“Dear, don’t hope any more”

These are the words spoken by dying Beth March to her sister Jo, in Louisa May Alcott’s classic “Little Women”.

Three nights ago a childhood friend of mine passed away. His name was Sasha (Saša).

I remember him as the bright-eyed beautiful boy with a mischievous smile I once knew. Since hearing the news, images of him pop up in my head. I see his face, which his cousin justly described as that of a cherub: rosy-cheeked, curly-haired, sun-kissed and sweet. I hear his voice, his accent and intonation. I especially hear his laugh. Throughout our childhood and early adolescence, he was my brother’s closest “summer friend” (those friends we see every summer, who mean so much to us). He was also the cousin of my closest “summer friend”. And though Sasha and I were not that close, he meant a lot to me. He was my first childhood crush. It was a crush that lasted into my early teens and was reignited every summer for years. I never told him that. I remember the feeling of anticipation before that first annual encounter with him, summer after summer… and my invariably blushing when it happened.

For years, our families got together on the Dalmatian island where our grandparents lived. We spent every day together. For the most part, we naturally split into groups: parents with parents, boys with boys and girls with girls. But we were also part of a whole, which reunited one month of every year. A whole that I can now only describe as “a very merry bunch”. To me, Sasha is a symbol of our enchanted childhood summers, of jumping into the translucent Adriatic waters, splashing the tanning tourists, of eating sweet and salty peaches washed in sea water, of excursions to neighbouring islands on our small boat, powered by our Tomos 4 motor, of knees scorched on the island rocks that we used to run on barefoot along the sea, of us kids escaping the house at post-lunch siesta time to play cards in the shade… I also remember one evening when all the families on our street gathered at a nearby hotel for a huge raffle, in which our two families won almost all the prizes. His family won bottles of red wine, ours won a huge leg of prosciutto. For days after that, we all gathered in the evenings to share all that ham and wine on the waterfront.

The enchanted years lasted until the war broke out in Yugoslavia. Sasha’s parents were a mixed couple, so they moved to Canada, where they knew they would be safe. Those were the years of disillusion in so many ways and the island was never the same to me after that. Nor were any of us. We were growing up, and adolescence was a rude awakening for me. Over a decade later, I moved to Montreal. That very first summer in my new country of residence, I visited Sasha in Toronto. I met his girlfriend, who has since become his wife and the mother of his child. I was so happy to see that, in the man before me, there was still that lively, witty, charming boy I’d known and fancied. He had been kicked around by life, as had I. But he had not let the light inside him die. And now it has gone out.

Last night, my daughter crawled into my bed after having had a nightmare. In her sleep, she held on to me and said: “I want you to stay with me”. It brought tears to my eyes. Sasha’s little girl wanted her daddy to stay with her too, but he couldn’t. When I received the message announcing his death, I was in the middle of a conversation with a girlfriend who, like me, lives alone with her kids. Just then, we were saying that we couldn’t risk getting seriously sick because our children depended on us. Sasha probably thought the same. All his hope and positive energy, all the love and support of his family and friends were not powerful enough to keep him alive. Life seems to have neither rhyme nor reason, and death takes people away at random. I do not believe that good things happen to good people, and bad things to bad people. Sometimes I even get the impression that the opposite is true. Montherlant’s quote “Wickedness, like alcohol, preserves” often rings true.

Thinking of Sasha, I think of all the things he had wanted to experience, and now never will. And I wonder what it is that I want to achieve or experience while I am alive. What do I think I absolutely need to do before I die? The only thing that seems to be essential is being there for my daughter, while she needs me. For the rest, I have ambitions and dreams enough, but when I think of my friend’s death, I feel like none of those really matter. Of course, I wish to write and direct films, to achieve professional success doing something I love, I would like my children’s book to be published and I want to write more, I wish to fall in love again and be loved, I want to dance and sing and see friends and travel. But if I were to leave tomorrow, the great world would go on spinning, other stories would be told, other books would be written, other films directed and other women loved by the men I could potentially fall in love with. Still, no one is replaceable, so when a loved one dies, their family and friends miss them forever. But they, too, go on living. The one person who would be rendered dysfunctional for life by my absence is my daughter. Until she is able to be independent, I am responsible for her health, her well-being, her safety. That is my higher purpose here. The rest is what makes life good, exciting, beautiful, worth living, while I’m here. But it will not matter in the afterlife – if there is such a thing.

