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This post has been inspired by the gorgeous Miss Mary Max and her hosting the Self-Discovery, Word by Word series, September edition. This month’s theme, Enough, has always made me struggle enough, as the following text perspires. But being able to write about a struggle is, to me, taking one step forward in this long run that is life.

Enough is enough.

Or, as it seems, until I say it is. Enough can be a never-ending race if I call it so but don’t call stop.

Too often I find my mind located in my foot, in motion or suspension, waiting to crush a handful of pebbles. But not yet, though; these pebbles are hopes of not being squeezed by a single sole. Yet, yet again, they are going to be trampled on as my mind wanders to my other foot in a flash.

The stamping must go on. The race must be won. One sole, sometimes two, moving in accordance but never in the present.

Eyes watching back, back watching eyes. Whose back? A better back, the best one, running too fast but wait, no, I’m gonna catch it up and then with everything else.

Catch back. Catch up. Catch in every possible direction until you find something solid, sturdy, impossible to crush.

Pebbles are weak. The ground is malleable. The sky, leaky.

My inner runner is not able to be weak. But I have been tramping on her, and I’ll keep stamping until her body is mashed enough.

And as I’ve reached the soft end of the spectrum, I’ll run back to the harsh one, as fast as I can, as if « enough » couldn’t last more than a half second.

Enough is never enough. An end is never its opposite. And rarely is enough seen in pain. Maybe it is just running away from it.

And I’ll keep on running, beating many more enoughs, learning new limits and bumping back in them.

Before we were even able to pronounce the three consonants in « next », we could, and would, say « neck ».

We were kids playing hard games, me-first-and-I-am-gonna-be-the-doctor-not-you games. The kind of games where one could be head and tail altogether, but never any lower than the top.

We were playing each in our own head, apparently sharing a part of our world but sharing it with whom I have no idea because no-one was really listening. Sharing apart, we were.

On one of those fog-clear days, I wipe myself off the world and think, « Aren’t we all kids building up our own stories and floors out of blocks? Aren’t we just blocking ourselves from the « nexts »: The person next to us, the next person who comes, the next opportunities that come in the shape of pains in the neck? »

Oftentimes I feel I am building my own next steps. I have been locking myself away, sleeping in my blog, living just what my head told me to.

We’ve been wrapped in our games, as presents to the next ones. Our own worlds pile up under trees, and no matter how far their contents is spread, they remain secrets.

Short is the path between a consonant and none. Short is the pat between two consonants.

As short as a lifetime, maybe.

You got to love this country as much as me – do. I know « as much » is a bad formula, one fed to newborns to this land and language, but on Holidays you can’t ask for too much of me.

And all my prepositions went wild for a spilt second (this expression is not mine but I can’t recall whose – sorry, please read my entire TL to know). Coffee and split sight sure are a panacea for the day’s festive atmosphere.

A sun ray woke me up this morning. In fact, it arose my eyes before my consciousness, and I had a light circle heavily stamped on my left eyesight. The kind that foreshadows many headaches to come, caffeines to crave, story endings to discover.

And this national holiday ends up – again – being apolitical, almost aphoristical as I am trying so much to write, to write so much. In spite of my limitations, or should I say, with my limitations in mind.

Why am I writing in English anyway? Is this a political choice? Just wandering.

Canada, our land of promised auroras, my land of waving auras. Land of moose or muses, country of more or less. 

I just don’t know what to say. Should go out and get some light. An illumination is coming, I sense it; such an opportunity ought not to be missed. 

And I’ll go moving around discarded flags and furniture, drawing circles in the air like a princess, watching intently what fellow Montrealers are making out of this Canada Day.

(This post is an attempt to follow a guideline as short as a word long – some people call this a « theme ». As you may have understood already, the theme is change. See Medicinal Marzipan’s blog for an explanation of the Self Discovery Word by Word Blogger Series, and the post that has launched the change.)

This life has been moving me around. This life has been moving so far.

Every day brings its bundle of surprises and surprising fears. Every day brings a load of clothes I could swear I have never worn. Out I find different images than in, what I had as a world.

Everything keeps changing… from what? From what I imagine they would become? That’s not what I could call real change: It’s just a becoming – of things as they are.

I like to say become instead of change. Then I can brag I’m always becoming myself, in the many myselves I can be throughout life.

To me, change brings a negative connotation forthwith – it sounds as unwelcome as a reason for a friend’s treason, or a switching off of the radio after an ill-formed popularesque song. Change sounds like forgetting oneself. Change looks like shutting oneself up.

Well, I may not be right, even in my own world. In fact, what change I do not caress is the unaccepted, refused, fought-against type of change. But change could not care less of my resistance, and keeps rolling on me whatever.

