Wild Grass

To Sara, Lola, Mathilde and Gaspard.

Yesterday, as I was watching Kieran, my current 25 years-old workaway host, starting his big once in a lifetime project, I thought about my own 25 years-old once in a lifetime project. And with almost maternal instincts (I know it is weird especially since I am only five years older), in the impulse of the one who knows in front of the one who doesn’t know yet, I wanted to tell him, like I would tell any of of younger siblings when life hurts them by surprise: “You know, even if this big project doesn’t work out nor bring you what you expect, you will be fine.” But because I remembered who I was when I was 25, I shut up… There are things you can’t say because they can’t be heard.
When I was 25 and I was starting this new project which would happen to be the beginning of my end, which would happen to be the end of a long and new beginning, I couldn’t have accepted such a truth because my whole life depended on this project. My happiness, my future, my success. I wasn’t wise enough to understand, I couldn’t step back. And I hated all the ones who even dared to think I would fail. It was absolutely unthinkable for me. I didn’t understand nobody was ever talking about failures, on the contrary. I hated the condescension I could read in their eyes or hear in their voice. I therefore refuse, proud and arrogant, to be condescending now. Instead, I write those worlds talking about me, that would hopefully be meaningful for somebody else, that I particularly send to my young siblings.

I have always been a strong person, strong enough to move mountains and blow rainbows, but that strength was a bit artificial, always jeopardized by my fears. Thus, everything I was ever doing was both full of strength and fears. Mostly, fear of failing, fear of not being able to survive. My stepmother spent a year in the US when she was teenager and she always tells me you are worthier of how you get over your failures than your success over there. I think I am starting to understand… I have always though what don’t kill you makes you stronger, but I know how masochistic it may sound in certain ears or mouths, including mine. However, it is not here a glorification of pain, it is a call for freedom. Because failing and recovering most of all makes you freer!
When I was 25, I was paralyzed by my fears; five years later, I want to experiment, I know it can bring what society calls failures, what my parents – in their great wisdom!- call experiences. When I was 25, I had a dream and now, I have emancipated from the dreams which had become my own jail…

A few months ago, just before starting this journey, I went through my umpteenth life crisis and my mum didn’t understand. Why was I so upset? I was then offered to perform on stage again when I had performed for the last time a few days before. Absolutely furious, I was strongly opposed to that suffocating opportunity, so different from my current desires. I couldn’t understand the violence of my reaction myself… Then I understood: I had to give up on everything I had built one day, give up on my dream because it had become too painful. Giving up, I created a promise, I let another opportunity blossom. It was my dream nonetheless and I had to give up on it nonetheless. I didn’t give up because I had changed my dream, I gave up because my dream didn’t fit reality. Thus, to go back to my previous state after having painfully given up was too much of a pain.
A few months ago, I (or at least a part of me) still perceived that as a failure. Today, as I am tirelessly weeding around blueberries bushes, I look at the bigger picture. Today, as I am transformed by my weeding epiphany, I get another look. It was not about giving up, it was about getting freedom: that last weekend of 2018, when I let my life collapse, when I ended everything I had built until then, I freed myself from my own dreams because they had become my own prison. And I am now grateful for this collapse because I am free. My happiness doesn’t depend on my work, or somebody, or somewhere; my happiness only depends on myself. It is like saying money doesn’t make you happy, it might only help. Nothing, nobody nor nowhere can make me happy, but they might definitely help.
All what happened to me make me stronger today. Now, I don’t need to be strong, I am strong. I don’t have to be strong, it is not an action, it is a state of mind. I used to be strong to fight my fears; now, I am strong because I beat them, I accepted them, they are a part of who I am. Now, I am strong because I know I will always recover. Even if my dreams happen to betray me. Because I don’t depend on them anymore.

