Sorry

Hi, my name is Ines and I’m seventeen years old. I honestly am torn between the desire to write this presentation of myself and not to do it because I believe it doesn’t make sense, it will not change my life. I don’t need to change anyway. I love my life, and who I am.

But as Jean-Michel Dissard told us : we are a large library full of books and a book should be read. He said each story is interesting. So I will do it.

My parents are immigrants from Algeria. My mother died when I was four years old, I still remember her, I still miss her, I guess. But I don’t feel a void because my father married again in Algeria, and my new mother is very kind. But my father went away because he prefered another woman, a few years after. I maybe was ten years old when he left. Since that time, I haven’t talked with him anymore because he has not only left us but he ruined us and abandoned me. Me and the four children he had with my new mother.

We had nothing. At the beginning, my mother didn’t find a job because she had no French nationality then it was really difficult. She literally fought to feed us and buy us clothes.

For my part, I could hardly focus on my studies because I had to watch my brothers when she came home late. The youngest of my brothers even used to call me “mom” for a long time. It’s a part of life which affected me so much.

Today, I still live with my mother and my brothers. In my family everyone has always been Muslim. And it is impossible for them to think I can have another religion. But for me it is different. I am an atheist, I don’t believe in God. And I am not ready to tell this to my mother because I know she wouldn’t understand. I am afraid she would reject me as well. So, I don’t think about it when I am at home but if I am forced to speak about it I prefer to play a role rather than say what I think. I feel as if it is reassuring for her when I say something like “Yes, I agree with you, God is merciful”.

I know my family, I know my brothers and I know my mother. From the outside, me and my mother seem to be two friends, two sisters, and so it is. However, my family doesn’t know me. My mother doesn’t know me because I show her only what she would like to see about me.

I will go to the university next year. I want to choose a university far from home, to take a distance. I don’t want to show what I really think, because as long as I don’t do it there is no trouble. I feel good like this.

Here is a part of my story. It’s so hard to tell one’s “story”. Because the story is not only what we lived, what we will live, what we will explore, but also the lives of everyone because we live in a world that belongs to everyone.