For Annie, Maryse, Gisèle and Patrice
” I’m coming,
Broken heart of a family
Where I lived in a corner
Half silence, half girl. »
This song by Marie Laforêt (Bring me) plays in my ears as I head towards my homeland. This song sung to my lungs at eleven years old, when I was in love even before being in love. Flagship song, while I have not yet regained my sight; my eyelids in petals of innocence under the cold of such a long night. Song to remember where I come from and where I’m going.
Several months ago, I was asked to be a spokesperson for Fierté Charlevoix. It is such an important event in the history of the region. Important also on a personal level since it means for me an opportunity for healing. My heart beats as fast as this procession of bucolic landscapes that pass before me. These Charlevois unevenness — caused by the impact of a meteorite several million years earlier — has something magical about it. Leaving Montreal, my gaze is inevitably softened at the sight of them.
Although I have returned to the region dozens and dozens of times over the last ten years of my transition, it is only today that I have this impression that for once, I am going there for real. They welcome me like a queen at the Manoir Richelieu, my eyes are bordered by the river of my childhood. So long the shame, so heavy this diving suit, so vertiginous this abyss which sucked me incessantly.
This river, wide now like a desire to live, imposes a pause and if we look at it for several minutes while silencing our inner tumult, it begins to speak to us, to reveal ourselves to ourselves.
This morning, before my lecture at the library in La Malbaie, the sun woke me up earlier than usual, but how can I be bitter when it’s the same sun that saw me grow up and that was just looking forward to seeing me again? only alive, but happy to be.
Telling myself in the territory of my evolution is an additional challenge; I feel much more vulnerable there than talking about myself in front of a crowd of strangers. This territory that I have long, and ardently, wanted to flee. What a contradiction that in these picturesque and grandiose landscapes I saw a suffocation, a hostage-taking under a bell jar.
Today, Charlevoix brings me back to her. Do not resist. It was she who overheard the secrets I told the stones before placing them in her womb. A radio show to promote, see a friend from primary school, be moved by her laughter.
On the evening of the conference, I see faces not seen for more than fifteen years. Surprises: like my childhood friend, friends of my sisters, and this primary school music teacher whose mere sight moved me even in childhood. A hug and we both cry, in the reunion of people who are never forgotten.
I rethink my roots, turn the earth over so that it can breathe. For a long time I considered myself rootless and I realize that they were only dried up, yet there, waiting to find the source.
At the end of the conference, comments.
“I’m sorry you went through so much distress, Gabrielle,” one of my high school employees said with a start. Sorry I didn’t see all that. She has tears in her eyes.
My elementary school music teacher tells me she’s sorry she didn’t see that I was unhappy as a child.
Tell them it’s nobody’s fault. But I didn’t know that I needed to hear their words. It’s as if the little Gabrielle that I was was finally seen today, and it heals wounds.
I emerge from the conference transfigured by the love received in this welcome and this ovation that I am offered. I am no longer half silence, or half girl, but whole. Moved, I think of other songs to sing, of suns to love and of landscapes to experience.