Feral Girl Spring (Or, It's Fine if I Feel Stuff)

Avoid saying things that wound, in other words, only say things he will like. Also avoid anything which, though true, would present an unflattering image of me. Truth can only rule in writing, not in life.*

There is something to the words of Annie Ernaux that reads as unapologetically feminine. She doesn’t stray from taboos, explicitness, and blends memory with prose in a way that seems to unlock something inaccessible, even if her approach is matter of fact. To read her, is to get to the driving force of validation of perceived insanity. She taps into emotional truths that sometimes, when exposed, translate as completely unhinged. But the case is not clinical, on the contrary. It’s the type of “insanity” that might occur to anyone, but especially women. It is reconciliation with one’s own misconception of what we see as normalcy, and what we dismiss under the label of that which escapes it. If I had a penny for every time I muttered “I’m being a crazy woman” to myself throughout my – still, short – life, let me tell you, I would have become swallowed whole by those pennies. I would meet a tragic end through the means of my own social conditioning. 

I found myself in a place where I come back to Ernaux whenever I feel like this. As if the real world and its actors were simultaneously escaping me and affecting me deeply, to the point where my life is completely taken over. The insufferable notion of a purely empirical existence – I am only in relation to others. Now you see me, now you don’t.

What follows is, essentially, a collection of annotated quotes. Mind you, she writes about love a lot, but do me a favour and take the statements as referring to some general affect – one inclusive of love and desire, but most definitely not limited to it. Should you feel inclined to explore my deviations from what is usually regarded as an appropriate amount of personal musings, feel welcome. Should you account me for how it makes you feel – about my character, about yourself, about taking things this personally – feel welcome. Or be warned and please, look away. 

Never say anything, never show too much love: Proust’s law of desire.

He said “my love” once but will not say “I love you”, and that which remains unsaid does not exist.

There is an intrinsic urge for both expression and control. I would guess the best way to deal with affect is to verbalize it. Yet I will not say that which is internally true, in order to strip it from its power to become part of the external real. Because if it is not real, it will not affect me. And here I enter the vicious cycle of denial – as if the feeling was not there in the first place. Does it make my impressions invalid, not actual? Is it not insanity to live by a reality which does not exist, whether by minimizing the impact or always sticking to the hypothetical, preventing things from “becoming” real?

Writing like this fills me with waiting again […]. François Mitterrand: “Youth is the time we have before us.”.

This thing has been nagging me lately – the sense that it is everyone but me that lives and experiences life to its fullest, somehow attuned to nuances and hidden meanings, all the while making things happen. To me it seems as if everything passes me by while I wait for something to happen. And it is not anticipation, nor excitement – it is the most mundane waiting you can think of. A delay-in-the-doctor’s-office unbearable level of waiting, when you’re not even sure you’ll make your appointment before the walk-in hours are over, and at this point couldn’t even be bothered if you didn’t. You just kind of sit there, stuck. And it struck me when I read the above, that it is precisely what should make me feel encouraged. To go mad in waiting is a privilege of the young (in spirit rather than body). As it can only mean you have stuff left to experience! There will probably come a time when I’ll long for the days of this particular madness, when I come to feel like I’ve lived, seen and been everything. Leaving me with truly nothing to wait for (…but death, but let’s not go there).

Something of a gigolo: he drinks half a bottle of my Chivas, asks me for the pack of Marlboros just opened. I’m both mother and whore. I’ve always liked to play all the roles.

Welcome to my preferred iteration of reasons for going feral – roles you’re tacitly expected to fill!!! Fun??? NO!!! Sometimes, maybe. But mostly irritating and very confusing! To demonstrate on everyone’s favourite and run into the ground example – motherhood – let me get specific and even more self-centred. I think I’m quite a caring person, having often been considered the mom of the group type, and it makes me feel good to make other people feel good (no shit). But having other people comment on it since you were barely a teenager kind of does things to you. A group of friends in grade 7 would actually, unironically call me mom. Later, I would have people randomly come up just to tell me their opinions on what kind of mother I would make (this happened multiple times – mostly it was well-meaning guy friends but I still don’t know what makes them compelled to speak out on this). One time someone expressed their discontent with my apparent “refraining” from mothering them. Now, I don’t know if I ever want kids and luckily it’s not something I need to know at this moment. However, it has left me feeling the following: 1. The expectation for me to be a good mom has risen so high to the point I’m convinced I’ll never fill those shoes and inevitably ruin a life after I crumble under its weight. 2. I no longer know what it is I want on my own because all I know is what others want for/of me, and finally 3. Now, regardless of my wants, I will do nothing to conform to this just to spite you, I’ll become selfish and careless and most certainly will never offer you hand cream in the wintertime ever again.

I don’t wonder at my madness  […]. I know very well it’s that which makes me write, the lack of fulfilment […], a bottomless pit.

See, this is a bit dramatic. But maybe it is exactly the drama of it that pushes us to create things? And not just artful things, but also practical things. I would not be surprised if it turned out that most technological advancements came to be because of some form of passion verging on frenzy. Or even minor ones! For example, I think of the lady so frustrated with coffee grounds she took a page out of her son’s notebook somewhere in Germany and gave us the paper coffee filter brewing system (her name was Melitta Bentz). Lesson is simple – you care, it irks you, it possibly leads to innovation. If it weren’t for the feeling, it wouldn’t come to be. Hence, I say making a fuss can be productive, and important, and meaningful, no matter how small the object of our fussing about.

So there. These are some of my insanities, small and big. Truth is, sometimes I care about things so deeply I can physically feel my chest collapse and then get very angry about it. Next minute I will scold myself for being stone-cold and disturbingly detached, and get angry still. And I shall love every second of it. Girlies, go be girlying. Read some Ernaux. And go feral, it’s good for you.

I leave you with the following:

I live for the sake of living right now. So I won’t lose anything of pure life, of this passion that will disappear this summer. How will I get through it? In about the same way as I did at twenty, twenty-two. […] Immersed in heat and chocolate […]. I know at once that this sensation was the very essence of my ennui, the disgust I felt toward life then, unaware that thirty years later, the same sensation would, on the contrary, be the very essence of my pleasure in living (or in having lived, or to still be living).

*All quotes come from Annie Ernaux’s published diary Se perdre, translated by Alison L. Strayer and published by Seven Stories Press under the title Getting Lost.