16/12/2025 - I let go of the “good girl” conditioning.

Hello readers,

Am I completely delusional, or absurdly aware? I’ve realized I’m always standing in that liminal space, halfway between the identity I inherited and the identity I’m practicing into existence. That’s really what my so-called “delusion” has always been: believing that my vision would materialize long before there was any proof that it could. Believing I could become exactly who I wanted to be, even when nothing in my life matched it yet.

The personal part has always felt easier. I learned early that my wellbeing mattered. But professionally, I’m still learning to trust the same inner compass, to choose the path that feels like mine, not the ones available for me to follow but which aren't a 100% "me".

I finished high school in 2015 with no idea what I wanted to become. I followed the “normal” path toward university because I thought that’s what you do when you want a respectable future. I chose economics because my boyfriend at the time dit it too, and because I believed it would lead to money. I showed up to the amphitheater maybe four times before I completely stopped going. I had just received the inheritance from my mother on my 18th birthday, and honestly, I was more interested in buying clothes, hanging out with my friends, getting fake boobs, and drinking alcohol than studying something that felt dead inside me.

The next year I enrolled in a business school “for the network.” I paid 8,000€ for the year, showed up out of guilt and obligation, and felt emptier with each passing week. I was performing a role I had no relationship to, trying so hard to fit into a life that looked good from the outside but felt like a slow suffocation from the inside. I was surrounded by people I couldn’t connect with, in a classroom that felt like a prison rather than a beginning.

The only light of that year was Calypso. I knew her from my group of friends in high school but didn't feel close to her because of my judgment: wild, extravagant, tacky, everything I thought I shouldn’t be. What I judged in her back then was only the reflection of my own pain in the life I was trying so hard to hold together. She was a distorted mirror of me. She coped in the opposite way that I did, but the truth is we were the same.

I was trying so hard to fit the mold of the social class I imagined I wanted to belong to: wealthy, polished, well-behaved. She was the only one of our group who ended up going to the same school, but it was never just a coincidence. A savior in disguise. Driving to this school each morning to pick her up changed me. I slowly discovered that what I perceived as “wildness” was actually her refusal to be tamed. And in her, I recognized a part of me I had buried.

It might have been the first time I felt seen and accepted for the chaos I was hiding.

The more we spent time together, the more I let go of the “good girl” conditioning. We smoked, talked for hours, cruised around town, dismantled the expectations placed on us, and realized, very quickly, that the systems around us weren’t built for us. We didn’t want titles, or prestige, or the safety of the predictable. We wanted freedom, exhilaration, to feel alive, to be uncomfortable, to step into the unknown.

And in a matter of months, everything changed: I broke up with my boyfriend of three years. I booked a one-way ticket to Australia. I cut my hair to my shoulders and dyed it black. I pierced my tongue and nipples. And I decided, finally, that I would begin my life, not survive it. Each one of those change, an act of rebellion against a version which slowly killed me inside.

Leaving France wasn’t a cliché “travel in your twenties” story. It was choosing myself for the first time. I didn’t leave to escape, I left to see who I was far from everything that tried to dictate it. I left to explore the edges of what felt possible, and to see if maybe, just maybe, there was more for me than the identity I had inherited.

I left with 700€ (yes, I blew through my mom’s inheritance in two years) and Calypso left with 1000€. We were completely carefree, which is probably why we survived the brutal beginning. We struggled for everything, money, housing, stability, but we learned fast. We worked in bars, partied like animals, shoplifted a few times to get by, nearly slept outside more than once, but we kept going. Nothing could stop us.

What was supposed to be a one-year adventure became two, then three, then more. I chose the lifestyle of freedom because it was the only one that made me feel alive, inspired, and connected to myself. Sustaining it was another story. I knew I couldn’t work a traditional 9 to 5 in a company. I needed to feel life in my work the same way I felt it in my travels: movement, discovery, meaning. So I tried different paths.

I worked in hospitality. I loved the human contact, hated the exhaustion. I worked as a software architect. I loved the technology, hated the structure. I discovered astrology. I loved the ancient knowledge, but reading charts drained me. Then I worked as a gaming architect. It was the closest thing to alignment I had ever experienced.

And when the company I was working for got sold and I lost that job two years ago, everything cracked open. I had to ask myself the questions I had avoided for years. What do I really want to do?What kind of work feels like me? What am I resisting because I am scared it might actually be my path?

Looking back, the signs had been there all along. The interests, the natural abilities, the moments where I came alive. It became obvious: my path wasn’t to fit into any existing profession. It was to merge everything I am, my voice, my creativity, my inner world, my love for meaning, and build something of my own.

And the truth is, none of this would have been possible without writing. Writing is what saved me, shaped me, revealed me. Writing was the mirror I didn’t have, the clarity I couldn’t find, the map that helped me take the next steps with two moves of intention in advance. Writing turned chaos into coherence. It made me stop drifting and start choosing.

It taught me the most important lesson of my life: Identity is not something we inherit. It is something we practice. And sometimes, to practice a new identity, you need a little bit of delusion. You need to believe in a version of yourself you haven’t fully embodied yet. A version that feels too big, too bold, too unrealistic for your current reality. But that belief is not foolish. It is the first stage of becoming.

That’s why I started this blog. That’s why I’m not backing down now. And that’s why I’m creating Carnet Brut and launching the first edition in January. Not because my journey is complete. Not because I have answers to give. But because I know firsthand that every answer you’re searching for is already inside you. And writing, raw, honest, unfiltered writing, is how I began to hear it, and maybe you will to.

If there is one thing I hope you take from my story, it is this: Your dreams are not delusions. They are the early whispers of the identity you are meant to practice into existence. Trust them enough to explore them. Trust yourself enough to follow them. And dare to create a life that feels like you, not the one you thought you had to belong to.

With love, Loune.