace of mind. Slowly, I started addressing the consequences of the decisions I had made, especially the way I had ended my relationship with Éli so abruptly without giving her a proper explanation.
Eventually, we found our way back to each other.
Éli and I rekindled our relationship and started dating again.
Not long after that, she brought me to visit her family home in France.
Calling it a house would have been inaccurate. It was not exactly a mansion either. The closest description I could think of was a château.
The property itself seemed endless. The lawn stretched so far into the distance that I could barely see where it ended. From the main gate to the residence, the drive alone took nearly an hour. Along the road were several elegant villas that I initially assumed were the main house, only to realize that they were merely smaller buildings scattered across the estate.
By the time we finally arrived at the entrance, I already felt overwhelmed.
A butler wearing a perfectly pressed suit greeted us and politely took my winter coat. Another man approached the car shortly after and collected the keys from Éli, likely the valet.
Then I met her family.
They were people who seemed effortlessly refined. Their hair was smooth and perfectly styled without a single frizz in sight. Their clothes fit them flawlessly, tailored to their exact proportions, yet none of them displayed visible brand labels. Their skin was pale and immaculate in a way that suggested they had never needed to scrub dishes or clean a kitchen after a meal.
Even their fragrance lingered in the air in a subtle yet unmistakable way. A single breath was enough to tell me that whatever perfume they wore must have been expensive.
Standing among them, I suddenly felt very aware of myself.
I felt small.
I felt out of place.
I felt like crap.
Still, Éli eventually brought me to meet her parents.
To my surprise, they treated me kindly. For a moment I allowed myself to believe that perhaps they were like Françoise's parents, only a little more welcoming. Maybe the differences between our backgrounds would not matter as much as I feared.
What I failed to consider was a simple truth.
People who live in entirely different worlds rarely accept someone they believe to be beneath them.
At that time, I did not realize that I had stepped into something that would eventually turn into a nightmare.
〔 YEAR 2001 〕
After some time, I slowly became known as Élisabeth's girlfriend among the people who surrounded her life. That alone was enough to attract attention, particularly from her family. They were not openly hostile about it, at least not at first. Instead, they reacted in a way that felt far more calculated.
Her parents arranged for Éli to meet someone else.
It was presented as nothing more than a casual date, something harmless and social. Yet even then I understood what it truly meant. The man they chose for her was described as a promising heir to a powerful French conglomerate. Éli never told me his full name, though she mentioned that he came from the Moreau family. The surname alone carried a certain weight, one that I had already begun to recognize.
Despite that uncomfortable situation, I tried to remain hopeful.
Since Éli had already introduced me to her family, I eventually decided that it was only fair for me to introduce her to mine as well. The decision itself felt like a gamble. Still, I convinced myself that enough time had passed. Perhaps my parents had softened. Perhaps they had reconsidered the way they saw me.
More than anything, I hoped they would see how much I loved Élisabeth.
That hope was enough to make me try.
The day we visited my parents' house, I remember feeling both nervous and strangely excited. As we walked toward the familiar front gate, I held Éli's hand tightly. She must have sensed how anxious I was because she squeezed my hand in return and whispered small reassurances under her breath.
Her voice was soft, calm, and warm. Every time she tightened her grip on my hand, it felt like a quiet promise that I was not facing this alone.
When she smiled at me, I felt warmth rush to my cheeks.
For a brief moment, I truly believed everything would be fine.
When we stepped inside the house, we were both carrying paper bags filled with small gifts. It felt like the appropriate gesture when meeting family. My parents looked up from where they were sitting, their expressions shifting from curiosity to confusion the moment they noticed Éli standing beside me.
I greeted them with a grin that I could not quite hide.
Then I told them the truth.
I introduced Éli as my girlfriend.
What followed was nothing like the welcome I had imagined.
Instead of warmth, my father reacted with immediate anger. His face twisted with a fury that I had rarely seen before. He despised gay people, and I had always known that. Still, part of me had hoped that the reality of seeing me with someone I loved would change something inside him.
It did not.
He pointed at me and began yelling, his voice loud enough to fill the entire house. His words were sharp and unforgiving, as if I had committed something far worse than a simple act of love. My mother tried to calm him, her voice soft and pleading, but he refused to listen.
The shouting continued until, quite suddenly, he stopped.
At first I thought he had simply run out of things to say.
Then I saw him clutch his chest.
The next moment, he collapsed onto the floor.
Everything seemed to freeze around me. I stared at the scene with wide eyes, unable to fully understand what had just happened. The anger that had filled the room moments earlier vanished, replaced by panic and confusion.
That was the day I was disowned.
And just like my father, whose heart had failed him in that moment, my own body soon followed.
Not long after we left the house, while Éli was driving us away from the chaos we had just witnessed, I felt the familiar tightening in my chest. At first it was subtle, almost easy to ignore. But the pressure grew quickly until breathing became difficult again.
Before I could even say what was happening, everything went dark.
I had another cardiac arrest in the passenger seat of the car while Éli desperately tried to get me to safety.