In the beginning of one my tales a few years ago, I rebeled:

Where are the bloody instructions? The life instructions? The first time you cross the grown-up world border, at an undefined age the law decided to be 18 years old but actually only depends on everybody’s path, and you discover the burnt land expecting you, your life aches, but untouched and pure, you are impatient to act on it, to make this grown up world a happy place. You do every thing like a first time, unshakably trustful that your world will turn to be a happy place one day. You don’t know you haven’t actually cross the border, you got stuck at the customs, on the edge of the stinky and messy world. It is only when you turn 25, when you are done studying and you start to build some beginnings, it is only when you truly understand your reality: even trying your best, even crossing your parents’ and their parents’ rules, you failed. You wake up grown up and you have become everything you didn’t want to. Your time is full but your time is empty. This is the actual slap in the face, because then, you don’t have your 20 years-old hope, you totally understand how powerless you are. Here your are, a grown up, you are suffocating, you don’t know your life instructions. Why nobody told you? Why nobody taught you how to be alive? You should have be offered courses about how to be alive, because you are completely helpless when it is your turn.

It is not that nobody tells you, you are only not ready to listen. Because you are young, impetuous, because you are indestructible and you don’t believe it. Because you are young, you are bold, because your are fragile and absolutely unable to believe this truth. You are terrified. You don’t have experience telling you it won’t kill you.
It is like when you are heart broken for the first time and everybody is telling you, helpless, the only healer is time. It never helps for fucksake! Except now, my mind is remembering everyone who talked to me about time and I smile. Thus, they were right. I needed time. Time to heal. Time to understand all this was not a failure but an experience. Time to see there is nothing more beautiful than not needing anybody but choosing to be with somebody. Time to figure out freedom is your most precious gift and like peace, there is never too much of it. Time to understand what I feared the most was what I needed.
Of course, when you are stuck in this impatient moment when everybody talks to you about time, it doesn’t fix your problem. Because time can’t heal you in the present, it precisely needs time. Then you struggle, you want an answer now, that nobody can give you but you will smile some day…

Come to the endless end of my messy mind, I need to finish, I need to talk directly to my young sisters, to my little brother three heads taller than me…
I wish you the most beautiful failures of your life. Not because I wish you the worst, but precisely because I wish you the best. Today, your adult lives start little by little, leading you second after second to who you already are. And all your “failures” will save you time! You will understand your dreams are changeable, and make them come true, or not, makes you more free. You will understand you can survive your first love, better you live with it because no first love ever truly leave you. You will understand you are strong because you are completely yourself. Today, all this probably sound a bit unreal for you, young impetuous puppies, and you are sure you will get over it without considering what it really implies, you are young and pride and it is beautiful.
But when the day will come – because it will, it is life – when the day of your first failures that you won’t yet call experiences, made worse by your wounds and fears, will come, I swear I won’t bitterly talk to you like those who suffered, never really took time to heal and think the youth should suffer the same pain; I won’t condescendingly talk to you like people who has forget, saying: “Don’t worry, you will get over it.” or one of those stock phrases people say when they don’t have anything to tell. Because it is important, it is even the most important thing occurring to you, you are at a turning point and your helplessness deserve to be taken seriously. And this most important thing, you don’t get over it; better, you deal with it, you cope with it, you change with it. This most important thing becomes a part of you as much as your beating heart. Part that you cherish as much as any of your success.
I will therefore simply tell you, my dear siblings, like all the stupid ones I actively hated, you will understand with time; even if you will feel furiously misunderstood for a moment, I don’t mind this fleeting anger because I know one day you will smile.
I will tell you, dear siblings, no matter what happens, I swear you will cope with it because you are who you are. I won’t lie to you though, coping with the biggest earthquake of your adult life is a slow and often painful process, you will sometimes feel like you are over it, you are ready for what comes next and you are actually only getting your next slap in the face. I won’t lie to you, coping with the biggest earthquake of your adult life is an endless and angry process, but I swear, one day, you will be grateful of this long arid walk. I swear this thing that didn’t kill you will make you stronger.

But most of all, my dear siblings, I will tell you that, when this most important thing will occur, when the biggest earthquake of your adult life will happen, I will be there for you.

Justine – Nov. 13th 2019, Cowichan Bay (BC) – GMT -8