Ode to Simone de Beauvoir | Are we winning?

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Dear Simone,

In your biography I read your life. Printed on sheets of paper are letters that form words that tell a story. I read. With pen I underline sentences that touch me. That seem important. As if by doing so I can give them more weight, erase the equivalence of words and decide for myself which parts of your life are worth more than the rest. In the margin, I write down my own thoughts. Your life becomes my life.

In my mind I conjure up images of Paris, where you lived and worked. I see you with Jean-Paul Sartre, Bost, Nathalie, Bianca and all the others, with whom you had turbulent relationships. Your travels to America, Asia, Italy. I think based on what I know. You are among them. Do I know you?

Your photos show me what you looked like. Your book teaches me about your work. Your life I fill in for myself. I mix the words with my own memories; we do it together. Your character develops under the watchful eye of my imagination. Did you feel as depressed as I once felt? Did we get the same cry because we felt desperate about the vulnerability that comes with a relationship? We share big questions: who am I, who is the other? How can you pursue freedom when you deeply love another human being? What are we depriving the other person of with our love?

In your story, I read my own. So are we really alike? Or is it my imagination, relating the story to myself? I feel deeply connected to you, because I know you. Because I am you. I underline in your story my identity. This is how I filter your person. I flatten you, you become two-dimensional, the third dimension, I add myself. You are no longer the “wife of” nor “the writer of,” for a moment you are a mirror, in which I look at my own person. You show me what it is to be a woman in the world, and more than that you make me feel what it is like to be the woman I am now. What it means to me to be a woman in my piece of the world.

I wish I could say it gives me comfort and support, but it doesn't. Because as you were woman in your world, I am in mine. We struggle, against life, against conditioning and against ourselves. A struggle that transcends time and place. So tell me this Simone: are we winning?

Love,
Alyssa