The Love Stories

When I was young my aunt asked almost every Christmas what I wanted to be when I grew up. She suggested I be a nurse, a teacher, a hairdresser. But really, I had no idea. I liked drawing, I loved writing, but these were not jobs I was told, they were hobbies, so they did not count. Plus, as my mother pointed out incessantly, my grammar was excruciating so I had no hope.

Therefore, I did what was expected of me and I studied a field that would provide me with a real job, but a job completely ill suited to me.

The fact was, I really liked writing and I thought it was a good idea to write for a living. However, I also knew that any ambition I would voice would be received with sneer and sarcasm from my mother and brother, thus I was not particularly inclined to share my aspirations with them. Once in a while, the longing would resurface but to protect my dream, I would bury it deeper and deeper until one day I forgot all about it. It all came back when I started working with John. Or should I say, it is only at that time that it no longer appeared absurd.

When I was young, young enough for my grammar or syntaxes not to matter, I wrote a book. Given that I did not know how to write at the time, I had chosen to illustrate it. I asked my mother to write down the title, so that I could trace the words on the cover. A book must have a title. It was called “The shock of the future”. What a title for a five-year old! On the first page, the first drawing was one of a beautiful brown horse and on the second drawing, the horse had been butchered. All the little stories were similar and in retrospect, quite morbid. I guess the future did not seem all that promising to me. Obviously, my mother was not too impressed, but no so surprised as to wonder where I got that kind of ideas from.

From there on, my writing career became sporadic and secret.

I have often heard authors say in interviews that writers can only write well about what they know well. The first time I heard that, I was heartbroken. I knew about drama, loss, hurt, abandonment, loneliness and broken heart, but of nothing else. I had nothing to write about, nothing had ever happened to me.

After much thought to the matter, my teenage mind concluded that I could only write very sad love stories with tragic endings. Of course, I knew nothing about love, but I certainly knew a great deal about the craving for it. The only problem was that I hated that kind of books, it was so sappy, so unrealistic. Needless to say, I was devastated at the perspective that my most cherished desire could only serve that kind of material. I had Pulitzer Prizes in mind, not Harlequin.

At university, I took a class in literature, in creative writing. The idea of writing stories for credits seemed marvelous. The first story I wrote was a fantastic story about an illegitimate son of Leon Trotsky who while in exile in Montreal, had become a mute homeless until the day he had won the lottery. All the stories were read in class and then handed in for markings. After the reading, I got good revues. The professor thought it was very well written, fantastic syntaxes. Gosh was I ever proud. When I received my mark though, I barely passed. A note on the last page justified the marking by the fact that the grammar sucked.

All these years, I knew I could write well, I just couldn’t master the grammar. Nothing I did could ever change that. That is, until I realized that I could simply change language. Suddenly everything became possible. And check it out, soon you’ll be able to buy my book in any bookstore and it won’t be a love story.

The last Christmas that my aunt asked what I wanted to be when I grew up; I had a slightly clearer idea and probably far too much imagination for an eight-year old. I told her that I wanted to live in a big city like New York, have a beautiful apartment in a high rise where I could see the night lights and have tons of lovers. I remember the nervous laugh and the impressive silence in the room. She never asked me again.

A Special Day

Today is a very special day. Today is my best friend’s birthday.
I am sure he would be more than happy with the usual good wishes. But I would rather tell you how truly special this day is to me. How his being born, how his existence has touched my life. Without him, I wouldn’t be half the woman I am today. He brought strength and support to me life, but also whim, joy and laughter. His unwavering trust and belief in me has allowed me to blossom. He has encouraged me through every endeavors, every obstacles, forcing me to transcend myself even in the weakest of times. He is the parent, the brother I never had, he is the best friend anyone could hope for. But most of all, he is my best friend. And although a birthday is really just another day of the year, on that day, one of the most precious person I know was born.

Happy birthday to you, my friend.

It Must Be Karma

I went out with this guy for a short while. A really strange guy, actually he was a complete loser. Why did I go out with him? To this day, I have not the faintest idea what could have motivated such a choice. He was by no mean handsome, sexy, brilliant, rich, good lover, kind, funny or even decent. In fact he was weak, deceitful and completely disconnected.

My feelings for him mostly consisted of a certain disdain strangely associated to my brother. You see only a few days after I discovered that I had been sexually molested by my brother did I meet this guy. Worst still, they bore a certain physical resemblance. Anybody in their right mind would have concluded that perhaps the timing was slightly off and abandoned the pursuit. Not him. Even though I had informed him of the particulars of my life and what was bond to happen following such discovery, he was determined to be a part of it.

I think as nice and decent as we mostly all are, there comes a time in every human being’s life where being bad takes over, if only for a short while. Although not intentionally, someone ends up paying for all the evil deeds made by others before them. Perhaps it is karma. Perhaps they deserved all the pain that comes their way. Perhaps, and I am sure I am stretching the concept here, that having been hurt so often and by so many somehow entitled me to a certain degree of retaliation.

So I figured, the victim may just as well be him… he was so eager. In retrospect, I was bad. I made him pay. I made him absolutely miserable. I got it all out of my system. I was surprised that he lasted that long.

