FROM THE NORM TO THE MARGIN

Choose well.

In life we often tell ourselves that we have no choice. I learned the hard way that we decide. Always.

Who are we really? I often ask myself the question. Am I the only one?I always find it hard to do things in half measures. When I have a job I throw myself into it completely, much to the frustration of my daughters. I eat, sleep, breathe my work. I wake up at night thinking that something might work with the students. I quickly turn on the light and write down the first idea I come across on a piece of paper. I talk about classes with my second daughter and my sister. I discuss the adventures in class with my youngest. I see everything through the filter of my job. When I rest, I do absolutely nothing. I don't even feel like cooking, going out, getting dressed. I just lie in bed or on the couch and watch Netflix in vegetable mode. Oh yes, I have to move to get a glass of water or go to the bathroom. 

The same goes for the foods I love. I open a chocolate bar and promise myself that this time I'll stop at the first finished stripe. Well, after the second one. One more square is not so bad. Finally I put the empty wrapper in the bin, feeling nauseous and angry; I definitely have no willpower. It reminds me of my last daughter who, at a night market in the Ardèche, wanted to eat the churros she had taken on her own. On the way back she turned pale on the bends and was sick all night. The problem for me is that I am no longer nine years old.

I like to do things without constraints, I find it more constructive and my curiosity always leads me further. So why is it that when I don't have a timetable, when I can manage as I like, I wait until the last minute to do things in a hurry or by dragging my feet.

In the countryside I feel at peace. I like the calm, the slowness of everyday life, the song of the crickets. I admire the stars that shine for me as they have done for those sailors across the oceans for centuries. I relish those cool breakfasts with a book while everyone else is still asleep, as well as evenings sitting outside with my family talking about everything and anything. Yet I enjoy living in the city. I have my own little shop downstairs where the shop assistants know me, the metro just next door to go shopping in the centre, to go to work without taking my car and to enjoy myself by going to the opera (too rarely). Everything is within easy reach and there are beautiful parks that make you feel like you're in the countryside when you walk through their gates. 

I feel I belong in the life I have now. I travel and write. I take care of myself and spend time with my last one who is my port, my refuge. However, I have just had former colleagues on Whatsapp asking me if I am going to go back to my job at the school. They tell me that they miss me. I have good memories with them. I didn't leave because I didn't want this life anymore but to take the opportunity to discover something else. They are counting on me next school year. I think about my students, about this work that consumes me completely but that I love. When I am a teacher, I don't have time to feel alone. Here I am cruelly aware of the desert of my personal life.

So should I take up my second life next year? Drowning in work is less painful in the short term. And then, above all, for the last two days I've been in love at first sight; I'm a grandmother to the most beautiful baby on earth and I can't hold this little fellow in my arms. 

This would be the opportunity if I went back to France.