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You understood that, for you, politics was a question of life or death.

One day, in the fall, the back-to-school subsidy granted each year to the poorest families—for school supplies, notebooks, backpacks—was increased by nearly one hundred euros. You were overjoyed, you called out in the living…

In March 2006, the government of Jacques Chirac, then eleven years in office as president of France, and his health minister Xavier Bertrand, announced that dozens of medications would no longer be covered by the state, including many medications for digestive problems. Because you’d had to spend y…

In March 2006, the government of Jacques Chirac, then eleven years in office as president of France, and his health minister Xavier Bertrand, announced that dozens of medications would no longer be covered by the state, including many medications for digestive problems. Because you’d had to spend y…

The problems had started in the factory where you worked [...] one afternoon we got a call from the factory informing us that something heavy had fallen on you. Your back was mangled, crushed. They told us it would be several years before you could walk again, before you could even walk.

The fir…

When you'd had too much to drink, you'd lower your eyes and say that no matter what you loved me, that you didn't know why you were so violent the rest of the time. You would cry, admitting that you couldn't make sense of the forces that came over you, that made you say things you'd instantly regre…