Lend me your dream

Chapitre 8 - Martial

Our teenagers' lives continued, nothing special happened. But then, on a Monday morning, Martial came to school with a splint. He had sprained his knee during a rugby match over the week-end. Therefore, he had to avoid any physical activity for a while. That really was a problem for him.

He had a fiery temperament. The problem with fire is that it burns... Chiefly calories, in Martial's case, because he constantly moved and he did a lot of sports to channel his boundless energy, always pushing the limits a little more. 0% fat and no beer belly, despite his six-pack. His head also fully worked, non-stop. He always switched from an idea to another, from a project to another. He wasn't easy to follow. As a big joker, he made us laugh a lot! He was quite a crackpot, like all of us in the merry band, I guess. Well, "Blessed are the cracked, for they shall let in the light", Groucho Marx said. Martial learnt easily and was good at school, thanks to his rapid and logical mind. Adults encouraged him to go on like this. But no one noticed that he was under pressure all the time. He couldn't keep still. His leg moved so much under his school-desk that his neighbour permanently faced jolts. What a hassle to write! Martial's poor pens were mishandled and bitten. Glad to stretch his legs, he always was the first to go get some equipment when a teacher asked for it. And he constantly talked in class. Even when he wasn't trying, he clowned around and entertained the others. Everybody thought he was great, and so he was. He brought joy around him and never disappointed anyone. But I had the strange feeling that he wasn't in touch with himself, and he couldn't enjoy anything in his life, because he was too excited and not connected to his own reality. As Valentin said, maybe he wouldn't have started with cannabis to calm down if everything was all right. Yes.... Since he had sprained his knee and couldn't count on sport to evacuate his energy excess, he had traded his cigarettes for joints. He kept this habit even after three weeks without any physical activities. That was funny at the beginning because he was even higher creative in humor. But what lengths might he go? He was slipping and we worried about him.

We live in a world where everything is going faster and faster! I felt bad because Martial was off his game but, even so, he was encouraged not to change anything. There is no doubt that he had all the keys to "success" and be a valuable asset in this society, which puts pressure on you to do always more and better. I sometimes have the impression that as long as you are the most efficient at carrying out your duties, no matter if it means forgetting who you are... Alas. That is a good thing to aim high, but Martial, not helped by his hyperactivity, imposed more and more and more to himself and got lost on his own way... Physically he had gone too far, and mentally, he seemed not even able to follow his own rhythm.

Everything was very dynamic in his dreams too. Unsurprisingly, sport was a recurring element, but so were all kinds of productive activities: building a cabin with kids, cooking coq au vin, lawn mowing with a ride-on mower decorated and numbered like a car race with which he managed to beat the clock, and after his race, he jumped from topic to topic... As in reality, he didn't live in the moment, he didn't take time for himself and to contemplate life, he wasn't able to do anything which wasn't subservient to any purpose, just for pleasure.

Our mission was thus to teach him to be a little lazier so that he could simply have time for finding himself. To do that, Valentin had first had the good idea to organise a party to hang out at his home with Dolorès, Suzon, me, and Martial, of course. One simple goal: doing nothing! Drinking, eating, talking, everything in the couch. At the beginning, that seemed unworkable for Martial. We should have pinned him to the couch to make sure he would sit still. He walked around the living room and questioned Valentin about his mother's sculptures and books laying here and there, he overstated his helpfulness while there was so little to do. He finally relied on joints to decompress a bit... It was only once alcohol made him dizzy that he finally settled down, but only physically because he activated the chatterbox mode... Martial had an incredible way to be interested in everything and everyone. He paid attention to every word that we said and had a great memory, he remembered everything that he heard. But what we particularly noticed with Valentin that night was that when we talked about him, he avoided the issue and managed to change the subject or redirect it to someone else. For example, when Valentin asked him what he wanted to do later with his life, he caught Dolorès's shoe and got it close to his mouth before standing up and singing: "I want to break free, I want to break freeee..." What a comedian! But that was also a ruse to avoid considering the question. Beyond the comedian, we didn't know who he really was. Everybody could rely on him, he was kind and got truly involved with people, but as soon as it was about himself, he hid behind his clowning.