That’s where I « gotta roll with it » – to paraphrase a once-not-so-popular pop song – and on it, through it, in it. Change is a surfing dough from which I’ll become. Hmm, I mean, I become. Cause I am already.

Guess who’s coming to dinner tonight? A surprise, a surprise me. I’m all ready for the fear of this everbecoming lady.

Sometimes an unexpected change of setting may bring in the most welcome guests.

I recently wrote a comment on a mouth-watering blog about how taking care of both our inside space and the others’ is something I value. In this sense I was only putting emphasis on Kate’s choice to pick Japan for her post, a topic that has not – at least recently – been related to women and their body image.

It turned out that inside and outside are linked more than I had thought, though. Sometimes my well-worn escape routes are blocked and full of fumes. Japan is no more passable. If in need of a geographic cure, please turn to your own basement and duck.

That’s where I found purposes I knew for this new, frightening guilt – of not being there to help by catching some rays – and this new, guilty fear – that the ones I love over there are going to suffer.

How I made this guilt and fear useful, are you going to ask? By using them on me, on what I’ve always felt guilty/afraid of: Eating. Japan is uncontrollable? I’ll manage myself, then. And shiver and shake like a quake myself.

Am I going to shed pieces too? No. I want to be as strong as a wave. And I don’t want to play self care when my whole body is in fact self hate in disguise.

My words and meanings are shaky. Maybe because I feel responsible for Japan. Could my waves of hate towards it have created such a monster?

First, it would be really egoistical of myself to believe that I, by myself, could have had such an impact on a country in another hemisphere. Second, I don’t hate Japan: I hated myself when I was in Japan. And that I couldn’t bear anymore, so my body sent me out of it.

I guess that want it or not, there’s a whole force inside me thriving for self love. And I can’t help but thank it for having brought me back in time close to the place where I – first – belong.

Now all I’ve got to do is keep sending waves of different loves in all directions.

(This post has also been inspired by the #StopSelfHate movement VoiceinRecovery has just started.)

I got tired of being negative about Japan. After my boyfriend told me I was the best hater of Japan (« la meilleure détesteuse de Japon ») he knew, and after a recovery advocate I feel so much admiration for, Voice in Recovery, declared March the Embrace Joy Month, I felt compelled – propelled by my helixes inside – to be part of it too.

After all, have I not always been the girl you hated because she was so optimistic? « Oh, it’s fine; I missed my plane because of this strike, but that will just give me more time to read these crappy magazines I usually don’t have time for. » Have I not always been hated because everything seemed to work so well for me? Lucky, or talented, or blessed, or good at controlling things; whatever you may call it, you’re right. It’s hard to find something to complain about when things flow so smoothly…

…Would you say. But I won’t.

‘Cause whatever the circumstances, it might be easy to give in to criticism… Much more easy than to feel gratitude for the positive aspects – even though we’re almost drown in the positive, like I feel I’ve always been.

Got it? The slightest problem feels overwhelming… when compared to the usual situation, i.e. no problem whatsoever.

And follow me in this roller coaster ride of mine! Euphoria! Down. Euphoria! Down. In the air! On the ground. Spread on the ground, should I say. Stomped on. Not « grounded »; this I can’t fully feel yet, ’cause that’s too « middle », « balanced » an emotion.

And Japan… I hate it AND I love it. Lately, I have been hating it for having put me down. (But is it really Japan’s fault? Or mine, for not listening to my aspirations? Or is there a fault in the first place? After all I did end up listening to my heart, so where’s the problem?)

The problem is that EVERYTHING did not go well. It was not an escalation of pure moments of glory, always more and more glorious. So I felt it as a failure.

Did I say « glory » instead of « joy »? I’m sorry, it’s a typo.

When I don’t get my daily intake of glory, euphoria and the all-transcending happiness, I feel like something’s missing… so I feel down. After all, « febrility is a state of art » (quoting myself here, upcoming book of poetry), and if we’re not doing art, then we’re doing nothing worth…

Hum. Could I just be content? Satisfied? Grateful? And… joyful? Yes. Sometimes I get tired of playing extremes in my internal drama, and I find the balance (really? yes.) to look at the now. Then I can’t really feel dissatisfied. Not bad, my life, hey?

It’s just that drama is a state of art, too. Too bad inspiration comes best when I am in a melancholic mood. Sweet, blue melancholy… Sweet, creative hate… Sweet, cold irony…

I commit to writing about positive things as well. To share positivity in order to have more of it. More of these blessed moments of free dancing. Of this unending learning. Of this air biting my lungs. Of these Aimee-times steeped in inspiring words and tea.

Why would I still be such a hater of Japan? Am I not in Japan anymore?

Ô Joy! Ô sweet, sweet Irony…