And so, once again, my thoughts turn to Sasha and, this time, to his wife. She will have to be strong enough for two now, courageous enough for two, loving enough for two, constant enough for two. I wish her well, and may she never have to suffer such a loss again as long as she lives.

Dear sweet Sasha, may you rest in peace. Počivaj u miru. I shan’t forget you.

(Title: Quote by Beth March in “Little Women” by Louisa May Alcott)

“There are no strings on me”

We live in an era of absolute interconnectedness. We know it and read about it everywhere. We know what each of our contacts (using the term “friend” here would belittle its true meaning) is doing every day. We constantly receive messages on our various messengers, we let everyone know where we are with our locating devices, we call each other to exchange trivial titbits that aren’t worth the effort it takes to call the person in question.

Decades ago, when people were starting to get mobile phones, I remember waiting for a bus in Paris, seeing everyone at the bus stop texting or calling whoever, and thinking: “Phones have now replaced cigarettes.” Until then, when you were stuck in a situation where you could do nothing but wait, most people would take out their packet of cigarettes and light one to pass the time. That was already what mobile phones were becoming for us 20 years ago: not a means to communicate, but one to pass the time. This tendency has, of course, become the rule since the appearance and complexification of smart phones, making us feel that using them is truly useful, if not necessary. When actually, we often just use them to pass the time and avoid boredom.

Meanwhile, the great majority of people have most likely rarely felt as alone as they do now. One of the texts that best represents this feeling for me are the lyrics of the song “One against another” (“Les uns contre les autres”) in the Franco-Québécois legendary 1970s rock opera “Starmania”. In it, the robotic waitress sings:

“We sleep one against another
We live with one another
We caress each other, we cuddle each other
We understand each other, we comfort each other
But in the end, we realise
We’re always all alone in the world
“We dance with one another
We run one after another
We hate each other, we tear each other apart
We destroy each other, we desire each other
But in the end, we realise
We’re always all alone in the world”

“Les uns contre les autres” in its originally performed version of “Starmania”

Considering this text was written by Luc Plamondon to Michel Berger’s heart wrenching minor chords decades before the 21st Century, one could argue that people have always felt – and been – alone. This is a universal truth after all: we are born alone, we die alone, and in a way, we experience everything in between alone as well. We are alone in that no one will ever walk in our shoes. We are, each of us, unique. For better or worse.

But in view of this, we have two choices. Either we can try to share what goes on inside us and empathise with one another, or we can rejoice in the fact that we are free to be who we are, knowing that there is no copy of us anywhere. We are not tied down by other people’s needs, wishes, wants unless we choose to be. This is Pinocchio’s philosophy:

“I’ve got no strings to hold me down
To make me fret, or make me frown
I had strings, but now I’m free
There are no strings on me”

When you live in an interconnected society, your everyday decisions and actions are affected by others. Planning anything, doing anything, becomes a complicated and tiring affair. The simplest deed becomes a juggling act, never knowing how many balls might be added in the process. Again, like in “Pinocchio” when other marionettes join him, we get tangled in all the strings surrounding us and find ourselves unable to move.

Reflecting on all of this, I also remember a ghost village I visited Serbia years ago. It was probably last inhabited about a hundred years ago and the structure was fascinating to me. The village was made up of circles: one for each family. In the centre of each circle, there was a comfortably sized stone house in which the elders were living with their grandchildren. Around this house, the villagers built one-room wooden cabins for the middle generation, i.e. the parents of the children staying in the stone house. This dynamic was the smartest construction I’d come across. In it, the little kids kept the elders lively and alert, the elders shared their wisdom with the juniors of the family. Meanwhile, the adult couples were able to work in the fields all day and keep their intimacy at night, while seeing their children when all of them gathered for meals. That’s the kind of interconnectedness that seems balanced and healthy. And real.

*Photo by the Feminae et Insula Collective (c)*

What we have now sometimes seems to lack the advantages, while having all the inconveniences, of being connected to each other. We have little time and space to ourselves, away from other people’s voices and opinions, but have next to no face-to-face daily support. So the question is: who is there for you when you’re not on social media, when your phone battery dies or when you feel terrible despite the upbeat tone of your posts?

