FROM THE NORM TO THE MARGIN

The roller coaster.

I hate roller coasters. I always want to get on it looking down from the ground, but when I find myself sitting in the car at the top of the first climb, I pray with closed eyes that it stops as soon as possible. Maybe it's because my moods, my happinesses, my life, simply resemble this merry-go-round from the underworld. And maybe that's enough.

Yesterday, my daughter and I took advantage of a holiday to watch the end of an anime while eating. Afterwards we groomed the cat and got dressed to go running on the beach. My daughter suggested it to me like that. It took her like a shotgun blast. I take the opportunity when she wants to move with me.

Here we are at seventeen fifteen, jogging, me with my heel tendonitis and her with Osgood Schlatter's syndrome in her left knee. We lasted just under fifteen minutes. For a recovery and, what's more, injured, that's not bad. Then we take off our running clothes, under which we have our swimming costumes, and head for the ocean. I don't know how to just stay in the water. I have to heckle my daughter. She squirts at me, I give it back to her with more intensity. She continues, I give her a jujitsu hold (but gently, I am her mother anyway). Afterwards, we head to our beach restaurant for a cocktail in front of the sunset with chips and music. I am happy and so is my daughter. Back home by taxi bike. We discover that the second part of Enola Holmes has just been released. There are two of them who know what they are going to do with their evening! Midnight, time for bed.

At this moment, I think of my son and the feeling of loneliness that he must have felt far away from everyone in the face of problems that are difficult to overcome, of my grandson who does not know me, of my daughters in France who feel abandoned, just as my daughter here feels towards the people she left behind when she left and who are spacing out their exchanges more and more

It annoys me to be able to switch from one emotion to another with a snap of the fingers. I have to say that I have a bit of a problem with emotional management. I can keep calm for a long time, but as soon as the cup is full, I switch off and can't control anything. I can only see the problem that puts me in a state of rage. It's as if everything around me becomes blurred and I have no survival instinct or awareness of danger. I run like a bull on the bullfighter's cape.

I hate being in such a situation. I want to control myself, to distance myself from the events in order to have the best possible reaction. It's much classier and more efficient, a person who manages a situation with a single line or a single look. Whereas I shoot Jo Dalton. You know, I'm the kind of person who'd run into a glass door on the way out after getting angry or falling down. I lose my credibility on my own. I find it hard to be in good faith in these circumstances. It takes me so long to come down, to calm down. 

When I can prepare myself, I'm quite proud of the image I project; calm, sharp but still caring, in control. I only want situations like that.

They say you can tell if a person has lived several past lives by the size of their earlobes. You know, like Buddha statues. My lobes are not non-existent though, they even have a certain size without being prominent. You can imagine that I've had several lives in the past but I guess I haven't learned many lessons from them.

You'll have to think about growing up a bit, girl.