TESTIMONY
Assaulted by a gang of twenty people, Romain became paraplegic. Thirteen years after the events, he comes back to this attack which left him disabled at the microphone of "La Libre antenna", on Europe 1. He tells how he manages to overcome his handicap by writing which allows him to free his suffering . He is currently working on a third book. He shares with Olivier Delacroix the maxims that help him move forward and confides that this aggression has enriched him.
>> Listen to Romain's testimony in full here
"I'm 44 years old. I became a paraplegic from an assault. I ran into a gang. Twenty guys ran into me. I was with my girlfriend. I was in front of a little girl, the one of them called me a pedophile. There was an altercation and I found myself paraplegic. I was in intensive care. I have iron bars in my spine to keep me upright. It will do thirteen years.
" Writing is a liberation from suffering "As I can no longer make love, I use subterfuge, other means to have fun. It can be through the mind or through dialogue. When we listen to music, it speaks to us. Everything is a pretext to live, to live happily if possible. I have a maxim: "Very happy is he who has learned to laugh at himself, because he has not finished having fun". I have another maxim: "It is easier to be a slave than to be master of yourself". I find it very pretty.
I write a little, I am not a professional. Writing is major. It is a liberation of the spirit, it is a liberation from suffering. I have a lot of sentences that allow me to find myself. I wrote a collection and a novel. This is already good, but I would like to end up with a third book. I try to find ideas for a future text, I fish in all corners. I have no desire to sell my texts, I keep them for my family and my friends.
>> Find Olivier Delacroix's Libre antenna in replay and podcast here
The more we move away from the intimate, from true psychological relationships, the more we move away from a form of truth, we scatter. The real pleasure is to have intellectual support. I suffered this assault, but it gave me a lot. She enriched me. I think fatality is not bad in itself. All my life I have forgiven about many terrible situations I have experienced. There is no point in judging people with cookie cutters. It only brings additional contempt, it's not enriching.
I do not use light wheelchairs. I have a very heavy chair, it allows me to keep in shape. I did some passages in psychiatry because I still did not understand the reality. For me, there was no logic. I looked for logic in a situation that seemed inadequate to me. I was diagnosed with bipolar. I took a lot of sleeping pills. Currently, things are much better. I take light sleeping pills. Medication destroys the body. "