Gone, till I change (2011)

Prologue

I recall my childhood bedroom, it overlooked the neighbourhood hospital, of which the ventilation system and lighting disturbed the suburbs quietness. I recall this children room where I finally decided to overturn my cardboard décor.

It was an ordinary day. A day with no reason for being sad. No reason to be. A day like any other day, when I was coming back from college, carrying my chemistry, physics and mathematics books, heavy with indecipherable formulas and meaningless symbols. Just another day that my forearm was soar, a painful tension extending down to my right hand. This right hand, week after week, unabatedly filled the spreadsheets, obedient to the brain while the heart was more and more silent. This hand was driven by the fear of disappointing.

On the bus, bent over my Facebook feed, my pointer finger drawn by magnetised images and links, I had gotten into the reading of a poorly written and unscientific article, perfectly digestible content for burnt neurons: an article about the 2012 December end of the world, two years later. According to the predictions, a diversity of fatal phenomenon would bring us to our death: we would disappear inside a large crater as Earth would get torn by a gravitational effect pulling from the center of the Milky Way, that or we might burn alive in a grandiose volcanic eruption during an exceptional alignment of the sun with the galactic equator. But some of our world's sages believed we would survive. December 2012 would merely be a symbolic end to our era of degeneration, of unhealthy materialism and disproportionately rationalist vision.

I felt as if believing in this end of the world would alleviate my soul's slow decay. I was eighteen years old and the flame of my desire to live my life was being smothered. So I asked myself: if I had two years left, what would I do?

But then, what if I survived? Well, I'd be happy to survive only if I was to take part in humanity's rebirth. For me to be part of an evolved collective consciousness, I should live the next 24 months as if they were my last on Earth. From then on, I would pretend to believe in the end of the world on December 21, 2012.

My gaze drifted through the steamed window of the bus, along the rainy and already dark streets. I was dreaming of my freedom, achieved when daddy would hang my university degree on the wall of our living room, between the tacky paintings. College studies were strangling me: how could I suffer three more years?

I could see myself, sitting at the back of an auditorium, behind three hundred rich kids staring at their Instagram feed on their phones. I'd be commuting everyday from a dreary suburb to a disturbing downtown and back to the dreary suburb: two places where the middle class, bored to death, fabricates new passions and distractions to forget their lack of purpose. Demonstrations betrayed a terrible fear of the passing of time and the absence of love: immeasurable energies invested in studies and careers, unreasonable physical training or Botox injections in the lips, breasts and wherever it is needed to attract love.

But what would my life be like if I did not have school, till then the only measurement of my evolution and worth? Could I ever be anything more valuable than a gifted student?

The long evening of my childhood had been spent stubbornly trying to learn the multiplication tables, imposing punishments until I'd get a perfect score. I was taken to the medical clinic because my heart cramps would keep me from breathing every other day. The doctor had diagnosed "A symptom of the first class", while exchanging conniving laughs with my father.

As career would replace school, my university diploma would show only ephemeral/fleeting freedom. A freedom that would become a new but endless routine of boredom, forty hours a week: eight hours to pay for transportation, eight for rent, eight more to eat healthy and the rest of my hard-earned salary to fill my infinite void. I'd spend it on expensive hobbies that had been imposed on me for years and never really enjoyed: freeze while downhill skiing, get horrible posture from cycling and wince as I hear the noise of my cheap electric keyboard. I'd pay monthly for a phone that never rings, while being reminded of my lack of meaningful relationships: I would never have had time to build one or never even learned how to do it. Each day, my loneliness and absence of passion would weigh me down. I'd end up believing, like those around me, that things do not change, that it is better to accept and adapt to the environment. Shoulders hunched and dull gaze, I'd profess this philosophy too, wandering with nothing left of my damaged dreams and shattered hopes.

That night, I got off the bus, a deathly silence of my street was just the same as usual. No life at mynever before seen neighbors, who may have, perhaps, observed me discreetly pulling aside the burgundy curtain of their dining room. Had they seen me? Waiting for the yellow school bus, crying, broken by family quarrels? Had they seen the teenage me, bowed head and shoulders, lips closed over my horrible metal teeth, sleeves pulled over my wrists to hide my discomfort? Had they watched me, morning after morning, standing on the sidewalk, mechanically flipping through the books, lackluster eyes? Could they read the marks of anger on my face, trained early on to display a sulky look in order to make others guilty?

As I walked into my bedroom to sleep, I noticed the leaflet from the London employment agency. When my mother had brought it to me weeks ago, as I was considering an English immersion, I had looked at it with little interest before dropping it on my bedside table. That evening, the leaflet caught my attention. What if this leaflet was a sign, like the ones on the road to Santiago in The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho's book?

Shaken by the announcement of the end of the world, I regained some energy and started writing down what I would devote the last two years of my life to: traveling, dancing, writing, being in love... Getting caught by my own game, I listed all actions to be taken, at the risk of deciding to really accomplish them: obtain my college diploma, save a few thousand dollars, then resign from the bistro where I had rolled more than thirty thousand pizzas in the last five years... Deconstruct my paradigms and store up the courage to cross the Atlantic alone.

Before falling asleep, I placed this precious list next to the flyer. The signs coincided.

I decided to move to the UK.