THANK YOU - Eté 2006

I know I'll never be capable of rendering yesterday night's events. It was just too strong. Too perfect. My writing is too clumsy and to bland to reproduce such power. But I want something material to cling onto. A way of remembering. I don't want it to dissolve into the night. Although it's left a deep deep mark in my heart. Forever. Last night, something happened. Words were said. Words that had been screaming to come out since I was born.

I didn't want to go at frst. I even figured I could make up an excuse. Pretend to be sick or something. But I didn't. I went all the same.
We entered the garden. The three of us girls. I figured we looked like the three Mary's, bringing the food instead of the perfume and ointments. I was wearing a long white skirt by which I felt protected.

I didn't know how I was supposed to act with her. I thought I could look at her in the eyes, with a glorious smile, and defiance in my eyes. “I am stronger ! See how great I look ? You don't affect me anymore ! You can't crush me !”. Or I could just ignore her. When I saw her, at last, I lost my senses, my composure and had no control over my attitude. I didn't manage the defiance thing. So, I simply looked down when she hugged me. She might have said something about my hair, to which I gave no answer. I feared my coldness had been too conspicuous.

I turned hard as stone with her daughter. She wanted to organize a treasure hunt and I showed very little interest. This is aweful cuz I can't be mean with this little girl who truely loves me just because I blame her mum. But that's what I did. I feel ashamed. When I think back of it now, I love that child. She's so happy and healthy and lively. She's got a lot of imagination and a strong temper.

While I was eating, I pretended to have a ball with the other people there. I wanted to ignore her on purpose and show her how confident I was, how successful I was without her. She came and touched my face with her hand. A tender caress. I ignored that and turned cold as ice. “Don't you touch me !” I wanted to shout.

Her beauty struck me. She was wearing that long black dress. Her hair was tied back into a braid that fell on her back. She was slender and had a noble attitude. She was this admirable Italian beauty. It broke my heart that I hated such a beautiful woman.

All the people were smoking. I saw that she was holding a cigarette as well. Something that spoilt her perfection. I wanted to write something crushing about it. Beautiful girls and their cigarette. Or Beautiful girls and their murderous cigarette. Or Murderous girls and their beautiful cigarette.

After we left the table, she came to me. “May I have a few words with you ?” she asked. I hesitated. I could have said “Honestly, I don't feel like talking to you”. But I went all the same. I thank God that I went, that I accepted. Now that I look backwards at that very moment, it fills me with horror that I might as well have said “no”. There is a lot of tension, like in a movie, just before you know someone is going to die if he takes the wrong decision. These movies where you already know the end.

“I can feel that you're angry with me” she said, with complicity in her voice. She said this lightly but I could see that she was worried. And I told her I was angry. I told her everything. I was looking at her in the eyes, and I was shaking, my whole body was shaking. But I didn't flinch. I kept on speaking, getting words off my chest. I told her everything. The time I had spent waiting for her since I was a child, the power she had over me, the obsessive character she had become in my mind. It wasn't her. It was my perception of her : she was manipulating me, crushing my life to pieces without cleaning the mess afterwards, playing with my feelings. Hope – disappointment. I saw the hurt. On her face. The reasons why she had not come. The pain.
She told me I couldn't do that. I wasn't the only one in the world who suffered, and I had no idea about what suffering meant. I said I never pretended I did, I said Je n'ai jamais eu l'intention de me poser en victime.
I said I didn't blame HER but what she had become in my mind. I told her these were different people, although connected. I told her I had to protect myself. Defend myself against that character. She didn't know. She was stunned. She didn't know she was so important to me.
“Of course you are”. And I'd hated her, and I loved her. And I was crying in her arms, maybe she was crying too.

We were out of time, out of space. There were people coming and going around us but I didn't really notice. It was just her. My beautiful neighbour. I blamed myself for the hate I'd gathered on her. I confessed. I felt relieved. She didn't blame me. She said I was right in doing it. I had to do it. But my hatred is no longer alive. It was true then, but it was just attached to a perception, stuck in time.

She told me how important I was. It broke her soul to see me in pain. She was struggling with herself on my account. She wanted to talk to me. She was dying to speak to me. She didn't dare to. She was afraid she'd crush me. She couldn't stand it anymore that old evening when she came. I said “Come, everytime you feel it. Or else it will be aweful. Les non-dits. I'm dying to see you. To speak to you.”. These things, that I thought had killed me, had actually saved my life. I was born again. I said I didn't know how she'd done this. She said she didn't know either. “Mais tu es grande, si grande” I said.


I told her it made me sad we'd spent so much time on discussing illnesses and sufferings. I wanted to talk about life. I'd tried to let her read some stuff or listen to music but I couldn't do it. She said she knew. But it was difficult to speak with me sometimes. I said I blamed her for denying my writing. She said she knew I could write well. I said “How do you know ? You never read anything” and she said this was not true. She'd read everything I'd given her. I said that was old stuff. Things had changed.

Hair came into the conversation, it echoed throughout the evening. She told me she had noticed my hair. How beautiful it was. She told me people who were attached to their mind had that. When she'd lost everything, when she was sick to death, she said, she still had that hair : long and flamboyant.
I said it was funny because since she'd left that day, saying I should do something physical, I kept on having these massive hair fantasies : losing it, shaving it. She knew how important hair was. I said I'd never do anything stupid with it unless I went crazy, which, I hoped, wouldn't happen too soon.

I saw her that night. It was such a relief too be able to look into her eyes again. These deep, deep eyes of hers. I understood something. She was even more important than I thought she was. She was not my enemy or my tormentor. She was my friend, my beautiful friend. I send her all my love.