Dumped on August 15th

The sun had just left the sky after several weeks of overwhelming heat. Moderating itself, it no longer shone on the city in such a determined way. Clouds were gathered to spread cheerful faces above the trees that swept across the horizon with the twitch of branches. A long-awaited light breeze encouraged families to enjoy the fresh air that this morning was ready to give. Far from the concerns of the new school year and satchels to burden with new school books, the children played ball in the park. Their parents, full of carelessness, watched them with a distracted eye. Lost in their thoughts, only a furtive glance was thrown at them from time to time. The birds came back from a long journey and fought over the breadcrumbs left on the benches. The calm, but also the sweetness had returned. Everything seemed to be going well; that's what mattered at the end of the summer vacation.

Windows closed, curtains were drawn, Judith stood there like a hermit and did not see the outside world around her. Stuck in her comfort zone, she preferred to ignore the hustle and bustle of Paris. She remained cloistered in this large house, overwhelmed with rage. Passing from room to room, the ticking of the great clock punctuating each of her hesitant steps. It was what happened each time a man gave her a final kiss. An imposed ritual, in a way. Eric was the fourteenth man. He left her without the slightest explanation and not even looking back on their past together. He had suddenly deleted himself from the history they were drawing together, thus taking another lane, another direction without warning her.

Only a few words faintly stammered from the tip of his lips had helped her understand. "I need to step back, he mumbled, as if he was not really convinced by his speech, but the young woman understood his intention to get run away. She had rushed to gather her things, tears stuck at the back of her throat, before exploding inwardly on the way home. Why did he have to dump me right on August 15th? She wondered, upset. Passers-by, intrigued by her approach full of extreme distress, had met her gaze. A half-drunk guy had wanted to share a beer with him, but she declined the offer. Alcohol would not have been the best of allies. Judith had walked for miles as if to kill the anger that consumed her. Stepping as a way to forget, to cancel the past till ignoring its existence.

A sudden desire to dial the number of this umpteenth coward crossed her mind then, caught by wisdom and a fair share of pride, she changed her mind. She refused to show him her grief that easily. It seemed unnecessary to her to give life to more striking feelings. She knew it. The intense anger would eventually fly away or at least calm down. Insomnia was her friend that night. She had stepped on the streets of Paris in the hope of a potentially exciting meeting. After several hours of wandering, Judith had returned to her grandmother's, Jocelyne, at Casa Bella.

The thirteen other men had also put an end to their story. It often happened when the young woman dared to express herself a little too quickly in the future, as soon as things became a little too serious. Just when flirtation gave way to engagement. "It is so familiar," she said to herself, opening the window as if to breathe the air that wrapped the streets. Passers-by wore a happy and peaceful expression like when tourists have found a little piece of paradise in their journey. They did not imagine that a few meters from the large house hidden in the heart of Vincennes, a young woman had just experienced yet another abandonment. Judith hadn't tried to understand. Not this time. As a good student, she had only obeyed, even though deep down, the urge to break everything in his house had gripped her firmly. Slap him? Insult him? It wouldn't have helped. Her love wouldn't have returned in a snap.

Her love life was not a New Romance chapter. We did not get over it as quickly as in our favorite readings. There was always something fairy about love, but she didn't know all the tricks. Those which would make it possible to make her date return on their beautiful white horse, ready with a marriage proposal, with a flower between to the teeth. So she wondered how her heroines, with their heavily wounded hearts, managed to heal their disappointments. Judith loved her female readings. The books, placed on her nightstand, piled up a bit more night after night. She read a few chapters, tried in vain to guess the rest. She imagined feelings to the voices, invented the faces of these women with hurt souls.

In Judith's mind, curly hair corresponded to unsmooth love life. Straight hair meant the woman managed to control her desires. Judith made her own assumptions about the young women described over the pages. She had become cared about Lana, a thirty-something young woman abandoned two weeks before her marriage to a wealthy heir. She had felt a deep disgust when Nathalie had cheated on her husband for the twelfth time in a handful of weeks. A crowd of heroines with tormented minds, good hearts to patch up. Judith could feel connected to these women. Her heart had just suffered. But why? Her only mistake was to love the wrong one—the one who could not build an ongoing storyline with. Breathless, Eric had suddenly erased the lines of the story they were writing together.