Whatever the answer may be, those are the people you need to stick with. At the end of the day, we may each be alone to feel the way we do, but there are some precious individuals who are always willing to ease our burdens and share our joys. And there are people we are willing to go out of our way for, not because we have to, but because we want to. They are not all on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram, but they truly are friends.

(Title taken from Pinocchio in Walt Disney’s eponymous film,
lyrics by Leigh Harline & Ned Washington)

“The journey, not the arrival, matters”

From our earliest childhood, we learn that results and success matter. Parents applaud their child when (s)he walks, not when (s)he falls. When trying to get into the university of your choice, your hobbies and experiences may matter, but your grades matter more. You hear congratulations when you get married, not every time you start dating someone. You receive cheers when your child is born, not while you are trying to get pregnant. This applies to all areas of our lives. And yet, we are told that it is the journey that matters, not the destination.

So far, I have lived what can most certainly be qualified as a rich, full, diverse life. In so many films, novels and self-help books, we are told that it is always better to dare making mistakes, rather than shying away from a challenge. Over the years, Alfred Lord Tennyson’s famous quote “Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all” has come up in so many conversations I’ve had. And yet, whether it’s in my professional or my personal life, life has taught me that living by this rule does not necessarily make you happier, nor is it generally encouraged. It might just makes for a better story to tell at parties.

Of course, if you are one of few who follow untrodden paths leading to great financial success, you get to share your inspirational journey to fulfilment on Ted Talks. But otherwise, a varied experience is still perceived as a symptom of instability, a lack of commitment. At best, it will be seen as a sign of spontaneity, which is a quality rarely sought by employers or investors. The contradictory messages we receive lead to a general dissatisfaction, whether you follow “the safe path” or go on “the adventurous journey”. I have tried both. I have experienced the nine to five lifestyle, working in a cubicle, going for drinks during happy hour with my colleagues on Thursdays, blending into the crowd and elbowing my way through the rush hour stampede. I have also gone the other way, that of the freelancer, the artist, the entrepreneur. I know what it’s like to completely believe in what you are trying to sell, to be obsessed with it day and night, to be truly proud when it succeeds or to feel like an utter failure when it doesn’t because it is an extension of yourself.

When I talk to friends who have chosen the safe path, the job they neither love nor hate, the house, the reliable and predictable partner, the dog, the expensive holidays with their family, they do seem generally satisfied. But every so often, the subject of their unfulfilled ambitions and their evasive creativity surfaces. They tell me they wish they had dared to do what I’ve done: moving to a new country when the time seemed right, quitting their job when it lacked meaning, ending a relationship when it just wasn’t working anymore, diving into new and uncertain projects when they felt too good to pass up. Everywhere, they receive the same contradictory messages as I do. “Be daring, be creative, live life to the fullest, BUT also be stable, provide for your family, stay on your path, don’t take risks.” And so, while their lives are pleasant enough, they are made to believe that they should be extraordinary, thrilling, out of this world. Which they usually are not.

I wonder: Do we really choose which path to follow in life or does our innate character define which path chooses us? Over the years and decades, I have often started a new job thinking that since the salary was good, the colleagues nice enough and the work conditions very acceptable, this time I’d stay on course and forget about my creative endeavours. I thought dedicating my evenings and weekends to my passions would be sufficient. But it wasn’t. Even when I tried really hard to keep my initial enthusiasm for an office job going, my body would inevitably give up on me. I would end up sick and quit to literally save my skin. And I would return to theatre, film or cultural events, none of which ever allowed me to have the stability I thought I should have.

Whether we travel through life on the straight highway or the uneven winding road, I get the feeling that we neither really choose our path, nor are we ever completely satisfied with the one we’re on. Regardless of what we are being told, the destination does matter to us as individuals and as a society. How much we earn, whether or not we achieved public recognition, how long our marriage lasts, how many kids we have, whether we own a piece of land, all those things matter. We see them as a reflection of our success in life. But how much we enjoy our work matters too, and what we have seen of the world, whether we have truly good friends, how close we are with our kids, whether we still dance spontaneously past childhood. We do not wear these as badges of honour, but they fill our hearts every day and they give us a sense of pride as human beings.

