When Never Meneses (Madrid, 1978) read the book of Angel Martin in which she opened the Pandora’s box of her mental health problems, she felt reflected as in a mirror. The one who was the first expelled from ‘OT 2’ achieved success with Kim Fanlo, her sentimental ex-partner, with whom she created the group Nena Daconte. But succeeding in music did not sit well with him. Her lack of self-esteem led her to resort to alcohol and drugs and she ended up leading to psychotic episodes, as detailed in the book ‘I had so much to give you’, edited by Plaza & Janes. A play in which he explains that he went through a stage where he talked to plants and that he thought he could control the rain. He has forbidden his parents to read it “so they don’t suffer.” And she has titled it as the song that has marked her career, although it is not the one that she feels most proud of. “I wrote it in five minutes with the help of some substance,” she recalls.
In the book she defines herself in many ways: empanada, panphilia, clueless, melancholic, dramatic, she says that she has never considered her place to be success… It is an autobiography and it seems written by her worst enemy
When I started writing it I was very insecure and I wanted to capture that evolution in the book, which then ends up a little brighter. It was a way of confronting my own concept of myself, and it was quite hard.
Why explain now how he hit rock bottom? Has it been therapy for you? Because there are those who might think that it is a reckoning with her past and with Kim Fanlo, who does not come out very well.
I wrote it as a therapy, to put my ideas in order. When I had it written I put it away in a drawer. He was there for six months, until I read Ángel Martín’s book ‘In case the voices come back’, which explains his experience with a psychotic outbreak, and I felt that he was not the only person to whom this had happened.
The importance of breaking taboos and making mental health visible
I thought that my book could help to be another reference in the subject of mental health. To say that when you have a problem you have to ask for help, and that it is important to talk about it so that the taboo of going to the psychiatrist, to therapy…
The mistake you made in your worst time was not asking for help?
Not asking for help and not quitting smoking joints, which already made me feel very bad. I had to have left it.
He says that with Kim he met marijuana (“I spent the day smoking joints,” he writes) and that it gave him all the power over his self-esteem. He describes him as cold, calculating, and absent. Do you expect a response from his ex-partner?
I don’t know, although I don’t care. I have told my truth, but there are things that I had to explain because I have always been silent. I didn’t do it to hurt you or upset you. I haven’t seen him in like 13 years, so I don’t know what he’s like right now.
He talks about how he has been through therapies and psychiatrists, that he has suffered from bipolar disorder, anxiety, depression, psychotic episodes, paranoia… How is he now?
I’m fine, medicated so I don’t have psychosis, but fine.
Is it something that can be overcome or is one never really cured?
I’ve been told no, but I’ll try. I have that hope. When my doctor allows me, I will stop the medication again to see what happens.
She confesses that she got hooked on paranoia, which took her out of the monotony because her life was like in a video game
That happens to a lot of people, I realized after writing the book. It is as if the real world is sometimes a bit bland and, instead, the other is like living in a constant dream and where you are also the center of the universe.
“When my doctor allows me, he will stop the medication again to see what happens”
He explains that working in music made him feel terrible, that it was his kryptonite. How does he live now? Because next March he will release an album
What happened to me with music was that my level of self-demand was very high, I competed so much with myself and tried to be so perfect that it hurt me a lot. And now it’s the opposite: it has lowered my level of expectations towards what I can achieve, I know my limitations and my talents, because at that time I underestimated myself.
Speaking of self-esteem… He even writes: “I have never had much character and in my life he ends up giving his opinion to the pointer”.
It’s not like that now, but if I’m not careful it could come back. I have that defect, it is difficult for me to confront, to say no, to set the limits when I have to set them.
Did ‘OT’ make a person with low self-esteem like you see how that problem worsened? Because there they compared her with the rest of her classmates
I think so, it made a bit of a dent. At first I didn’t see it, I laughed a little at the experience we were living, I said that she was the opening act for the boys from ‘OT’. But seeing it from a distance, it did leave a significant wound, because otherwise the success would not have made me feel so bad. All the time I thought she had no talent.
His moment of greatest success, with Nena Daconte, was like hell. “The fact of being successful made me feel terrible. Guilt ate me up inside,” he says in the book
I had impostor syndrome, I thought I didn’t deserve everything I was getting.
“I don’t care what Kim says. I haven’t seen him in 13 years”
He got hooked on joints and alcohol. “The best time of my life is hidden in a mist. I hardly remember anything,” she says. Did he get hooked because of a lack of self-esteem or because he didn’t know how to digest success?
I started out of curiosity. When I smoked joints in the beginning, it was like lights went on in my brain, I heard the music in three dimensions. Everything went wrong when the pressure, the stress, the physical exhaustion began… That was what began to make me start to scratch people, to be very sensitive and everything made me feel bad. In the book, I hardly dedicated any pages to the Nena Daconte chapter because she hardly remembered anything.
In the book he also criticizes the recording industry. He comments that it was agreed that only seven singers from ‘OT’ would play on the radio, and you were not on the list. Did you feel rejection from other artists for having been on ‘OT’?
Not so much for me, because immediately, with the name of Nena Daconte, it was diluted that I had been a ‘triumphant’, but other colleagues have told me so. From the edition of Amaia and Aitana everything changed, but there was a time, that of our year, when they looked down on us.
Why has he forbidden his parents to read the book?
So that they don’t suffer. When I came back from Barcelona they already gave me a hand, but all that was in the past. I don’t want them to probe or remove things.
Has your husband, who was your old college friend, read it to you?
Yes. If you hadn’t supported me, I wouldn’t have published it. The role of the companion is fundamental. Sometimes we forget because we are very focused on ourselves, on our illness, and the people who accompany us have a worse time even because they do not know what to say or do.
Their children are 10 and 8 years old. Will they read it when they are older?
When the time comes, we will have to have a conversation about drugs, alcohol, the effects they can have in the long term… But that conversation will also be had by all parents.