After observing people gathered near her house for a long time, Judith poured herself a glass of water and added a few drops of Cologne. Something was reassuring, familiar about that smell. The smell reminded her of her childhood spent with his grandmother. Left in the maternity ward just after receiving her name, she would have gladly swapped for Mélina. She knew nothing about her parents. Pictures of the one who had left her to her own fate filled her wallet, but she couldn't look at them without being sad.

I am having a kind of reversed baby blues, she often said on the couch of her multitude of psychologists consulted during her teen years. The doctors, astonished by so much precocious lucidity, gently referred her to softer, more appropriate conversations for a girl in the prime of her life.

Doctor Valbois appreciated the twelve-year-old girl. He didn't dare urge her with questions, so he was careful each time he felt she was about to cry. Judith, often shaken by tears, did not always manage to express herself other than by the violence of words and gestures. Eleven sessions. She had counted them. Doctor Valbois held eleven sessions with him before referring her to another colleague. An expert in hypersensitivity. Judith had been upset to leave with such a diagnosis in her schoolbag. She blamed herself for having cried too much but could not hold back her tears during the sessions. She often evoked the memory of her mother or rather her absence of reminiscences, even the smell of her perfume. Chanel, it seems, but Judith had never felt it.

What scent was it like? How was she wearing it? She would have liked to know the sound of her voice, her favorite words. She imagined her as a very feminine mother with a strong desire to be protected. But the photos did not speak. They only revealed a half-erased smile devoid of dimples. Grandma Jocelyne was her unique feminine landmark. Judith didn't know much about her family. It seemed like a puzzle with a large number of pieces missing. The most important, the key ones who make us understand who we are and where we come from.

Her grandfather, who passed away during the war, did not wait for her to show her first steps. Jocelyne refused to evoke the slightest memory of him. Her mother had left no address or phone number to meet her own daughter's thirst for tenderness. The name of her father remained a mystery to the young woman. She couldn't blame him. It might be better this way. I will get over it, she repeated. It seemed to her that she had distilled all her anger with highly qualified psychiatrists. Judith sometimes showered Jocelyne with questions, but she only answered by nods of the head, leaving the young girl with all her question marks. It annoyed her, but there was nothing she could do about it.

Her grandmother lived in another era. An old school woman, she liked to think. A quick glance at the bathroom cabinets was enough to tell. Whole cases of soap and towels, hundreds of bottles of perfume were there. Jocelyne had missed them during her childhood.

Once she became an adult, she started piling up various colored fabrics, anti-wrinkle creams in exchange for a copious three-figure check. A sort of revenge on life, on the poverty she had known. Being the eldest daughter of a large family, they had to keep an eye on their bank account. The basins served as a bathtub. They should not use too much water every time, that is, every three days. Neither should you overfill your glass at the table or ask for more bread. Judith knew this story by heart. Jocelyne went over it every time her little protégé acted like a spoiled girl. Judith, accustomed to a particular lifestyle, believed she was from a great lineage and did not always understand the refusals she thought were an injustice.

Many arguments had started in bakeries when Judith asked for bags of candy and when Grandma Jocelyne reminded her possessing things could be nice, but being someone mattered as much.

If now her grandmother lived in a luxury house, it was above all thanks to Georges, her late husband, whose name she only modestly mentioned before feeling the emotion prick her nose. What exactly was she afraid of? The fear of reviving well-buried memories? Jocelyne refused to dwell on those sad events. She tried to live at all costs. Even though the pain was sharp, you shouldn't look back on your mistakes, your choices. You had to accept and move forward even when the power was slightly tired. That's how Judith was brought up. Her instilled values ​​had made her a strong young girl, full of convictions and sometimes cheeky.