I don’t think there is an ideal path. And I don’t believe people who tell me they are generally sublimely happy in life. Catching moments or even periods of joy, contentment, pride, wellbeing does exist. But I do not believe it can really last without phases of sadness, regret, bitterness, exhaustion. As a friend recently told me, “we must rejoice in the good times and use them to recharge our energy to last us through the difficult times that follow – but neither the easier nor the harder times are endless”. And trying to find a balance between enjoying the present moment and being focused on your goal is an elusive state of being that I keep trying to catch. Now you see it, now you don’t.

(Title: Book title of Leonard Woolf’s autobiography of the years 1939-69)

“We must die to one life before we can enter into another”

The whole quote by Anatole France is: “All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy, for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter into another”. It is a perfect description of how I feel right now. With every change in our lives, we have to relearn to live and be ourselves.

Leaving home to go to university, moving to another country, moving in with someone, getting separated, having a child, starting a business… These are all changes that force us to question our habits and rethink how we structure our lives, our space, ourselves.

It sounds easy enough to do, especially for someone who is as used to change as I am. I have not only been used to it, but have sought it and caused it since I was fifteen years old. And yet, I find that over the last few years, my ability to adapt to change is not what it used to be. When I was younger, change was often scary, but also exciting.

Changing schools at age fifteen, going off to university and sharing an apartment with complete strangers in a foreign land at seventeen, those first big deliberate changes in my life may have been a bit hard because I was still figuring out who I was. At the time, I found that all our routines and customs are a part of how we perceive ourselves in relation to others, whether in comparison or in opposition. At first, we think these habits are our own, as they helped shape who we are. So giving some of them up to better coexist with others is not easy, especially when you are young, stubborn and rebellious as I was. But as time goes by, you realise that some of these habits are not an integral part of who you are. You are just mimicking what you observed while growing up. You learned them from your family, your social circle, your fellow countrymen, and never bothered to question them. With age, as you begin to piece together the puzzle of your very own identity, you find that there is more room for change in your habits than you thought.

The years pass and you start being comfortable with your strong adaptable – yet authentic – self. And then, unexpectedly, this trend is reversed. At least for me. The habits, schedules, structure I’ve come to live by, through experimentation and change, have been my own. But gradually, I find that when one of the foundations of the life I’ve built for myself shifts, or worse, disappears, all that beautiful adaptability I pride myself on has begun to crumble. Reinventing myself was easy enough when I was young. Past the age of thirty, it started getting trickier. And now, past the big 4-0, every substantial change feels like an earthquake. Why is that? Do we stiffen with age, like our bodies do? Do we become rigid, judgmental, uncompromising? I doubt it, even though I sometimes catch myself being far less tolerant than I was fifteen years ago. Rather, I’m coming to realise that the tipping point comes when you feel that your life should be built by now. It has to do with expectations: your own and society’s. As long as you perceive yourself as having to build your career, your family, your life, it is fine to test, change, take risks. Because you know you are moving towards a goal, namely the fulfilment of your life’s purpose. But once you have your family and you’ve found a home you love, once you’ve built a career for yourself, every structural change in your life starts to feel like destroying what you’ve built rather than building something new.

When you’ve been on the roller-coaster of life’s trials and errors enough times, the expected smooth and straight train ride of mid-life is very appealing. Some manage to stay on that track for a very long time. I haven’t. Perhaps it’s my restless, strong-willed, intense nature that makes it impossible to compromise what I believe to be essential. Whatever the reason may be, the structure I’ve built for myself is once again shaken. And I find this very unsettling. It’s scary, but not the exciting kind of scary I used to know. It’s an unpleasant sort of scary this time around. My life experience has taught me that I will undoubtedly adapt to these changes once again, but this time around I am questioning the vast campaigns aiming to convince us that we should ‘seek change’ and ‘be our authentic selves’. Regardless of the price you have to pay for that. Perhaps there is, after all, some merit in wanting to enjoy security – with all its compromises – rather than this glorified ‘authenticity’ past mid-life. Perhaps.

Be that as it may, considering the life I’ve led and the way my experiences have shaped me, that is not my path. I have always caused or welcomed change when something wasn’t working in my life. As that is still the case, after the recent changes I’ve brought on in my life, I will have to rethink myself again… after I’m done mourning my former self.

