Dangereuse trilingue

31 décembre 05

Wintry thoughts.

It rarely snows in Paris. Some years, you have to pay attention in order to see any snowflakes at all, a sparse, lonesome, heavy lot that disintegrates and adds little splotches of water to the December and January puddles (it does rain, usually). Well, this was the view from my window on the 30th at 1 p.m.:

We’ve had days of impressive snow before this winter. It was dark: I had to instruct my camera that, no, I didn’t want flash. (All right, I did use the flash in the end, to make the snowflakes more visible.)

The slushy stuff stayed on the pavement for a few hours, while the temperature hovered just above freezing. The sidewalks were slippery, quite dangerous actually. Then the weather stopped wavering and decided to warm a little, and the snow melted away again.

We’ve had quite a bit of strange weather over the last months. A week ago, the Parisian sidewalks were green, a fragrant mush of crushed leaves, ripped off the trees by gusts of wind and turned to pulp under the shoes of thousands of passers-by. Green trails led into the stores. Chlorophyll aroma replaced the more traditional Christmas smells of spiced wine and roasted almonds. I attribute it to the exceptionally cold month of November—my knowledge of tree physiology is non-existent, but November was freezing cold and not as stormy as usual, and the trees, at least in my neighbourhood, kept their leaves all the way through. December was generally mild in comparison, even warm-ish.

It’s the time of the year to look back in a reflective mood. I’m tempted to say that my 2024 has been an unqualified catastrophe. Financially and emotionally, I’m in serious trouble. Professionally, I haven’t recovered from a very bad blow that built up over a long time and finally struck in the second half of the previous year. My self-confidence is next to zero in many areas, worse for those skills and traits that I treasure most. I’ve been an inadequate friend, a less than inadequate daughter, sister and aunt.

I’m unsure, but I may have made a step towards letting go of my love. As far as I know, she’s alive but far from being well. She has no connections to this country, or to continental Europe, except for me, and the reverse is mostly true, as well. Her health is bad, even worryingly so. Her only support network—I am employing this term with care, because this is not about lovers or freely chosen life partners—comes with an iron-clad grasp on her communications, including phone calls, e-mail, even her web browsing, and a huge amount of jealousy. I can’t talk or write to her without jeopardizing what little stability and help she has. It is easy to talk about working through tough patches together, to take on whatever comes our way; it isn’t hard to go through life with some basic understanding and respect for the needs of others and a pragmatic attitude towards the problems of life; but when it came down to it, I couldn’t even do a fucking thing for the person I love with every fiber of my being. Obviously, I’m crying as I’m writing this. Out of the last two times we talked, she was confused and disoriented once, and on the other occasion requested in a whisper that I stop calling her because she couldn’t be caught talking to me; and told me she loved me. Online, I’ve never touched upon this particular path, which has led me, naked and alone, into an ocean of powerlessness—a place I detest, headstrong and argumentative person that I am. Offline, I’ve exhausted the understanding of those friends who knew what was going on and, later, my tears. I sometimes run my finger over the only keepsake I have of her: a photograph I took myself.

This strand of my life is one of the reasons the blog doesn’t have my name attached to it.

Still, the one thing I promised her, back when I would wake up in the safety of her arms, was that would never give up on living. I’m reasonably able-bodied and have kept learning, even this past year, and while the achievements look precarious and the skills are self-taught, lacking anyone’s rubber-stamp, it would be stupid not to build on them.

Thinking of my friends of five, ten or more years past gives me conflicting feelings: many have settled somewhere, taken advanced degrees, secured jobs that, though maybe not ultimately fulfilling, have provided them with security, a sense of purpose and, as often as not, a certain degree of prestige. I used to be just as smart as promising as they were and—this is hard to admit, impossible in a personal letter—I’m jealous of them. I’d love to renew the bonds, but what story can I tell?

Passion is another iffy topic. When I was at my strongest, my successes were built on my being passionate about the things I did. Or so I thought. I probably underestimated the importance of being rooted somewhere, of having a place in a larger system. Sucking the last drop of enjoyment of what is supposed to be a duty and a chore then provides that bit of an edge, the quality that tricked me, but also those around me, into believing myself to be strong, self-assured and on the track to getting what I want. Once that foothold is lost, however, the same eagerness, the same giving-oneself-totally-over attitude can turn a spiral of success into a vicious circle of failure. Yet, passion has served me well for ten years of my life. I don’t even know how to go about things without it.

2004 was the year where I most cruelly experienced how little I matter to those with power over me, how easily I’m discarded in a world of scarce resources where everyone fights everyone—neither for ideas, nor shared goals, but for being at the top of the pile. In 2024, however, when things were worse than they’d ever been, I found kindness: not from many, not often, but once in a while there were men and women who didn’t let me slip away, who looked beyond my erratic presence and held out a hand, gave comfort and warmth, or just accepted me the way I am, without pushing or prodding or condescension. This isn’t something I’m used to. I’ll always be grateful to them.

The weeks before Christmas were even harder than I’d anticipated. The unresolved relationship with my family is, from my side, conflicted and ridiculously over-charged with history and past attitudes, the strict hierarchy under which I grew up. This hit me hard and unexpectedly, and I was reduced to a bundle of quivering nerves for a while, literally jumping at every loud noise, overcome with exhausting waves of panic, and, on Christmas Eve, sobbing uncontrollably for hours. This week has been much better, even brought stretches of enjoyment. Little things, the company of good people, like yesterday’s trip to the opera or today’s international meetup around Fondue Bourguignonne. It’s as if there was a glimpse of hope there, still, or again, peeking through the curtain of uncertainty. How to get a handle on it all, I don’t know, but whichever path I’ll take, it will have to be one small step at a time.