“Seen from the outside, we were the prototype of the bourgeois provincial family in the early 1960s. Doctor father, stay-at-home mother, four children, of whom I was the youngest. A conservative middle town, a nice house, a “maid”, as my mother called her, Sunday morning mass in a navy blue blazer.
Seen from the inside, it was a delirious universe. My mother was ill, and her pathology was dead. She suffered from paranoid psychosis, but the diagnosis would not be made until much later. She exercised considerable verbal and physical violence on us. Threat was the basis of his communication. The beatings were daily. We only had respite when she went through phases of decompensation, because she then left to spend some time in a psychiatric hospital.
My father acted as if nothing had happened. He pretended to work all the time, which allowed him to pursue his only passion: women. He spent his time chasing all those in town, with some success. In the city, he was a visible and invested man. He was a doctor, a city councillor. He was a young, athletic, educated, boastful man who earned a good living. At home, he was an absent father. I don’t think he knew the birth dates of his children. He never told us a word about our mother’s illness, even though he was a doctor.
In May 1968, everything exploded. At the beginning of the month, I am sent to a great-aunt for the summer. An extraordinary woman of open-mindedness and kindness, with whom I spent three delicious months. She educated me politically – she was a communist – and intellectually.
“It’s simple, he doesn’t care about me”
When I return home in September, everything has changed. My mother, who finally benefited from good therapeutic care, left to study in Paris. My older brothers and sisters are all gone. The house is empty. I am alone with my father, who neglects me completely, when I am only 11 years old. Today, the situation in which I then found myself would immediately trigger a report to social services. I prepare myself to eat. I don’t have the necessary school supplies, no suitable clothes, no dental care when I need it (a shame, for a doctor’s son!). It’s simple, he doesn’t care about me. My mother comes back from time to time, for short periods, but that is not enough. My parents divorced in 1971. Only my older sister is worried about my situation. This lasts until 1974, my senior year. I manage to enroll in a good Parisian high school, but my father refuses to pay me housing. So I finish my schooling at home.
You have 64.71% of this article left to read. The following is for subscribers only.