(Title: quote by Anatole France taken from “The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard”)

“For tonight it’s the Meaning of Life”

Emotion is a word that seems to be jumping up at me all over the place. So many life coaches and other enlightened beings around me seem to be saying that emotions are at the centre of everything we do. I have even heard it said that, beside our instinct to survive, “the only thing we as humans seek is emotion.” I wonder: is it, though? If all we sought was emotion, would we not all live on drugs, jump out of airplanes, cut ourselves? Though emotion is key to a full human existence, I am convinced that so is meaning. The Monty Pythons certainly knew it.

Monty Python’s song “The Meaning of Life” (from their eponymous film)

And I agree. I have felt the absence of meaning through and through. What was it that drove me crazy and killed me of a slow death while I was doing uninteresting day jobs? The salary was good, the work conditions as well, no one was mean – though sometimes condescending. What killed me was not the lack of emotion (I have always had enough to go around) but the absence of meaning. Each day blending into the next, each suggestion for a positive change having to go through the wheels of the decision-making machine and often disappearing on its way to the top.

An existence is not worth living where there is no meaning. We can all take it for a while because we sometimes have to. But deadlines are necessary. We need expiry dates for contracts that make us miserable. Seeing the finish line is what helps us go on during those meaningless phases. And after come the fireworks, the trumpets and the glory of being in charge of one’s life again. The money there is often scarce, the mistakes are ours to own, but the shackles are off. The meaningless phases thus have this purpose alone: to make us see the beauty of the penniless phases that follow. And vice-versa. Oh, the joy of a salary after years of “freedom” counting your coins to buy milk!

And so, though I will admit that emotion can often makes our lives worthwhile, I am convinced that finding meaning in our daily labour does too. But to come to this conclusion, one must dare to seek and face challenges, both in the personal and professional spheres. Whereas I have often met people whose professional selves knew no fear in their quest for the truth, while their personal selves repeatedly stopped and turned back when finding walls on their path to the immense diversity of human experience. These are the very walls I have never been able to resist climbing over or even breaking through. For the human soul, its beauty and ugliness, its extremes and all that lies in between, is what fascinates me. It frightens and attracts me equally. And in that sea of creatures and emotions, light and darkness, I believe that we all strive to find meaning.

Perhaps this means that I carry in me the “Contradictory Nature of the Germanic Soul” that Luchino Visconti saw in Romy Schneider.

(Title taken from Monty Python’s song “The Meaning of Life”)

“Take me away from all this death”

This is what Mina asked of Dracula in the 1992 movie “Bram Stoker’s Dracula”.

These words echo in my mind as I think: “If only someone could take me away from all these lies, these projections, this meanness,
“This darkness of the soul, this need to destroy the other,
“These spider webs so skillfully and patiently woven over years, decades,
“This carefully dosed poison slipped into each conversation. Just enough to go unnoticed while being harmful. Perhaps even deadly for the soul.”

I do not understand these tactics. They are foreign to me.

What good does it do to bite the hand that feeds you?
What joy is there in seeing that the person in front of you will crack at any moment like a piece of rock you’ve repeatedly been hitting with a hammer… every day, every month, every year for so long?
How can one feed on another person’s pain?
How can one prey on the admitted weaknesses of another?
What merit is there in hitting a person where it truly hurts them, after they’ve told you it is their weakest spot?
How can anyone mistake stepping on someone to feel taller for actual growth?

Like Jiří Kylián said in one of his interviews: “I seek something to lift me just a few inches above the ground.” Like his ballet Bella Figura did for me in 2002, when I first saw it performed on stage, and again tonight on my computer screen – and all the years in between.

Bits and pieces of Jiří Kylián’s ballet “Bella Figura”

Music, food, an image, a voice, a choreography, a text, a film, an open heart, a benevolent look that, for an instant, give me wings.
Not great big wings to fly up to the skies. No, just two little wings to lift me high enough that I can avoid seeing defiling looks, destructive glances, the acrid smell of complacency, the undeserved and unwarranted pride based on reaping what another has sown. What I have sown.
Oh, that I could clip those invisible claws that scratch at me, those tentacles that try to silence and drag me into the darkest depths of the sea.