One night while I was sound asleep, I heard an uproar coming from his side of the bed. I woke up but, not enough to appreciate what was going on. Still to this day, I have no idea what happened. Never-the-less, he got up, dressed, and left, more or less in that order while making much fuss and backtracking in between. I think he thought I would get up and convinced him to go back to bed. Instead I dozed off.

The morning after, I called him to find out what had happened. He did not answer my call or returned it. Being the smart girl that I am, I figured it was finally over. The grief, if any, would be short lived as I was going on holidays a few days later. A nice trip in the sun that I had planned solo a week earlier, it would do me wonder.

I had always been pretty decent until then and although I was not particularly nice to him, I thought the ending should be more civilized. Therefore, the morning of my departure, I left a message on his voice mail summing up my hunch that it was over and that the break up was probably the best thing that could have ever happened to us, we were after all a very bad match, sorry for everything, goodbye and good luck.

A few weeks ago, months after the fact, I received a brief e-mail from him, it said: “If you want to have a coffee phone me.” I pondered over the content. I thought it said so much about him. Nothing to the effect that he would like to have a coffee with me, that recently he had thought about me and would like to catch up or else, which could have enticed a much nicer answer. Rather it meant if you want to see me, I am willing to be seen by you!

Needless to say, the bad girl resurfaced just long enough for the answer back: “I don’t.”

The Lemon Cakes

I am a good cook. In fact, my friends would tell you that I am a darn good one. Not much eludes me in a kitchen. I can pretty much cook anything. Alas… I can’t bake. If my life depended on it, I could not bake a cake. I have tried though. I have tried every weekend for months now. I am hopeless.

I have tried dozens of recipes from the simplest to the most elaborated. Sometimes, the same one several times during the course of a single weekend in the hope of figuring out what I’m missing. I have tried American recipes, French ones, metric, imperial; I even tried Martha Stewarts’ own recipes, to no avail. I simply do not appear to have a pastry thumb. How is it even remotely possible?

The concoction of the batter is usually easy enough. Every ingredients is measured, weighted, whipped just enough, the ingredients are fresh, of good quality, the pans brand new and my oven’s heat is accurate. Most of the times the cakes are cook through. But they absolutely refuse to rise. They remain as flat as they were when they got into the oven. The inevitable result: a dense lemon brick.

Lately, finding tasters has become a tough job. For lack of volunteers, most cakes finish cooling down in the garbage container out in the lane.

The other day I was shopping for groceries with Marco. Lemon cakes were on sales. I bought one just for analysis. Once we got back to my place, we cut it in half to see what the inside looked like. Well, it turned out that it looked exactly like all the ones I made…

The Paintings

I am a painter. As far as I can remember, I always painted or drew or sketched something, usually always the same thing over and over again. I was especially prolific during my years in high school and college and then I stopped completely. It is only when I started working with John that the desire to paint, rather the obsession to paint, resurfaced. It was an important part of me that I had suppressed, but I assumed that everything came to pass and I never questioned the reason why I had stopped. I kept all my brushes and paint; somehow I couldn’t part with them. I love the smell of bristles many time used and cleaned.

I would draw eyes, eyes and nothing else. With dark pencils or black ink, I would draw hard, empty, frowning, sad, scared, cold, haunted eyes. They came alive on paper. It became my trademark. In high school, my work was well known for its gloom and was much appreciated by my teenage counterparts. At that time, my work was regularly exhibited at school and won several merits. One of them I remember particularly well. It was a very large painting made entirely of black ink, depicting a forest of looming willow trees. At the end of each branch, there were eyes. Some starting to bloom, some fully open with horrific expressions, some rotting on the ground, the white running like the yellow of a broken egg. It was a piece of art, an instant success.

In college, these were harder years. It was a very selective fine art program and only fifteen people were invited for the duration of the curriculum. Unfortunately, the friends I had made initially dropped off after the first year. I should have done the same. For three years I found myself surrounded by nine poisonous women set to make my life miserable. The queen bee had immediate aversion for me and my work. In all modesty, I was the only one who really had talent. But from great, my work became guarded and lame. Afterward, I put my stuff away and never used it again until recently.

When I started working with John, I almost immediately felt this imperative need for painting. Unsure and still shaken by my college years, I decided to enroll in a night class. I thought that perhaps it would help me break the spell. It did, and soon after I started painting again. My paintings were just as intense as before, but this time they were full of color as well. My obsession turned towards women. All I painted were women busts, women with large vacant, unseeing eyes. I painted dozens of them if not more.

Last January, I found out that I had been sexually molested by my brother, and that my mother had witnessed some of it without ever intervening.

A few months later, I pulled out my old portfolio from storage. I was looking for something but I didn’t know what. I was driven by instinct. Then it dawned on me. Every painting, every drawings and sketches I ever made screamed as loud as it could that someone saw. That a woman saw what happened to me, a woman with eyes that refused to see. My mother did not want to see, she didn’t want to know what had happened to me, she would have had to do something about it.

