Very intimate diaries  9

I understand that my life’s tools are tools. The work they help me accomplish often remains on the periphery of the "central engine." To work more directly to the heart of it, I need professional outside help.

What I genuinely want is ... uh...

What I honestly desire is ... uh...

What I fervently wish is ... uh...

I think ultimately I don’t know.

I never thought I was playing so much the victim.

Despite all that I can think of and even if I have a problem to admit it, Mom and Dad loved me.

I try to sublimate my pain with art.

My insane fears infiltrate everything I am, do and live.

From my yellow notebook  9

I know, I create, I do, I love.




I succeed or I learn.




Life is short; I want to enjoy it lengthily.




It's my actions which create my motivation.




I try to achieve my dreams with rigidity.




Start from scratch and continue. Start from a "no" and continue.




Feeling good. Right Now.




When is dad my father? When is mom my mother?




My "Exaggeration up to the ridicule" method acts.




To step back apply to all spheres of my life.

Narrative 7:

Breakfast:
 

When I was young, Dad woke us up to go to school shortly before leaving for work. I finally got up ... after his fourth visit to my room! I dressed flabbily and I went stomping to the kitchen table to sit down.

There waiting for me was a cup with a base of cocoa, sugar and Carnation milk which dad prepared. As soon as my buttocks touched the chair, dad poured hot water into my mug and voilà my morning hot chocolate was ready!!

 
I then took a toast very soft and dripping with butter on the stack on the plate before me. My delight was to dip my toast in cocoa before taking a bite.

 
Just to describe that breakfast makes me want to make me one on the spot! 

I have long tried subsequently to make me a cocoa and toast breakfast from “Dad’s recipe” to no avail...

Very intimate diaries  4

I am amazed at how I'm comfortable with people. I can be so smart, so resourceful. But as soon as I’m alone, it’s the "anti-nomy." Total paralysis. It's pretty amazing…

As long as there won’t be a total and ultimate trigger; it will always be a vicious killing repetitive exhausting circle.

Sometimes my life seems long and boring.

I wish I could love me, love my life...

I know that’s the love of mom and dad that I wanted and that I seek compensation for years.

I don’t understand how can I be so dark and yet have so much hope inside...
It’s obvious that it helps me to live.

(Another Day) 

I reacted quite strongly to the drawings I do in art-therapy. (I see myself as disabled, bruised, defeated and immature)

I almost always let others decide for me.

It seems that I need to receive affection to give me a boost from the bottom of the depressive pool where I am to finally break my drowning.

(In transcribing these lines, I realize how important it is for me to look frankly at my negative side. It’s part of my life. I don’t have to reject it but to accept it. I can help myself to live, learn something from it.  Accept it can give me more strength and much less fear.)

Narrative 4

Letter from Jehan, eight, to Jehan, thirty-eight.

Dear, thirty-eight years old Jehan,

How far away! Drat! That’s so far away being thirty-eight years old!

Do you still have fun, or you’re too old? Do you still know all our friends? Do you have a family? What a lot of things you must have done since now! You’re thirty years older than me; it’s as old as dad and mom. You must have become somebody important.

Do you still play outside? I hope that you have good friends. I look forward to being your age; then the big ones will listen to me … But it’s good to be young and with my friends. I won’t be afraid anymore of others at your age; I’ll be older.

You must be very busy! I hope I’ll still know lots of people at your age and to feel good, too. I’d love to organize, create games and all that and to be paid for that. That would be good, isn’t it? Does that kind of work exist? Will I have new friends? Will I have a friend like C. later?

That seems so very far away thirty years …

Am I going to play games, do things, in the meantime, or what! I look forward to all this, but I am o.k. right now: I don’t want to be suddenly very old tomorrow morning! I’ll be thirty years older, but I want to go there slowly, OK?

I hope you’re a big guy, and you’re nice. Is mom very old? And dad? I have nephews and nieces? I hope I’ll still have plenty of fun at your age. It is hard for me cause the big ones don’t listen to me. Nevertheless I’m on good terms with my friends.

School’s nice sometimes, but other times I’m bored. I like the drawing course, visual art course and all the things like that.

I may tell you that I love you, right? Even, if you’re a boy? I love you, be kind, and I wish you many, many friends.

See you soon,

Jehan, eight.

 

Narrative 3

I remember after my Saturday evening big weekly bath, my mother making me an neapolitan ice cream cone and then going to the living room watching Thierry la Fronde (The King's Outlaw) and then Hockey Night, with dad in his armchair and mom on the sofa and me right in front of the TV, sitting on the cold floor.

I was three.

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I remember having a terrible fit because my parents went out to the movies, a weekend, and hitting with all my strengths my red plastic boat on the front door, and shouting, howling, crying to show my anger in front of my babysitter totally helpless. Suddenly, I stopped everything and I noticed dozens of red marks which I had made on the door and then I was afraid I’ll be punished.

I was around two.

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I remember vaguely my little sister sleeping in her crib in my parents’ bedroom.

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I remember being five when I heard that our neighbor, Mrs. Tardy, woke up one morning and her husband, sleeping next to her, was dead. Not knowing it, she slept with a dead body next to her all night. This really traumatized me, upset me. A lot. I don’t know why…

Narrative 2

I remember the military parade at the top of the hill, on 1st Avenue, near the former Igloo, the ice cream counter. I was two years old.

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I remember around three, four years old, being at the cabin of a friend, who lived the neighboring house of mine, and trying to look through a hole, below the outhouse, where my friend had gone to the toilet, to see his booty!

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I remember, also, squabbling with a friend and then running to catch him up, when he wanted to leave, angry, to apologise and when I got out of the house, I stumble on the threshold, which was, like, one and a half-inch thick, and although I tried to hang on to the door frame, I fell on the corner of a metal tank, which was upside down, that mom used to soak the linen in, and I split open my right eyebrow and the skin over my nose. I remember crying a lot, blood flowing like water on my face and my mother carrying me in her arms to daddy's big old truck. Then dad in turn carrying me in his arms up the hospital’s staircases instead of waiting for the elevator which was too long to come.

(It’s strange, but I can feel, right at this moment, how they must have been worried for me I’d lose my eye or I’d die. Twenty years later, maybe they would wish I die, after all…)

I remember the doctor putting a sheet over my head, with only one hole for my eye. I remember the needle entering in and out of my skin. I had the feeling that the hand of the doctor was entering along with the needle and going in and out of my head. I remember, later, sitting on our stairs outside the house, my friends coming to see me, and feeling almost proud to show them my stitches. I was about four, five years old.