Where is this justice we so often hear of? This expected success based on merit?
Of course, I am well aware that the great majority of humans living and breathing today have a much harder, more ungrateful, more unjust life than mine.
Of course, I am well aware of my many blessings, of my great luck, of the gifts Life has placed under the tree for me.
But how, in these lasting phases of weakness, can my grateful heart find comfort in this while the life force is being drained from my veins by several foes simultaneously?
Hand in hand they walk and marvel at me while wishing my capitulation. They shoot at me like snipers comfortably posted up on a hill and then applaud when they find me still standing… and then they have another go.

As I look into my child’s wide open eyes, I pray that she never meets anyone who will wish her harm. And yet, the world is filled with such people.
And their concentration around one person seems proportional to the light that person radiates.
Inside my child’s luminous eyes, I see questions, fears, pain, but I see oh so much light too.
I wish I could tell her this light of hers is a marvellous and wondrous thing to have. But the truth is, right now, I believe it will be a wonderful thing for all who surround her.
Not for her though.
Not unless she builds herself an armour.
Not unless she feels protected by all – not just a few, but ALL who are closest to her.
A mother’s love, faith, trust, support are not and will not be enough.

She will need wings of her own to fly up, above the mud, the dirt and the slime of human baseness whenever she needs to.
Perhaps she will find inspiration in the whale and the dolphin who manage to swim up to the surface of the sea whenever they need to catch their breath.
I hope so…

In the meantime, I try not to cry when I see her big brown eyes looking at me with all the faith in the world.
That most beautiful of all beings. I wish I could keep her from ever knowing pain. But I can’t. Not if I want her to live. And that, I do.

And so, I watch Bella Figura yet again.
Thank you, Jiří Kylián, for this invaluable gift.
You have seen the human soul in all its complexity and have shown it to us in a most poetic form.
I guess if one can fall from grace, one can also be lifted into it. Bella Figura seems to do just that.

Now I must feed the light inside me to do the same. To show my daughter that it is possible.
Despite everything and everyone.
Lift my head, stand tall and be a bearer of light again, as I once was.

Excerpts from “Bella Figura”
(the best version to be found online: the original NDT)

“Anger is a cruel and furious beast”

I do not remember having had this much anger trapped inside me during my childhood, nor my youth. Sadness, frustration, definitely. A lot of both. Especially during adolescence. Love, joy, exaltation too. But now it’s anger that I feel invading my body and soul. It prevents my legs from moving, it burns inside my chest and pierces my breasts like needles, it twists and forms knots in my throat, then continues to move up my stiff neck and my tense face. It blocks my sinuses, my ears, transforms into a veil over my eyes and finally settles under the roof of my skull. There, it grows and pushes up tirelessly. Trying to escape, to find a hole, to form a crevice in order to free itself and shoot up to the stars like fireworks. Instead it remains a prisoner of my body and thus, holds me hostage. It cannot escape. So it spreads in my thoughts, it clings to my nerves, choking me and haunting my dreams.

I have no rest, let alone peace in my soul. I only see the present through this dark and twisted filter. Even when I think I have appeased it, when I feel the coal inside dying down, any unexpected irritation can have the effect of a powder keg on just barely live coal.

Oh, how I dislike this anger! My companion, by day and night, that deforms my features, consumes my flesh, carves my wrinkles, discolours my hair. Where is my strength now? My energy, my love, my hope, my faith in happy ends?

Anger, let me go! What can I do to free you without perishing in this battle? If only you would move downwards, if only I could liberate you into the ground. But like metal to the magnet, you are welded to the inside of my skull. I can feel all your heat as I place my finger on the uppermost point of my head. You are like a glowing cork, cutting my connection to the universe, to infinity. You cut all my ties. I feel devoid of healthy emotions. Food has lost its taste, wine no longer appeases me, champagne no longer lightens my spirits, embraces no longer move me. I wear a carapace, a shield that prevents outer harm from destroying me – and goodness from reaching me.

And yet, I have everything I’ve wanted all my life. I should be happy. But the battles I’ve had to fight alone, the innumerable compromises I’ve had to make, the mistakes I cannot forgive myself for, the stupidity I’ve had to tolerate and the insults I’ve had to swallow… they have piled up over the decades and formed such a mountain of vileness that nothing viable can grow on such rotten soil.

Now it’s too late to start all over again. I am too old, too cynical, too sour, too tired. I am the shadow of the person I used to be.

(Title: quote by Pierre-Claude-Victor Boiste)