In the end, the desert doesn’t suit me…

Monday 15 October 2007

I've come back.

All at once I didn't want to write any more. And all at once I wanted to again. So I've come back.

All at once I no longer wanted to tell people about myself. All at once it became an effort. A greater and greater effort. The days were passing and I wasn't writing. The days were passing and I didn't wan’t to write any more. Not even a farewell, not even a goodbye.

There was a moment when I asked myself when I was going to close this blog. I couldn't manage to decide. Where should this journey end? Besides, did it have an end?

The days were passing and I was deciding nothing. The days were passing and I was feeling guilty. The days were passing and in the end I stopped feeling guilty. I stopped looking for a reason for my lack of desire. I said to myself that this blog could perhaps stop just like that, abruptly, without warning.

Then one of the readers of my blog was operated on by Dr Foldès. We had corresponded a lot before her decision. As the operation approached, we talked on the telephone. I went to see her at the clinic, I called her after the operation. And accompanying her a little on her way gave me a happiness I hadn't imagined.

That’s when I understood what made me silent for the month of August.

I had doubts.

It’s ridiculous I know, but I doubted the efficacy of my operation, I thought that perhaps I had chased after a fantasy, that this operation had in fact served for nothing. I thought I had lulled myself with illusions, which would change nothing in my life.

I can’t really explain to myself how it happened, how this idea forced its way into my mind.

No doubt the reaction of my ex-gynaecologist had something to do with it. "Basically the operation is just cosmetic, isn't it?" she said to me. She didn't seem interested in my endeavour, I had the feeling she found it grotesque. I cried when I left her office.

No doubt the discovery that Dr Foldès said the same thing to a number of his patients weighed equally in the equation. It pained me to think in the end I was only a number amongst others, an nth patient to tell her clitoris was superb, an nth patient to whom to give a rambling discourse depending on which stage she was approaching.

I came to believe that the whole adventure had no meaning, that my clitoris would never function "normally". That I had to turn the page and think no more about it.

But in the end I didn't want to. In the end I didn't give a damn about my ex-gynaecologist's opinion. In the end it mattered little that Dr Foldès said the same thing to each of his patients. In the end it came down to the value of what happened on 16 May last.

And I decided that it had meaning for me. I would no longer let myself analyse this idea. I would no longer allow it to be cheerfully stamped on. And I wouldn't stamp on it myself.

In giving direction to my endeavour, I have found my voice again. So I am back.

Thanks to Fiftra who, in allowing me to accompany her, has allowed me to find my own path again.

Thanks to Moira, who sent me such a kind email to find out my news.

Thanks to all of you who were worried by my silence in the comments of my last post.

[Original in French]

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