Interlude: Justified

roses in the hospital stub cigarettes out on my arm. roses in the hospital want to feel something of value. roses in the hospital nothing really makes me happy. roses in the hospital heroin is just too trendy. all we wanted was a home now we're so strung out we wanna own. like a leaf in the autumn breeze, like a flood in january. we don't want your fucking love.

-roses in the hospital

                I know people think that I am an angry young man.

                Sometimes, I think about what they did to her, to Jeanne-Marie. And it still makes me angry. A thirteen year old girl, tortured, repressed, riddled with guilt and a complete lack of self-worth. I was not there; I did not even know I had a sister at the time. But she stood there, alone, in the dark, ready to die, on the roof of Madame DuPont's School for Girls. And she jumped.

                She did not know why she flew rather than falling to her death. When she went looking for answers from the Soeur, she found nothing but hate, disbelief. They beat her. They starved her. They sent her to do penance for her "blasphemy."

                That was the beginning of her disease, my sister. Not the beginning of her troubles, non. But the beginning of the all too real split-personality disorder that would rule her life from then on.

                I could have been more understanding at times, perhaps. I could have been less judgmental, particularly knowing of her past with the Sisters. And truly, I have apologized to her for my own transgressions.

                It does not make them disappear. But it somehow makes me feel justified in blaming the Sisters, and then Department H, for Jeanne-Marie. And for Aurora. 

                And sometimes, I think about how angry I was, before Alpha Flight. Oh, I know what you're thinking. "Jean-Paul, you're angry now!"

                Yes, sometimes.

                But once upon a time, I was a true sepratiste. Unwilling to sit back and do nothing to aid my country-folk, my fellow Québécois, I joined Le Front de Liberation du Quebec. Now, I am not proud of that association. I did not realize that the movement was not purely political. I was naïve, and discovered too late that I had made the wrong decision.

                Make no mistake, I still believe in the ideals I upheld then. But I was mistaken to think that the FLQ was the answer to our hopes. And I was mistaken to associate myself with them. It has caused me much grief since.

                After childhood, things become cloudy. Perhaps some look at me, and they think I have it all. Money, looks, intelligence. A stare that can make a man's knees weak from across the room. Yes, the boy who tried to steal from Raymonde Belmonde on the street one day has done well for himself.

                But the past remains. My past. Her past.

                Sometimes, I think there is much that I would change. Foolish decisions and foolish pride. But foolish or no, the choices were still mine.

                I suppose I am still an angry young man. I know it's true when I think of Jeanne-Marie. When I think of the times my loved ones, so few remaining, have been threatened. When I think of the prejudices have faced, no matter what my chosen career, no matter where I found myself. And, to be perfectly honest with you, I don't feel the need to justify it.

                I have my reasons for being who I am. I have loved and lost and lived like everyone else. I have made my own choices, taken my own chances.

                And if you don't like me, you're welcome to, as they say, fuck off.

                I could not ask someone else to accept me, after all, if I could not even accept myself.