If it weren’t for my beloved children who are still too young to be deprived of their mother, I would leave. For some money, I would rent my pretty condo, making people happy in Montreal, I would leave my old cat to board with a friend and, with my backpack – without a makeup bag – I would go and hole up alone somewhere. I don’t have a precise plan, as it is not reconcilable with my current situation. There is no point, therefore, in turning iron in the wound, but the idea haunts me more and more.
I need air.
I need the trees, the flowers, the earth, the whistling of the wind in my ears.
I need messy hair, to wander around in rags, dirty, uninhibited, disoriented, without expectations, without outside eyes looking at me. Except that of wild beasts that I would not fear, unattainable because they are strong and confident.
I would like to be alone by the water or in the woods, swimming, walking for long hours in a Georgia O’Keeffe landscape, crying my heart out or giggling like a crazy old witch. I always wondered to which destination they flew astride their broomsticks. A dilapidated castle? A cavern ? A manhole cover? A secret Lesbos-style island full of women addicted to cannabis? I would like to speak to myself out loud without being afraid of being surprised. I would like to vape in peace without being judged, or feeling guilty for taking a few years off my life. I feel flattened (batinsse!).
As a self-employed worker in the media, I have never been able to afford time off work, to do a “ reset » to ask myself if I am really who I want to be, in the right place. I would be forgotten, we would move on to the next one, and when I returned, I would find myself without a contract, without a penny. So, I continue my frantic race, resolving every year to slow down. But I’m not one of those who keep their resolutions, nor one of those who slow down. So I burn incense, I try to drink chamomile rather than wine — not without great difficulty — and I let myself sink into hot baths because, as Sylvia Plath wrote in The distress bell“ [i]There must be some ailments that a hot bath cannot cure, but I don’t know of many.”
Fortunately, books offer me some temporary relief. In the extraordinary work Women who run with the wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estés, my friend Geneviève, who lent it to me, highlighted this passage in pink marker: “Most of us cannot be away as long as we would like, so we also go away as long as we can. From time to time we go away as long as we have to, and sometimes we go away until we miss what we left behind. Sometimes we make a foray, leave, and start again. Most women who re-enter their natural cycles alternate between all of this, depending on needs and circumstances. One thing is certain, it is good to have a small suitcase ready. In case. »
Its symbol is strong on my doorstep, but less than it must have been for the aristocrat and mother of three Frieda von Richthofen, 33, when she dared to throw everything away, on August 5, 1912, to go and do miles of road on foot in the company of her lover, DH Lawrence (Lady Chatterley’s Lover), then an unknown and penniless writer with whom she had been fooling around for a few months… “It wasn’t so much about adventure as about escape,” writes Annabel Abbs about her in Beware of walking women. “And above all, she would now be a woman without children, without neighbors, without the slightest circle of local friends, having given up all of this for the sole purpose of reclaiming and reaffirming her place in the world. » Part of me fails to fully understand Frieda for having abandoned her beloved offspring, but this chapter devoted to her by Abbs does not fascinate me any less.
Waiting for this possible exile, when the minis have left the nest, savor the chance to be born on the right side of the world and make this powerful fantasy a treat that I bite into in small doses. Don’t they say that time makes things better? One day, perhaps, the desire will pass me or I will finally leave, on the threshold of the third age or with my feet in it, without faith or law.