As the new year approaches, the thrill of possibilities tickles my spine. Like a faithful in mystical crisis, I place my destiny in the hands of the Gregorian calendar. As if, on December 31 at midnight, an occult spell freed me from my own person, finally propelling me to the rank of “orderly woman who loves to do her little jog-chia-seed-two-drinks-week”. Only, disillusion hits me hard, on January 2, when I find it too chilly to put on my running shoes, give me a blanket to warm up with my glass of mulled wine.
But like every change of year, while Amazon’s sled encourages wild capitalism, I dream. The list of things that I wish for us collectively is as loaded as it is baroque. Because we are not going to lie to each other, the bombs that litter the ground of the news are numerous, complex. Metaphorical or not, they terrorize the living.
The living, us.
Because yes, yes, one thing we have in common, you worse, is the fact that we are alive. Pragmatically, I mean. Living is something we share. The rest is up for discussion. Another thing that should unite us unequivocally is the fact that no one has the right to take this life away from us. Person. Not a dictator. Not a political system. Not even the person to whom you say “I love you” while tasting fruit at the grocery store. Person.
I also place a wish on the big springboard that separates 2022 from 2023; would it be possible, please life, to kill conjugal violence at the moment when the bottles of champagne go popping in the cottages?
A pressurized cork, it can wreak havoc, can you please life, take advantage of it so that domestic violence takes it deep in your throat?
That would be nice, right? We would wake up on the 1ster January and the metamorphosis would have already begun to disconcert many households. Here, someone wouldn’t even be afraid of being put down by whispering a “good morning, did you sleep well?” “. There, someone wouldn’t hesitate for a second before accepting a date with friends. Over there, someone would have the strength to breathe, to control their anger, would have the courage to say “help me”, to break down another kind of wall, the reinforced concrete one deep in their stomach and worse in their history. family.
Even loving, on January 2, 2023, would no longer hurt. All the fiction, the narrative of our childhoods, of our adolescence, would be rewritten. The authors, the autrices, the screenwriters would find other dramaturgical springs to advance their stories. To be in relationship would be something that would enlarge us, that would push us to do yoga or ride a horse smiling in a field, rather than hiding deep inside ourselves or in a wardrobe, hoping let the violence stop for a few minutes. Even ordinary, everyday, almost invisible control would disappear.
Well do you know what? In 2023, the number of feminicides would be limited to zero. Not a single child would have to go through the heartbreak it must be to lose their mother to their father. Not a single family would have to face every hour of the rest of their lives feeling guilty for hesitating before meddling in other people’s business. Not a single girlfriend, a single friend, would have to scream at this kind of news. We would save our tears for something else. Even that the word “feminicide” would no longer serve any purpose. It would become a mixture of sounds that would no longer have any meaning. Like a dead language, which we would never have known.
But hey, I know I live neither in a musical nor in an absurd book where the character wakes up without a nose.
I have to face the facts, domestic violence hangs around me, it clings to the words of some, to the behavior of others, sometimes so subtle that it could be confused with love.
Its smell is often tenuous, but always tenacious. Darkness never just happens, unilaterally. The roles can be reversed. But she is there. It is there, in the knuckles that turn white during Christmas carols, in the grinding of too many teeth, in the commentary that denigrates under cover of humor, in the wrist that we keep tight, in the friend who isolates himself, in the friend who is afraid to speak to another girl, in the hole in the wall, in the bite marks on the skin of the neck, in the death of too many women, above all.
I can perhaps issue from the end of my lips, from the end of my heart, a wish that you can take back. How about we stay tuned? For real listening? Listening to ourselves, pointing out our own mechanisms of violence. Listening to our loved ones, our not so close ones, by offering them something from our hand, our courage, our love. Listening to the system that creates this violence, trying to thwart the achievements. Listening to the resources available to us.
For the new year, in the lot of what I want to pitch in the universe to wish us a common breathing, I add this: love, criss. Worse of life. Well of life.