Menopause

I did not have the courage to split honestly.

A real coward was I.

I preferred the anonymity of a telephone booth.

While the phone rang, at home, I was frantically searching for a cigarette, deep down in my handbag.

I announced my departure in a cloud of smoke.

But you were the one coughing.

And you did not make it easy for me.

You refused to understand the obvious.

Why ? Why ? Why ? Were you repeating steadily.

Why now, precisely now, when everything is getting better and all hopes are allowed again ?

Because, my dear, my future ex-love, if I want to survive, I have to do it without you.

How can I make you understand that ?

I have just returned from much too far.

A few minutes later and I’d say hi to Saint Peter.

Nine days of coma.

Nothing more.

Plus one month to relearn how to walk.

And another one to get clean.

Thirteen years of hesitation to leave.

I knew, however, that you don’t built up a new love over old ruins.

After a lot of procrastination (without the distance we’ll still be at it) and with the promise that I would not take any decision before you return (count on it, you fool !) you finally let me hang the phone up.

I ‘m still shivering.

And I rushed to take the train for Paris.

Since you were stuck in the countryside…

I profited from the situation to fill up my trunks.

Without letting you any time to make me change my mind.

I had to be reasonable.

I knew too well your grip over me.

The power of your blue eyes.

Coming back to you was signing in for death.

Next time I won’t fail upon me.

I still thought about taking back the small silver spoon that my parents had offered to us as wedding present. They have to stay in my family. Absolutely.

I also called my boss.

I quit.

He expected it.

He was understanding.

He invited me for lunch.

He really understood my point. I believe he did not like you very much in fact.

After that I went back to my mother’s. In the city of my childhood. I found a job. I contacted a lawyer and initiated the divorce proceeding. I was the plaintiff, thus I could choose the place of the court. I started to study my civil code.

When you really understood that it was over. You started a meticulous work of undermining. A sly and laborious assassination attempt.

I had screwed your pride, you attacked my femininity. And, perfectionist as you were, you took your time. You pretended that one cannot split « like that » you asked me to write to you. At least to answer your letters. Just for a time…

Why not after all ? I did not risk anything anymore. On the paper I was your equal. I accepted. Played it all right. A little, a lot, epistolary…

At first, you pretended that you missed me.

You dreamed to hear the sound of my little footstep down the stairway. You tried to sound desperate and thus, I had to comfort YOU !

I heard later that at that precise moment, you already had replaced me…

Nevertheless ; in each one of your letters, just after the chapter where you were crying on my absence, you described the new conquests you just made. Oh, of course, they were far from being as good as me, but still, you explained, it was necessary that someone, a sort of modern times hero (and why not you, then ?) devoted himself to satisfy all those poor forty years old women, still pretty, so smart but so lonely, and apparently paving all the streets.

Too happy to have recovered my freedom, I did not yet suffer from my solitude. Finally one day, you saw that the little silver spoons had disappeared. But you still sent me my trunks. That was fair ! Nevertheless, considering that « I had fallen so low in your esteem » you saw no need to insist any longer.

And this time you were the one who gave up.

You’ve always liked to have the last word.

As a farewell gift, just before closing the door definitely (no mail, no phone calls !) you wrote me a last letter. You explained for the last time : « you see, divorced ladies, in their forties, you find them everywhere, each one as beautiful as the other, men only have to lean down to get them, they are so desperate without a man… don’t even think about getting remarried one day. As for having children, you can give up dreaming because for you it’s over. O-v-e-r ! You are simply too old. T-O-O O-L-D ! ! ! »

No kidding ?

So, I,

In my fiscal paradise.

Where the one coming back are welcomed with numerous tax form…

I,

I took due note.

At thirty five years old.

Without a husband.

Without children.

AND NO HOPE OF EVER HAVING ANY

Since it is so…

Happily, lets start a new life.

Lets think a little bit of me…

Lets travel, get some instruction, go to the opera, the theater, to the movies.

Lets have training courses about :

« How to feel healthy »

or, « How to approach my forties with happiness ».

Thus, a few years ahead of my biological clock, but joyous, free, serene and without ANY regret…

I announced all around me,

That I was entering…

… into menopause !

And the funniest of all is that I really believed it !

The moral of this story…

Is that for this as for many other things, it is fortunately not us who decide about it all.

And this goes for Love as for everything else and this is why, after this great decision that had changed my life (entering menopause) I remarried twice and gave two beautiful children to two different father (divorced in their forties…).

My third and last marriage was the most beautiful.

But that’s another story.

Nevertheless,

I am today the happiest woman on Earth…

… and still very far from my menopause !