It never ceased to be mild, this Saturday evening in April when the air smelled of summer.
"A perfect evening to have drinks with friends", thinks Maxine, a 31-year-old Parisian.
Ten minutes later, someone up there seems to have heard her: the upstairs neighbor knocks on her door.
"I'm celebrating my birthday, are you coming?
She will spend an hour getting to know three strangers, a glass of champagne in her hand.
An hour of "normal life", a firewall from the melancholy she felt dawning.
Because the confinement may be over, the restrictive measures still carry enormous psychological suffering, especially among young people.
So much so that the multiplication of wild festivals in broad daylight, as in Lyon, Lille, at the Buttes-Chaumont or at the Parc de Bercy recently in Paris, seems to have a cathartic function.
Read also Wild festivals in Lyon, Lille, Brussels ... is there a risk of conflagration?
“These constraints weigh on people psychologically, especially young people aged 18-30.
They try to party according to the rules: often outdoors, and they stop at curfew time, remarks Raffaela Cucciniello, psychologist at the GHU Paris Psychiatry and Neuroscience hospital.
It's touching in a way, they don't want to harm or challenge something, but they show us that they want to find each other.
The curfew is all the more unbearable as we feel more secure outside than inside, in terms of the transmission of the virus.
"
Despite the impatience of the French, the government calendar sticks to a very gradual lifting of the curfew: it will be carefully pushed back to 9 p.m. on May 19, then to 11 p.m. on June 9, before being completely abandoned on June 30. , eight months after its implementation.
The curfew at 9 pm, a "half measure"
“Having a perspective on resuming social activities at night changes everything,” breathes Jean *, a 36-year-old public relations executive.
But the question is: what can we do?
9 pm is half a measure.
"
However, this Parisian has been "making do with the rules" for months.
“Not out of ideological contradiction, but more out of convenience: respecting a curfew given my working hours is already complicated, so I necessarily break it when I want to see friends or play sports.
"
But Jean strives to "minimize the risk" in his "illegal nightlife", as he calls it.
Never more than six to lift their elbows outside.
One evening, the small group is checked.
The police show pedagogy.
“There was some form of understanding.
We told them that we knew we were outlawed, but that we were all neighbors, that we respected barrier gestures and that we would be home soon.
"
The shift with the sunset arouses anxiety
Sabrina, who landed in September in a city she did not know, awaits June 30 "impatiently". Before the start of her internship, in Toulouse, this 22-year-old student was locked in her 10 m² room from morning to night, without seeing anyone. The professional certificate gives him an excuse and courage to go out late. She meets up with friends from time to time. Then "more and more often, because I get more and more fed up with it." "
"Now that the sun goes down around 9 p.m., the delay with the curfew at 7 p.m. is causing anxiety: having to go home when the weather is nice, when you would like to enjoy the air, is a violence", Raffaela Cucciniello analysis.
For the psychologist, the airlock between leaving work and returning home, normally filled by reuniting with relatives, going to the bar or to the cinema, to the restaurant or to the theater, is "psychically essential".
And “this airlock has not been present for a long time.
Our patients say they miss it.
Those who are alone find it difficult to motivate themselves to cook, to tell themselves that the evening still deserves to be lived by watching a film or listening to music… ”
If Raffaela Cucciniello has never yet heard his patients pronounce the date of June 30, that of May 19 heralds a turning point.
“It is a very present date in people's minds.
Several people told me that they would leave work earlier to take advantage of it!
The 9pm curfew coincides with sunset, so it's more acceptable.
"
"The curfew is a mirror of my sorrows"
Marion, a 29-year-old single, feels exactly this curfew anxiety. "There it is starting to get late, I would like to clear my mind, but no, I am an outlaw ..." She who lives 13 km from Paris only sees her friends at lunch on weekends. end. “Even though there is almost no control, I feel psychological pressure at the idea of defrauding, of taking a risk, it stresses me out. I sometimes feel sucked into my work and my loneliness. I'm in camera with myself, and that sends me back to all of my problems. The curfew is a mirror of my sorrows. We hang on by telling ourselves that there is worse, more precarious. She talks about it to her psychologist, and takes refuge in reading, series, films.
The end of the 10 km rule relieves Marion. "I will finally see my family again." And the passage of the curfew at 9 pm will allow him to "find a semblance of social life", to meet people. “My only
date
of the week is Véran. When we come to fantasize about his chest, we say to ourselves that there is a problem… ”, jokes the young woman. The televised interventions of the Minister of Health symbolize these dates that she no longer wants to see. "I want him to forget about me."
For Damien too, the curfew "accentuates the void" and "encourages melancholy to come in advance".
This 48-year-old photographer would be ready to brave him for a clandestine party, as the lifting in stages, "this at the same time" dear to Emmanuel Macron, seems "ridiculous" to him.
“I accept everything!
I am not afraid of the virus or the controls.
But it is clear that I receive very few invitations.
"
As May 19 approaches, Raffaela Cucciniello still sees mental health indicators improving.
“There are still a few weeks to go, she explains, but the signals are encouraging”.
* The first name has been changed at the request of the interlocutor.