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Bonjour Paris,

What a well-filled week it has been! The Carcassonne mission trip turned out to be a beautiful break spent by and within the castle walls with wonderfully loving company and mission accomplished, and last night’s concert at one of the suites at the O2 Arena seeing The Waterboys got me dancing to Irish tunes. Don’t be jealous, I’ve already got tickets to be with you soon!

I did do some silent crying on the direct Ryanair flight from Stansted, not because our flight was cancelled along with pretty much all the other afternoon flights from the UK the previous day and we had to chill and drink at Victoria station on the way back home, definitely not because I bumped into the same enthusiastic young man by chance for the third time over the past three months and I still had not given him my number simply because he had not stopped flirting with me though, knowing that was the condition I set out on the second encounter – meeting me for the third time and not flirting, he tried to tone it down, which got him my email address. 

No, let’s not read too much into the fated encounters, or his subsequent proposal pitch deck to have a date with me so I could finally give him my number, which was quite compelling but kindly turned down nevertheless. My heart is intact and we’d like to keep it that way, don’t we, boys? Nah, he’s too young and whilst I’d hang out with or befriend any adult I like, it is my responsibility to not put myself in a position where I take, or perceived as taking, advantage of the power imbalance when it touches romance, as cute and innocent as I sometimes think I am. I want that full prefrontal cortex, alright?

Ah, how liberating it is to have a choice and choose what’s right, though if I bumped into him randomly for the fourth time that would become a cause for crying. Speaking of which, why was I crying on the plane? 

Umm, I was just reading, rereading even, Hermann Hesse’s Narziss and Goldmund, the part where Goldmund first discovered his true soul – a poet and a lover, through Narziss the thinker, who spotted their differences and urged his beloved friend to stop trying to be someone else, a monk or a man of science, or seeing them as superior to a man of love and freedom that he was; to embrace his soul fully. 

I cried for pages as Goldmund went through the pain of seeing what he previously deemed holy, now cold and meaningless, and what he used to deem selfish and immoral, now pure and healing, in other words essential instead of merely necessary. Am I not still going through the journey of self-acceptance myself? After years of conditioning, which, for the most part, was traumatising and trapping me in guilt and fears, worst of all, of being my true self. Oh shit – who’s crying now! 

To some extent I experienced a similar parental dynamic to Goldmund’s. My father was an intellectual and holy one, my mother a wild woman who refused to bend to the strict religious norms, according to my holy father and his followers, anyway. My mother, loud, and strong, and brave, and actually keeping the big family together in her unique ways, used to embarrass me growing up until I saw her through via my own journey as a young single mother and an outcast in the eyes of the society, a poet who only cared about making sure her son was fed and loved, and her freedom to be herself, and occasionally dreamt of being loved for the way that she was. For the way that she truly was.

It is easy to be loved for her youth and beauty, but she has always wanted more because that has never been who she is; that is only her physical condition. But she had a Narziss, a friend, a thinker and a spiritualist, who did the opposite of Goldmund’s friend, urging her to abandon her soul, and writing, in other words to be ashamed of her mother again but also of her father for abandoning his family in the name of religion, and to act like what is socially deemed a responsible adult for so many years. 

She tried, and she kept thinking she had been free every time she managed to leave behind an abuser, a manipulator, a false friend or just a husband or, in her case, two, but on that Ryanair flight from London to Carcassonne, sitting next to a gentle and loving friend, she realised that she could not be released from the cycle, and be loved for who she truly is, until she accepts her true self, her soul, completely. She has long understood this concept, but has she fully adopted it?

Anyway, her son can now feed himself, and many others for that matter (he’s a fulltime chef!) and her daughter is not at all embarrassed by her loudness, strength, courage or unique ways of keeping the family together. All I need to do is tame the Narziss in me and love who I am without guilt or fears and see where it takes me. Well, I know it takes me to you in a couple of weeks, Paris, but where else? Here and now, ideally!

londres, le 13 septembre 2026

je t’embrasse !

d.o.