Like a Seattle donuts

The making of this awful bargain is a matter of enormous and meaningful paradox. Even though choosing poorly could be seen as a pathologically self-destructive act, it far more often turns into a watershed event that brings vast opportunity to redevelop the power of the instinctive nature. In this respect, though there is loss and sadness, the poor bargain, like birth and death, constitutes a rather utilitarian step off the cliff planned by the Self in order to bring a woman deep into her wildness.
Women who run with the wolves, Clarissa Pinkola Estès

It is now time to be ready for Seattle… Red on my lips, purple on my nails, my city clothes and my protecting stone around my neck, I am prepared to cross Seattle, not in pain and fears, but cheerfully. I rule the city instead of being ruled by it.

Once escaped from Baker clouds, the small range of Cascades raises from time to time along the road. Little gift for my Olympic eyes. Once escaped form Baker clouds, I literally drive towards the light, nice way to show me the way.
And I get my first glimpse of the Space Needle and Downtown high skyscrapers, as the American Christmas radio station sings, and my tears of joy are smiling. I am full of a beautiful and happy feeling. Thus, I am here, in Seattle, and I feel so good. I think a part of my joy comes from the fact that what sounded so impossible for me two months ago makes me so peaceful now. There is no anger nor sadness nor fear, only a profound joy of being here.

Everything is like I remembered.

I first walk around the Pike Place Market to buy the cinnamon donuts I have waited for so long… For some it is the “Madeleine de Proust“*; for me, it is Seattle donuts, triggers of so many memories, so many feelings. I meet another version of myself, another part of my history. I come back to both such a close and far time. They don’t taste the same though, back then it felt like it was the best thing ever. Today, I might enjoy that memory more than reality.
I then go to the esplanade from where, during my enchanted summer, I could see the Mount Rainier. Today, it is only a grey but dry sky. And I walk to the stairs facing the Great Wheel and the aquarium. I fleetingly stand here, on this special pavement, that for an unknown reason is specifically full of my first love since the first day.
Hurried by the car parking payment, I don’t linger; sushis are waiting for me in Bellevue. I still get a stop from above to gaze at the Space Needle, without two years ago sun.

Seattle is only a name in the end, a holiday spirit where we escaped from time to time during my fleeting stays. Seattle was an out of time and sublimated bubble, a bit like Ireland. Bellevue is my real challenge of the day. Bellevue was daily life. Bellevue was our end. And it is exactly what I comes to make real today: the end. I wander in those streets, exactly alike my last stay, with the same Christmas standing nutcrackers along the sidewalks. Everything is so vivid, like the way I remembered, like I had never left. It is so puzzling. It was already two years ago, I feel like it was thousand years ago, I feel like it was yesterday. This alien land and yet so familiar feels so weird.
My favorite sushi restaurant is closed down, and I start to question my good idea, my fairy godmother. I make parallels, I don’t know where to go, where to wander… I end up passing by what we used to call « home ». My heart feels so heavy. I would like to go, somewhere, anywhere; but I know I need to finish this, that I have to embrace those contradicting feelings. My weird hesitation only lasts for a short moment. I get a last sushi chance. Nailed it.
Finishing this strange pilgrimage, I go to the library, like I only went yesterday, like I was going to my American home after. It is really weird to follow this exact same routine without him and that it doesn’t really feel weird. I suddenly realize I was kind of living here for a while, having my habits and everything. And when I flew to my French home the last time, I literally left a part of me hanging here, awaiting for its epiphany. This is what I have been refused then: how would I have been able to rebuilt anything without getting that piece of me back? I feel like the lady on Vancouver Island, stopped in her car on the side of the road because she had had an accident there before and she had to stay at least 30 minutes to get over her fear.
I therefore have to stay one day on the place where the accident of my life happened. I had to come here in order to get the missing part of me, to make all this real, to get my own version of Seattle, Bellevue, here and now, and create new memories, of course embellished by my past. Because all this is not really about him. It is about what got awakened so deep inside me, that I have untied root after root since the first day, since the last day. Since the beginning of this journey. It is a process I won’t come back from, I don’t want to come back from, because I feel so peaceful of this slow and peaceful mechanism. It is my new way of being, of existing.
Coming back here which was our end and accepting that idea even goes further: I acknowledge this end like a good thing, like something I don’t want to change, like something from the past that I don’t want to relive. I celebrate the end of an era. I finish my healing process. Whatever is coming for me tomorrow.

* From the French novel In search of lost time, by Marcel Proust, on the theme of involuntary memory, the most famous example being the “episode of the madeleine” when eating a madeleine brings the author back in his childhood.

Justine T.Annezo – Dec. 4th 2019, Seattle (WA) – GMT -8