It has officially been one year since I first embarked on the adventure that sparked the creation of this blog. One year and nine days to be exact. When I review my beginning (and thorough entries) an intriguing sense of nostalgia sets in. Certain emotions rise into memory—feelings of facing a world I knew nothing about that included fear, excitement, bewilderment, and novelty. When I arrived in the City of Lights, I was not welcomed with embracing arms. She was cold, rigid and austere. I was still so young in my naive ways. I was soft and hopeful; not yet hardened by the stone city that I decided to try to replant my feeble roots in. Now, I marvel at what took me there, what was it really that drove me to leave everything that I knew in order to see what I could find elsewhere? Was it simply the love of learning? Of discovery? Curiosity? Escapism? I went so blindly. It was a dream that I had to have. I had to do. It was just something that was meant to define me: I was meant to be someone undaunted by the unknown, and well-versed in the foreign. Flipping through my old memoirs and seeing my first photos of the city, I remember now how unrelatable they first felt to me. Interesting in their unfamiliar, beautiful, stark, and condescending existence. The city made me somewhat insignificant.
It has often been my fear that after returning to the States, my time in Paris would become irrelevant. Even worse—that it might become a setback. After a few months in the U.S. again, my fear partially became fulfilled as I mysteriously grew to resent the time I spent in France. I still do not know why this exactly is. I can guess that it has to do with shifting between two inevitably different and separate worlds, and what happened to me while I was there. As I became exposed to the unknown of a foreign land, a new me was born. A me that wasn't so naive. I became more informed. I became habituated to life in a big city where you are surrounded by everyone but accompanied by no one. I learned to depend on the only person I had: myself. I faced the tides of loneliness and found that I could still float on my own. I grew more independent, confident, stronger. By the time I returned, I had grown a new sense of self-respect. But I was also harder, colder, less-emotional—I had changed to be more like Paris.
I believe the resentment comes from the feeling that I lost something that is invaluable: time. The time that I spent was especially precious, as it contained a pivotal youthful year. That is, of course, one reason why I had to go to Paris when I did. When I was young, and pivotal. I had to have adventure when I was free and malleable. The dilemma of life is that we can only live on one path, at least, that is my dilemma. The progress that I made in France, did not necessarily translate into progress in the States. This makes the last year feel somewhat wasted. Because it is disconnected. It is quickly becoming a misty memory. Now I find myself older and I forget how I got here. And I don't just feel one year older either. I feel at least five years older. Even more frightening, I look older—people started calling me "ma'am," or "lady" after I got back this summer. I feel as if Paris put me through a rapid-maturity crucible.
In the time that I was maturing though, so was everybody else. People were getting married, graduating, living their own lives separately, away from me. When I came back to what I had before, I couldn't relate to the people the same if I wanted to. Worst of all, I was suddenly left to face all of the bleak unanswered questions I had fled from in my pursuit of moving away.
Sometimes I feel like coming back from Paris was like re-emerging from freezing water, as if I had been holding my breath the whole time I was over there. I came back gasping, heaving, uncontrollably for air, wild-eyed and practically sobbing as my body auto-piloted itself to survival. Except air were things even less tangible, less obtainable, than oxygen. Such as a sense of belonging, family, and community. The yearnings for these things slowly made themselves evident as I found myself often wanting to be around my parents, even to live with them again where I think I felt I might drink from the well of unconditional love and support. I had lived so long without people who loved me. Initially uprooting from my Utah world and then uprooting my Paris world jolted me. And then I uprooted myself again to NYC. I think the final move ripped my legs off. I have crash-landed in NYC and I am finally beginning to walk again.
It has often been my fear that after returning to the States, my time in Paris would become irrelevant. Even worse—that it might become a setback. After a few months in the U.S. again, my fear partially became fulfilled as I mysteriously grew to resent the time I spent in France. I still do not know why this exactly is. I can guess that it has to do with shifting between two inevitably different and separate worlds, and what happened to me while I was there. As I became exposed to the unknown of a foreign land, a new me was born. A me that wasn't so naive. I became more informed. I became habituated to life in a big city where you are surrounded by everyone but accompanied by no one. I learned to depend on the only person I had: myself. I faced the tides of loneliness and found that I could still float on my own. I grew more independent, confident, stronger. By the time I returned, I had grown a new sense of self-respect. But I was also harder, colder, less-emotional—I had changed to be more like Paris.
I believe the resentment comes from the feeling that I lost something that is invaluable: time. The time that I spent was especially precious, as it contained a pivotal youthful year. That is, of course, one reason why I had to go to Paris when I did. When I was young, and pivotal. I had to have adventure when I was free and malleable. The dilemma of life is that we can only live on one path, at least, that is my dilemma. The progress that I made in France, did not necessarily translate into progress in the States. This makes the last year feel somewhat wasted. Because it is disconnected. It is quickly becoming a misty memory. Now I find myself older and I forget how I got here. And I don't just feel one year older either. I feel at least five years older. Even more frightening, I look older—people started calling me "ma'am," or "lady" after I got back this summer. I feel as if Paris put me through a rapid-maturity crucible.
In the time that I was maturing though, so was everybody else. People were getting married, graduating, living their own lives separately, away from me. When I came back to what I had before, I couldn't relate to the people the same if I wanted to. Worst of all, I was suddenly left to face all of the bleak unanswered questions I had fled from in my pursuit of moving away.
Sometimes I feel like coming back from Paris was like re-emerging from freezing water, as if I had been holding my breath the whole time I was over there. I came back gasping, heaving, uncontrollably for air, wild-eyed and practically sobbing as my body auto-piloted itself to survival. Except air were things even less tangible, less obtainable, than oxygen. Such as a sense of belonging, family, and community. The yearnings for these things slowly made themselves evident as I found myself often wanting to be around my parents, even to live with them again where I think I felt I might drink from the well of unconditional love and support. I had lived so long without people who loved me. Initially uprooting from my Utah world and then uprooting my Paris world jolted me. And then I uprooted myself again to NYC. I think the final move ripped my legs off. I have crash-landed in NYC and I am finally beginning to walk again.
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