NEED FOR AFFECTION

Rare is the media (be it magazine, newspapers, teletext of different television channels, etc ...) that does not have a section of contacts or relationships between people. You know: men seeking women, women seeking men, men seeking men, women seeking women, friendship, other relationships, etc ... Many of you have ever resorted to this section to widen the circle of friends. I have done answering ads or putting my own.

I remember in 1990 I put an ad in the ABC de Sevilla Journal and the company that managed the ads published in many other ways, including one of Granada, which allowed me to meet Leocadio, who after years became my best friend. And still is. He just turned 49, specifically on 4 February. Every year we welcome birthday. I him on 4 February and he to me on August 26. Certainly the next August will fulfill 56 years, so I'm almost four years older than my friend Leocadio.

Tune from the first moment thanks among other things to the affinity we had with mental illness. Those who often read me know my sufferings, among whom I stress disorder, generalized anxiety disorder and obsessive compulsive disorder. Leocadio suffers from paranoid schizophrenia. I do not know which is worse. I know he really tried to commit suicide, not mock, and I do not. And he must submit from time to time and I have only entered once I coinciding with the death of my mother and the breakup of a relationship with a woman. My friend has a hard time with income, but it will check to perform all therapies that apply.

He lives in Lugros, a small town in the mountains of Granada, occasionally going to Granada to see the psychiatrist and psychologist, allowing you to interact with others, but that relationship is ephemeral and lasts a few hours. We hit it off from the beginning great. We wrote long letters with all the sincerity in the world where we told all things. And always we were sending one christmas Christmas to congratulate the holidays. Over time we have left to write and use over the phone.

He was married to a woman who knew her illness when they went to bed. But he soon left with a small daughter, Mari Carmen. Leocadio saw his daughter half of the holidays and every fortnight on weekends. He wanted and loves her daughter, who is now a woman. What hurts is the attitude that now has his daughter with him, absolute coldness because he will never see his father living in such a small town and never calls and when seen every fortnight for tapas and chat never asks how it is, that is the question most expected him to see how his daughter is interested in him and gives him a little affection. But his daughter follows the guidelines of his mother, who does not want to be spreading the disease from her ex-husband, like a contagious disease. It is again the stigma of mental illness, which spans many branches of human relationships.

Nor he receives the affection that he wanted his mother, a village woman, closed, brutota, 83, who gives loving mother, but no understanding for the disease because it does not understand and overcome. Often discussed and he calls me to tell me. I listen with all the love in the world because we are really friends and I love him very much. I want to highlight in this article the importance of friendship for the mentally ill so they do not feel alone and stuck only his ailing world.

Also he has problems with his two brothers. With the largest I had a shock when her mother was admitted in the hospital in Granada and his older brother as he charged meals if your home was entitled to a pension food. Leocadio has a small non-contributory pension.

He calls daily to his brothers, but neither ever ask him how he is. They have frankly marginalized and feels very alone and no longer knows how to make his brothers throw accounts.

My friend is a little sybaritic of snuff. Every day after lunch going to a cafe for coffee and then a cigar smoking a certain brand, not another. I send every year a cigar box that mark for his birthday. This year I've done it again. I also shipping as a second birthday on April or May I usually book published annually. This year will be Rosa of life, a poem lake river divided into 90 parts which deal with four themes: life, love, death and obsession, all under the influence of Schopenhauer. He is an avid reader because their vision problems can not watch TV, but you can read. And devours everything he can. Theirs is the writing that painting, but also writes occasionally. He learned to paint in the Ura Guadix. Since that time it does not stop. But not sell his paintings. I always tell her that you will follow the path of Vincent Van Gogh, who sold one painting in his lifetime and after his heirs have had enough of making money. I do not want that to happen to him the same. I think that's self-esteem must sell their pictures and get money to live better.

Regarding the attitude of his daughter to him sometimes too desperate and sometimes tells me he regrets being father. I say that teenagers are well and I know well what I say because I have a son who is already a man and treats me coldly. But he despairs soon.

In the village you point out, as they did with Juan Ramón Jiménez in Moguer, when he was riding his Platero and pointed with calling him crazy finger when he was was depressed by the untimely death of his father, which cost entry into a sanatorium. But Lugros is a very small town and everyone knows their constant internments and problems of paranoid schizophrenia.

I understand the need for affection Leocadio. His immense solitude. We will never see us because he can not travel for their illness and I am afraid to go to new places. I wish him the best Leocadio. And I wish the best to all readers who put ads in daily or teletext. They find true friends and happier and mitigate their loneliness in the best way possible. Health and luck.

Jose Cuadrado  Morales.