j'ai beaucoup les fucking cafard
31st march ☽ sagittarius
The French have some interesting sayings.
To say I miss you, you would say ‘tu me manques’ - which directly translates to ‘you are missing of me’. The way this guttural translation has had me in a fucking chokehold from the moment I learnt of it years ago.
These punctures in the fabric of languages provide endless fascination and speculation. Melancholics are free to fill them up with their pathetic tears.
There is also l’appel du vide – call of the void. That one just sounds nice. Then there is one that I had no idea existed until I wrote it in a prosepoem and a friend read it and told me it was a saying in French!
The poem is titled ‘terrible woman complex’ and this is a section from it:
but the shame is like a fucking cockroach
like
when you wake up in the middle of the night and go to your kitchen and you stand there, at the threshold, cold floor beneath bare skin, and you just know. that something has been crawling on your kitchen floor. as you stand there, you have a knowledge that there is movement, coordination. there is ; the cockroach. and shame works the same.the cockroach of shame is always around.
you don't know how the fuck it got there. you keep your house spick and span clean!
but sometimes you leave the front door open, unguarded
and there's the kitchen drain, of course
and darkness exists
and these are all places where shame and cockroaches reside
so my friend says that to express depression the french say “avoir le cafard” which literally means “to have the cockroach” – was that my inspiration?
No, friend, it was not! I had no bloody idea the French and I were soul sisters!!!
(we’re litch like this 🤞)
I don’t want to live in a hole anymore.
I’ve been holed in for the past few weeks. For reasons unknown to myself. It started because of the workload of deadlines season. My first year of university is about to end and for the first second time in my academic life – I actually care about my grades. Because this isn’t school anymore, and I’m not 13 anymore, and I’m running out of time to make somebody of the nobody I am.
But once I found myself in the hole, it became increasingly hard to get out of it. I started to cover myself with dirt, till, eventually, I was completely hidden. I don’t want to hide, I don’t want to live in the hole, but. I can’t. sometimes, I just can’t. So here I am, hiding out. I am falling short of food, too. Bad habits are so easy to slip back into. They’re so comforting. Why would I ever quit? Someone said rightly, I always say I’ll quit, but I never will. I feel like an Idiot Girl when I hold a cigarette in my hand. I don’t know how to stand. But I really fucking need a smoke right now. There are certain things that just soothe my mind. A cuppa black coffee, a film where two people are just talking to each other, writing in the dead of night, wearing my thrifted triple XL men’s size skull tee, gossiping with my sister. cigarettes. that i don’t know how to smoke. but i live for the aftertaste.
The worst moments of my life I have thought – wow, I’m gonna write about this and it’s gonna be so nice. i’m always searching for traces of the aftertaste in my mouth.
Performing. Always. Even in my grief, my rage, I look towards other people’s faces. To see what they think of my spectacle. Should I up the ante?
An ex told me once life isn’t a movie and I should stop treating it like it is.
He was wise beyond his years for saying that.
I really do suffer. I hate the modern panopticon. Someone break me the fuck out.
When my body aches, I feel disgusted. I want to be a temporal being. I don’t want to exist in a physical realm. All that blood and bones. Just a bag of anatomy. Really, aren’t we?
This, too will pass. It’s a phase, obviously. Everyone gets low sometimes. Everyone Tous les gens ont le cafard, quelque fois.
(I took french for 10 years in school. I still had to double check with google translate.)
How many years have I wasted? How many more will I continue to waste? Will I continue to blame the dictators like I have? Or will I do something fucking brave for once and move away to a cold land where I will get weird roommates and maybe dirty looks sometimes but at least I will finally own myself for myself by myself just me and me for me.
My apologies for being disjointed. Give me some time. I’ll be myself in a bit.
love this, very real very vulnerable. the whole thing about living in a hole, especially during deadline season is so real - and the FANTASTIC MR FOX REFERENCE AH I HAVE TO WATCH THAT MOVIE AGAIN.
also fun fact - u said something like "this too will pass" at the end. since you were talking about french, there actually is a way of saying that in french - "ça ira" meaning it will be fine. it's one of my favorite phrases in french and english
only u can make me appreciate the french