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a lot can happen in five weeks.
you can leave everyone & everything you’ve ever known behind.
you can find yourself halfway around the world.
you can live out a childhood dream. you can lose your faith and have it restored.
you can go to sleep in the city of light & wake up in the country of the world cup champions.
you can take the paris train & emerge in london rain.
you can consume copious amounts of alcohol and wake up in a hospital with very poor recollection of the previous night.
you can meet the man of your dreams in a crowded airport and exchange nothing but a lingering look.
you can fall in love.
paris is an old friend, a faithful companion. as savage garden would say, “i knew i loved you before i met you.”
i grew up romanticizing and idolizing this city—praying constantly for an eventual rendezvous.
when the day came, i was so nervous. i wanted so badly to be perfect, for us to be perfect.
but it wasn’t and i was disappointed. but five weeks can change your mind.
i spent my weekends away; out of the country searching for what i thought would be something better.
i was wrong. paris grew on me. i started to call it home.
then one day, it struck me. i was in a love-hate relationship.
i hated the city for not giving me answers, only to realize i wasn’t asking the right questions.
i depart for california tomorrow morning. but i’ll always have paris & it’ll always have me.
because as ernest hemingway will tell you,
“if you are lucky enough to have lived in paris as a young [wo]man,
then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you,
for all of Paris is a moveable feast.”
