Posted yesterday at 9:00 a.m.
As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be a doctor. I was volcanically convinced. There was no room for doubt or possibility of seeing myself otherwise. It was so. It was safe. Doctor, veterinarian, police (what a strange choice), lawyer, teacher. The range of possible professions was limited in my little nutty young girl who had clung to the first profession accessible in the toy bin (a plastic stethoscope and the delight in the eyes of adults who already saw big for me).
Good. So the few people who follow me will find that I haven’t recently opened a doctor’s office (the lexical field of health, on the other hand, I master). As a teenager, I embodied a happy mixture of porcelain, the aspiration to perfection and Pauline Martin, whose I imitated on occasion, discreetly and without any pretension, laughing saturday. I was one of those children convinced that failing at school led directly to prison. That a mediocre mark would confine me to making wallets to the rhythm of the drums or that a loose result would destroy my chances of becoming this adult wave with a leather briefcase.
The leather briefcase has nothing to do with medicine. But when you’re a child, you sometimes project yourself with a briefcase, to reassure yourself about this terrifying future. My school results were impeccable, a little scary, even, when I take a look at it with my slightly worn adult eyes. Finishing your Latin with an average of 99% is great (I was great). Getting up at night to revise basketball theory for fear of failing in physical education, a very healthy habit. But behind these notes from an aspiring Comaneci (a great basketball player) was hiding a young woman paralyzed by the expectations of others. By his conception of success. Blinded by excellence. The excellence of nothing. Just the notes. The shell. The passport to success, any. Ventolin’s little puff for pulmonary amplitude before the next exam.
Never, in all my school career, from elementary school to the baccalaureate in biochemistry (which I have, THANK GOD, never finished), have I questioned myself about who I really was. I was that girl who got really good grades. End.
This tragic truth was my only guide, a sad standard of values guided by what – I was convinced – was expected of me. Everyone, in fact. Never opened a leaflet on strange avenues in arts and letters, philosophy or the cultivation of heirloom tomatoes. My future was mapped out, secured and admired and oh! that I was going to follow him with my leather blinders on which a Celtic sun had been painted (it was still the 1990s).
Several puffs of Ventolin are necessary for me today to reach the pulmonary amplitude required to sigh strongly enough when I look with tenderness on the young woman that I was. A lost first. A young woman paralyzed by the future. Guided by the aspirations of others. The fear of others. Those famous doors that would open to me and of which I never even saw the goddamn handle.
I allow myself these words today because even if I finished secondary school 25 years ago, I revisit each year the end of the school year and the portraits of your little ones’ balls with vibrant nostalgia. I think back to young Cathie in her silver dress, knowingly lost to the power of 10, but who pretends to know where she’s going, especially not allowing herself the chance to be frivolous. Permission not to know.
To wander.
I discovered who I really was around the age of 33. Good. It didn’t appear to me in the middle of the night in a baroque villa lulled by a lunar ray, there was a journey. A journey during which I first authorized myself, at the age of 20, to quit science with a bang in all impulsiveness (as well as my job at Tim Hortons, the same day. Big day at the Ethier’s). From that feverish day, I allowed myself to park my bike. To stop on the side of the road and, certainly, to cry a lot because I didn’t really know where I had gone, while noting acutely that I really hated cycling.
And that is fantastic. Of not knowing. To deal with uncertainty (when we have the privilege of not having a family to feed and our head is on time with our body, of course). It is this permission, which I would have liked to have been granted earlier. Attention, at this precise moment, I had no idea of the big turn that I was starting or the direction that I would take, inhabited by nothing but panic fear and this sinister feeling that my future would take place under the bridges and above all, the urgency of finding a new profession. Clear new goals that would lead to the purchase of a leather briefcase before I turn 30. I wandered. I improvised as an advertising designer-editor. It was good to allow it (I hated everything). I traveled with three pennies and a lot of naivety. Worked in a hospital. I drew. Writing. Shined with all my arrogance. I freaked out. A hundred times. Experienced just as many failures. Schools. Lover. Professionals. Wiped the refusals (too exotic for the time, I was told).
These failures, which I had never really embraced in my journey as a young first to whom everything succeeded, certainly saved my life. I failed because I allowed myself to try business. To meet me. To know absolutely nothing about nothing. And I’ll tell you, I was well hidden.
To all those young people (and not so young) who write to me on occasion to find out where to get my world map, know that wandering has been, to date, my greatest ally. I wish it for you. Big. Terrifying and sovereign.
Let our children take the time to have time. There is no emergency. Wandering (and the luxury of time), I promise you, will be an exquisite ally.