I’m not a morning person, even I hate getting up in the morning. When my alarm clock rings, I snoozeI snooze… and I snooze !
Except last Wednesday. Wednesday I woke up shaking, stress numbing my face, my jaw refusing to relax.
I was terrified. Terrified that people don’t understand.
In recent weeks, I agreed to take part in a journalistic investigation by The Press and 98.5 for one reason. For two years, each time an article on Julien Lacroix is published, there is a voice in my head that says to me:
“But what are you doing here!? »
In 2020, I was, anonymously, one of the nine whistleblowers of Julien Lacroix in The duty. This fall, I agreed to speak up and tell my story again because I saw no other option to set the record straight.
An article from To have to published in July 2022, about Julien’s comeback attempt, particularly bothered me. It was written there that none of his victims wanted to comment. Technically, I’m counted in the nine victims. How was it that it was indicated that I had not wanted to comment, when I had never been contacted? It was suddenly clear to me. For two years I had been used to inflate a number without really listening to me, they didn’t need my comments, they just needed my story.
I contacted the journalist from To have to in order to withdraw from the number nine. I told him that I was uncomfortable, that I should never have been considered a victim given the nature of my testimony. She told me that she could not modify the articles since at the time of publication, I considered myself as such.
What is strange is that I had never thought of myself as a victim until a person, who was my friend at the time, convinced me to tell my anecdote to a journalist. She was there to advance the cause, I was told. I wanted to advance the cause too, but not from there to become a victim.
On Wednesday, I came out of anonymity to correct the facts of the past two years. I am not a victim. The duty and a friend gave me this role, and I don’t want to pretend to be indifferent anymore.
Since Wednesday, we talk a lot, but we do not exchange. Lots of words, so little dialogue.
Opening the dialogue, especially at this time, is difficult. I don’t want to rush anyone, I don’t want to seem insensitive, I don’t want to set back an important cause.
When I think of the turning points in my life, the moments that stirred me enough to change and become a better person, they all have one thing in common: they are moments that I would have preferred never to experience.
For many, learning about this week’s survey was uncomfortable, confronting, disheartening. It stirred us up, enough for us to say to ourselves collectively that things must change.
In recent years, the #metoo movement has encouraged me to speak up when I see problematic behavior, to denounce. This movement filled me with courage with #jetecrois.
Yet this week, that same movement said to me:
We encourage you to talk, but not about everything, tse…
Yes, be brave, but only in certain contexts!
#jeecrois, but not about the thing you just said…
I said that I was not a victim and the movement that has given me so much strength in recent years refuses to believe me. And he even insists on telling me that I’m wrong, that I’m a victim.
I should never have been one of the nine women. Questioning this fact by saying that I am still a victim demonstrates a great lack of listening and a closure to the real dialogue that should be taking place at this time.
I quote Martine Saint-Victor, who commented on Michelle Obama’s new book during her appearance on the show 24/60 of November 18 said: […] part of feminism is having a choice”.
We all have a choice. I chose to denounce an injustice. I chose to reclaim my story. I chose to denounce a mistake that was made, to denounce the manipulation that I suffered to be “on the good side of the battle”.
“But what am I doing here?! »
I’m here to chat, even if things are stirring inside. That’s what I’m doing here.
So why don’t we try to find what we can do together rather than against?