My malaise had been latent for a long time, always I believe, but it was when I was twenty-seven that it came to light. I then spent three weeks in a psychiatric hospital due to what the local psychiatrist called a “major depressive episode”.

In the following years, my state of mind and my life deteriorated further. Slowly, then faster and faster, I raced down the slope. I even had a few bouts of delirium. In those moments, my head was boiling with incoherent ideas, my reason wavered, I lost control. But most of the time, I wasn't crazy.

I was depressed.

The anguish, the sadness, the lack and the desire to end it: I passed and repassed through the dark corridors of this labyrinth; I bivouacked there for what seemed like centuries. I wandered in the dust of moldy dead ends, turned in circles in front of walls without ever finding a way out.

The discomfort, the guilt, the tears... The feeling of being fat, ugly and repulsive... The feeling of being an insignificant, dirty, useless and despicable thing... The unanswered questions, the weakness, the impossible dreams... The humiliation, the heart that hurts so much it feels like it's breaking...

All this I know very well.

And if I were still in this state, you would really have no reason to listen to me — except, of course, if your ambition was to become depressed, too...

But in recent years, my life has radically changed and today, at the age of thirty-seven, I am almost someone else.

At the sentimental level, I was incapable of establishing a lasting, or even only pleasant, relationship with a man; I chained in humiliation and tears lamentable adventures on grotesque misadventures. Now I am the fulfilled wife of the best husband in the universe: the most beautiful, the kindest and the most intelligent.

In saying that, I don't think I lack objectivity.

On a professional level, I suffered from being a — bad — teacher. Not only was I not credible, but I realized it, I hated the programs, the nie copies had the effect of neuroleptics, and the students terrified me: they were tougher than me.

Anyway, they looked like it.