Three weeks

Three weeks left. Quite a disappointing summer, with at most two or three moments of grace. Spent my days either dying from the heat or emotionally convalescing. Slowly realized that my family's drama is not something I have to partake in. I miss those days when my mother's excessive control over me was so obvious, so direct that my rebellion was nothing more than a natural and legitimate reaction. Something similar to how it is easier to feel politically revolted by exploitation when it isn't sugarcoated with the friendly boss and "we're like a family" rhetoric. "We're like a family", how ironic. Like a structure with a naturalized and unquestionable hierarchy.

Thought about how it only took me a scholarship and the legal ability to rent my own place to build myself a better life. I never got my parents' authorization to leave their home. As if I was required to have it. As if I couldn't perfectly reproduce their signature from all the school documents I had to fill for them. You know how some people grow up and become gentler with their parents as they realize how hard it is to be an adult? I feel the opposite. I understand how someone could get where my parents got, which is why nowadays I don't feel bitter, but rather weary of them. But what I truly realized is just how much of my suffering wasn't caused by our material conditions, but by something I'd like to call cruelty -- although it would be too generous of me to attribute to them a form of self-consciousness. Turns out it's way easier than I thought for an adult to buy colored pencils for their daughter -- not even for her pleasure, but for school -- instead of cigarettes. Not even alcohol, cigarettes.

Pondering about what would be the right thing to do. Strictly speaking, I am not my mother's mother. Strictly speaking, a human being made absolutely terrible life choices -- me being one of them -- and now they have to deal with the consequences. Strictly speaking, I am not responsible for said choices. Strictly speaking, I do not owe anything to my family, because they only did the bare minimum to keep me alive -- and even that might have been too difficult for them, since I spent my entire teenagerhood yearning for death. And at the same time, I know that they are suffering and that I'm probably the only person that could help them. They are dependent on me. They need me for administrative tasks, occasionally financial support and, the worst of all, emotional support. I feel like I have the moral duty to provide these. And you know how strongly I feel about moral duties. So I wait until I collapse to finally exempt myself from these obligations. Things would be so much easier if my mother was ruder. I'm constantly waiting for her to say the snide remark, the one word too many, the inappropriate question to finally have a reason to distance myself. Yet more often than not, I end up finding excuses for her behavior, tracing it back to her own shitty upbringing. Lord, why are things so hard. Why are hurtful people too complex to be complete monsters that nobody should have to deal with.

I spent the morning writing three paragraphs of things I've already thought. Morning is gone and nothing has been added to my life. I cried a little. I wanted to bike but I'm too weak to handle Parisians' rudeness today. I might get up and go back to where I used to live during my two first years in Paris. I lived in a simple student studio apartment, perfectly located in a bourgeois neighborhood. I spent my first summer alone, reading, dreaming, watching movies and walking outside for hours.

One of my ex-friends once told me that she liked going to cafés to read books and hopefully get interrupted by a stranger that would ask: "what are you reading?" (She also asked for cigarettes to initiate social interactions. She was the performative queen I'll never be.) I remember wanting what she had quite badly, so each time I went I outside I would bring a book in my bag. Alas, I was too awkward to go to a café by myself and order something like a grown-up, so I always ended up in a park, anxiously sitting on a bench, profusely sweating, and re-reading each paragraph at least three times because I couldn't concentrate. I suppose it was too obvious that I wasn't there to read. I had a total of two social interactions in my entire park-reading career. First, a forty-year-old white man who asked me: where are you from. I answered: France. He said: yes, but you know what I mean. Second, an old woman who saw me reading Plato's Republic. I genuinely thought it was the kind of book you can casually read in public lmao. I had no idea what I was doing. Woman interrupted me and asked me what I liked reading. I said I didn't read that much but I loved philosophy. She then wrote a random library's name on a note and told me: "here you can buy books for as cheap as fifty cents". Librairie Boulinier. And she left. That summer, I also stopped believing. It was around the 15th of August. I spent the remaining days of summer masturbating while thinking about women -- no guilt involved this time. Life back then would have been less boring if I wasn't such a femcel.

It's the afternoon. I have to pick up a package. I bought pants from Uniqlo I'm sorry I have at least five pants I bought from Vinted that don't fit me despite checking the measurements and it's so difficult to find pants for someone who's as short as me and I gained 5kg since I started doing sports so none of my old pants fit comfortably either and I will keep these Uniqlo pants for ages I swear, amen. I'm laying half naked on the couch. My boyfriend is three meters away from me, reading yet another book about Wittgenstein. He's been on a Wittgenstein frenzy since early July. He's been telling me that Wittgenstein's approach could change the way he thinks about ethics. How he created a new, third approach to ethics that nobody thought about before. I've tried to make him speak more clearly about this third option but he isn't quite there yet. Oh, he dropped the book. He's on his laptop now. He's on his five minute brainrot pause. He brainrots on YouTube shorts. He just told me he has to pick up a package, too. A second-hand book. I feel humiliated. This one is from Iris Murdoch -- Iris Murdoch being the reason why he picked up Wittgenstein in the first place. He gifted me a book from her, The sovereignty of good, two weeks after getting to know me because he was convinced it would change my life. He told me it was a secularized version of Simone Weil's ethics. I never got past the 30th page. I tried to read it again in June and failed.

It's so hot and lonely here. My boyfriend is having diner with his friend tonight. My only friend in Paris isn't answering my messages. I hate it when people take ages to answer. No it's not the same as when I take ages to answer to emails because it takes me way more than five seconds to write a proper email

I just woke up from a nap. It was nice. My boyfriend is gone. I can finally watch an old italian movie without someone telling me that the way I appreciate the movie isn't pure because what I love about it is seeing one of my desires (being sexy young cool and free) on a screen so it's just yet another self-centered activity. Anyway. I'm posting this now. I will not reread or check orthograph or grammar or ideas. I hope you're all having a nice summer -- nicer than mine at least.