2023-10-12 13:58:47
“Writing is above all regarding making connections and daring to read the world differently.” Social worker and psychiatric user, Véronique Friess, poet and blogger, discusses the difficulty in accepting help, through a very pretty text which accurately and delicately reveals her own resistance and the struggles that accompany it.
” I like. Today I went to a special place. A place that did not leave me indifferent, while moving me to the point of being unstitched like a button hanging tirelessly along a jacket. A place where people come who have no place in our world, where hats are generally not pulled down to the eyes. A place where unshaven beards are not an effect of style but that of boredom, where smiles are sometimes sad and handshakes a little feverish. A place where coffee is the cup that allows you to talk regarding yourself. A place that reassures a thousand successive lives. A place that thinks regarding healing without compensating while favoring connections and words. The word of those whom many believe without thoughts. A place that places the specificity of the other in a respect and dignity that few grant because the difference can be read on a face or a gait that can be recognized from afar. The erased ones who crystallize our fears have a place of their own there. Everyone finds themselves responsible for the other. Everyone suddenly opens up to themselves and then to this other who is no longer the unknown. Everyone recognizes in this place this wonderful feeling of existence like everyone else, but also as it should be with the rest of the world. A world that prefers to look away and forget that illness does not prevent us when it grabs our minds and torments our flesh. A world that is human only in the name of the people who occupy it and tends to dehumanize the bonds that compose it, forgetting kindness towards the most vulnerable.
I was there, sitting in my chair looking at these women and men teeming with prestige, that of a hand shaken, another outstretched, a handful of certainties, including that of being here at home. It was beautiful as well as moving and joyful. It was beautiful and yet, I left this place with a distance made of discomfort. I accepted the cup but refused the hands that invited mine. I wasn’t ready. I wasn’t ready to be in that same human warmth. I lacked humility. I lacked many things from my past as a caregiver for mental illness. I understand my feelings and my restraint better. There is a world of difference between espousing a cause and being imbued with it. There is a whole world that moves when the wall cracks and rejection and vain battles seep in, in a last jolt of protection. This is not the first time that I have experienced this antagonism. Mirrors take time to calm reflections, our resistance has nothing to do with it. Tonight I want to cry. The struggles with myself are exhausting, the struggles but also my place constantly in flux. I bow to the tears of a conscience that invites openness. I will no longer refuse any handshake. »
Véronique Friessread his columns on his blog with his artist name Cello Muse
Biographie de l'auteur C’est depuis l'Alsace que Véronique Friess écrit sa poésie en marge de recueils collectifs et de revues. On peut la lire sur internet sous le nom d’artiste Cello Muse et le hastag #lesmotsdecello. Elle tient un blog littéraire et se lance à présent dans l’animation d’ateliers d’écriture autour du projet "plaisir d’écrire et de dire" au sein du GEM Azimut de Haguenau. C’est son expérience passée en tant que travailleuse sociale couplée à celle d’usagère de la psychiatrie qui l’ont conduite à s’investir sur les questions d’accompagnement au quotidien des personnes concernées par le trouble psychique, au travers de l’association FASCIAS mais aussi sur celles des droits, de représentativité et d’accès à la culture. Ecrire, c’est avant tout tisser des liens et oser une autre lecture du monde. Elle aime les mises à nu, écrivant ses hébétudes, parfois ses révoltes ou s'aventurant sur un terrain plus léger en sondant les diversités de l’intime. Elle se vit indéniablement libre dans ses désirs d’écriture et explore l’expression photographique autour d’autoportraits où le corps gros interroge les normes induites par notre société faisant le choix d’une nudité franche et sans fard. C’est une voix féministe engagée, future éditrice d’une revue littéraire, qui s’amourache de poésie pour supporter l’âpreté de ce monde.
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#longer #refuse #handshake..
