This was originally published on 8 February 2023 on my blog called The Anchor Within (theanchorwithin.blog).
Soon after I moved into an apartment in the centre of Valbonne village in France, I had a water leak in my ceiling right above where I kept my clothes. I still remember that sound at night… ugh, that dripping! It would keep me up all night… even though it was a very soft, and possibly even quite a peaceful, sound. I told the rental agency about this problem as soon as I noticed it… but it didn’t get looked at for a while. My lack of confidence (and complete inability) to speak French didn’t help.
Until one day, after finishing one of my English classes and five minutes before the next class began… I heard a kind of eerie silence. The single drops had stopped, and turned into more of a gentle flowing sound… I immediately got up from my chair and started throwing my clothes onto the bed. Luckily, I got all the clothes out in time because the water soon came crashing down in one big wave. The floor of my studio apartment had flooded and I had 1 minute before my next class began.
I took a deep breath, even though there were tears at the edges of my red, sleep deprived eyes, and pushed it all down. Ah, how the little things in life can sometimes tip you over the edge… I topped it off with a smile, and then started my next online lesson. How many times have we all done that in life? Probably too many times.
I gave the lesson, which was luckily only 30 minutes and then figured out a way to mop up the floor. All while crying, audibly, and I am hoping that no one could hear how ridiculous this would have sounded. I felt like I needed to release something that had built up within me, from all the struggles I was experiencing due to my lack of French. Amongst it all, I was cursing myself. I had been contacting the rental agency for over a week about this problem and nothing happened. Probably because I was too nice.
“No rush” – I’d say. “It’s okay, don’t worry. Whenever you have time.” All the emails I wrote to them came flooding through my mind, until I just had to stop and sit on the bed. I held my head in my hands while I berated myself and contemplated what a complete failure of a human being I was for overreacting to this small event. This was all my fault, after all. Why couldn’t I be strong, like other women who seemed to have it all together? Like mothers or business owners, all the women I was not. These women seemed to have something special that got them through things in life, something which I didn’t have.
While I was sitting there, I received a text message from someone who so generously was there for me during my first few months. I met him soon after arriving in France, and we clicked immediately. I was lucky, because I don’t think this happens often and his English was good enough for us to communicate well. He asked me an innocent question, just casually: What are you doing? And I, much like the water that flooded through my ceiling moments ago, dumped the whole situation and all of my emotions onto him… through a sea of text messages in bastardised, Google translated French.
I told him that I felt so stupid, as if I could not do basic things in my life to take care of myself. Then, he told me something which I have never forgotten – “These people in France, they need some firmness sometimes… but don’t let them change who you are. You are kind, and gentle. You are perfect as you are. Just call the rental agency immediately and be you. Keep telling them. Tell me if you need my help.”
I did what he said – all except tell him when I probably did need his help. When I meet people who see my weaknesses as strengths, who willingly offer a hand without me asking… a feeling of protection rises up within me. I don’t want to take their help, because I have a deep respect for them, and I somehow gather the confidence to just move ahead by myself. I have since changed this… I realise now that when I do this, I end up blocking people who genuinely like me from having the pleasure of helping me.
It took another week, but the plumber did come and fix the leak. However, he did not replace the panel in the ceiling. And I am pretty sure, despite my consistent attempts to contact him, that square in the ceiling probably remains gaping open until this day. I resisted the urge to blame myself for that too.
We can always look back and say to ourselves that we could have done things differently. I could have been more nice, I could have been less nice. Sometimes, we can even blame others for why things turned out the way they did. But if there’s one thing I’ve learned in life now… it’s that blame is only the lure that keeps us hooked to the past. Whether we are blaming others or ourselves. And the past is not the place I want to be. The amount of times I have to unhook myself and let go is much more than I thought, but I try to take pleasure in it now. That feeling of release is actually quite satisfying. So now, when I catch myself getting hooked into the past, I try to look forward to the pleasure of letting it go. Unhooking that fish, giving it a big old kiss and throwing it back into the sea where it belongs.
Leave a Reply