All that time, somewhere at the back of my mind, I knew that something terrible had happened to me and that she knew about it all along. She could close her eyes tight, she could look the other way, but whether she liked it or not, she saw.

From Generation to Generation

It was a shock, as you can imagine, to realize that I had been sexually molested by my brother. It was a shock and a relief as well. In my therapy, I had focused a lot on my strained relationship with my mother. There was something about it which was haunting me. The relief came in the knowledge that I had not screwed up my whole life based solely on the fact that – mummy did not love me -. Although irrefutable a fact, it still felt too pathetic, too weak a reason. I refused to consider it as the only explanation, there had to be more. Something had always felt out of reach, and now I knew what that was.

The enormity of it did not immediately dawn on me. When it did though; it felt like a ton of bricks. Only recently have I gotten out of the preliminary period of shock and disbelief, to feel rage and a need for certain level of retaliation. Hopefully, in some distant future, this could perhaps transform itself into some sort of life experience and maybe fade away somewhere in the background. In any event, I have to learn to live with this knowledge and not let it define me as a person.

During the last year, I have spent a great deal of my time wondering about the ways this affected my life and the choices I made. It was a very tiring period in that I had to question every reaction, thoughts, likes and dislikes I ever experienced. Some say that not every aspects of my life could have been affected by this, that I had a choice, but the truth is there is hardly any aspect of my life which has not been impinged on in some ways. I was only four years old at the time. I was barely starting to discover the world. These tragic moments defined my views of love, safety, security, respect, trust, intimacy and ultimately the place I was allowed to occupy in the world.

Unfortunately, there were even more fundamental questions to be asked if not answered. My brother was only three years older than me. How does a seven years old boy know about these things unless they were performed on him first? And then, who would be his abuser? Where did it all start? Then again, he could – simply – have been some sort of a psychopath but at seven? And my mother, why didn’t she do anything to prevent it? She knew what was going on all along. She abandoned both her children to their fate. Why? Was she reminded of her own painful times? Did she not care? Was she helpless or more concerned with the judgment of others on her maternal skills? I understand these were other times; it was not an easy subject to raise but still. What about my dad? Did he not know? Did he not care? Was he the original instigator?

This new knowledge has also forced me to rethink my rapports with all of them and most particularly to my mother. None of them would ever admit to any wrong doing. If the subject was ever brought up, I would be accused of craving attention, of dirtying my brother’s golden aura; of being responsible for it all, and perhaps even be accused of being the instigator myself. Therefore, whatever validation I may be looking for, it will have to come form other sources.

I am interested in finding out the origin of things. But ultimately, my claim remains with my brother and my mother. They are the ones who hurt me. They are responsible, whatever their stories is. They had a responsibility towards me. They failed. They chose the easiest path at the time. A path which has become increasingly costly to them both. My brother could never again pretend to an affiliation with me; he has been banished from existence. My mother is now an aging and lonely woman, abandoned by her dear son and slowly deserted by her only daughter.

When I was a teenager, my mother once came to me and asked why I was so aggressive, why I hated my brother so much. She wanted to know if perhaps he had abused me sexually. Until recently, I could not remember a thing so this line of questioning was surprising. How could she ask me such a thing? In retrospect, she was probably trying to figure out if I remembered. She must have been so relieved when she realized that I didn’t. These are the kind of glimpses that have resurfaced throughout the year. If anything, it helps me realize that I am not crazy, that all the signs were already in place, waiting for me to be strong enough to handle them.

Being Four Years Old All Over Again

This post was amongst the hardest one for me to write. It triggered such a strong emotional reaction every time I tried that my mind went blank. But however long I postpone its writing for, I know I could never write another story until this one is told.

There I was, back in the hypnotist’s office, deep in a hypnotic trance. I was four years old all over again. Except that I was not. Rather, I was in the presence of the four years old I once was, observing her. During a hypnotic regression the – you - comes back as an observer as if you had inadvertently landed in the middle of a play with no role to play. The players don’t seem to notice your presence; you are free to walk around, to observe them, to scrutinize their interactions with each others without being emotionally involved. It is fascinating. There are times where you can also reach out to your alter ego and make contact.

At first, the hypnotist brought me back to the age of five but there was nothing to see, except perhaps statics. Statics like we used to get on TV at the end of the programming. Then we regressed further to my earliest memory. I was four years old. I was a beautiful little girl, blonde with long hair held in a pony tail by a red ribbon. I was wearing red pyjamas with little blue flowers and red fuzzy slippers. I was in the basement with my brother Richard. My dad had installed swings there for us to play during the winter. It was winter and it was dark. The little girl seemed happy on her blue swing, she was giggling. My brother was standing in front of her, his back against the wall, watching intently. Although pretty mundane a scene, it crept me out. Something was wrong. My brother had an erection; in fact, his penis was out in his hand. To a four years old, this wouldn’t mean much, but as an adult I was horrified and there was nothing I could but observe. A few minutes later she had been molested for the first time. To make matters worst, when it was all over, she saw her mother watching the scene.

She was four years old. A beautiful young naive and candid four years old. Her childhood was over. She had died before she could live. She would be nine by the time her torment be over. Forty before she could reclaim a life for herself.