“The Living Library”
Today we invite you to the living library, where people are the books.
România Internațional, 22.03.2015, 12:34
Today we will introduce you to the ‘living library’. Eight so-called books make up the “living library”. In fact they are eight living people with psycho-social disabilities who tell their stories to a reader, face to face. The “living library” event was organized for the press so that the journalists could talk to the so-called books. The organizer of the event is the group “I decide for myself”, the first civic action group in Romania made up of people with psychosocial disabilities.
We took several books from the “living library” because we wanted to learn their individual stories. What makes this library different from a normal one is that here you can ask the hero of the book any questions that may come to you while reading.
Catalin is 37 and three years ago he had his first psychotic episode. He was known to be an introvert, but all of a sudden he started screaming and was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. He was a graduate of the faculty of Public Administration and had had several jobs. The motto of the book he embodies in the “Living Library” is “it is in our power to do what we want to”. Here is Catalin himself:
“I’ve been like that since I was little: whatever I’ve set out to do, I’ve managed to accomplish, even if it’s been really hard. I was an introvert child and I had a lot of time on my hands. What do you do when you’re alone… a lot of things. For instance I used to twist my fingers, like most children do. I can use my feet to grab things, I can twist my arms… To give you an example, when I had my psychotic episode, they tied me up, but they couldn’t keep me tied up. I would untie myself, just like Houdini”.
After this psychotic episode he was only able to get a job as a guardian.
“This is what we do. We work and work, we give it our best and say we are alright, we drink some more coffee, we take a hot shower. Each of us has our secrets, mine are the hot showers. The best thing is to be relaxed”.
Our next pick from the library was Filip. He is 41 and studied law at the Bucharest University. He currently collaborates with Active Watch, an association that promotes freedom of expression. He also worked in the press, is passionate about literature, history and the mountains. But he was diagnosed with bipolar affective disorder and ever since, he has had to change plans.
“I can no longer get to the places I wanted to go when I was about 19-20, this is very clear to me. But I am more balanced than I was then, more at ease with myself. I can still get at least to the middle of the road if not further up, it depends on the circumstances and on my willpower”.
Filip has a few suggestions to help people drop some of their prejudice against those with psychosocial problems:
“In the western world business owners who hire people with disabilities get tax incentives. Such incentives also exist in Romania, but company owners here are not really interested in them. I would suggest someone should do a show about the Trepte centre of the Obregia psychiatric hospital. A lot more such books can be found there, this would be a way to change mentalities. There are quite a few of them there, I don’t know exactly how many because some of them manage to get a job, they go to the psychiatric hospital for a while, then they leave. If they fail to adapt out there, they come back”.
Andreea is 28 and four years ago, when she was finishing up her Master’s Degree in the Theory of Art, she experienced a serious bout of depression. She wanted to be a “living book” because she wants to help people with psychosocial problems be understood better. What is her story?
“Out of the blue my mind stopped working with me. I preferred to completely withdraw, to isolate myself. I decided to wait until this period, which I couldn’t under any circumstances manage by myself, would pass and I was eventually hospitalised. Things returned to normal after quite a long while and I tried to pick my life up where I’d left off. But it was something sort of illusory. I started to get involved in a few major projects, which unfortunately failed and which brought me back to that dark period I had experienced before and which I was now equipped to handle. I was no longer that panicked, I waited for this period to pass and I got back on my feet. Now I am trying to do whatever I am doing the best way I can. Aside from this project with Active Watch I am involved in, I work with my sister in her ceramics workshop.
Carmen is 24 and a graduate of the Communications and Public Relations faculty. She currently works for an NGO which manages artists and a year ago she was diagnosed with unipolar depression. The first signs were that she had difficulties doing things that everybody does on a daily basis.
“Getting up from my bed, putting on my slippers was much too difficult for me, so I would just lie in bed. In time I was able to talk about my problem, to tell my parents, my workmates and they were open about it and accepted me. But there were also people who asked me if I really needed this and if I wasn’t by any chance exaggerating the problem”.
Carmen is another book that’s very much alive and here is the message she wants to convey:
“I am not the first person to talk about depression. This has been talked about in many books. There are works of art, extraordinary books written on this subject. I have chosen to expose myself, I see myself breaking a taboo, this is what we are doing right now. I was helped a lot by a book I’ve discovered recently: ‘The Noonday Demon’, written by Andrew Solomon; this is the book that literally woke me up”.
