Lost in Paris (Again)

It has been a year. One full year, one year of life and a few hundred lifetimes. I dove into, discovered, adapted to, and built a life inside another world that had nothing to do with the life I had previously, and what was my plan before has melted down and built back up into something entirely surprising. Where I am is not where I thought I'd be. What was immense passion has become sheer obsession, and I wouldn't have it any other way.

And now--yes I know I haven't updated in forever and there was a whole life in Colorado that you missed because I didn't want to stop to put it in language, didn't want to waste time on words when living was enough--I've returned to a life I had.

Two years is not a long time. And it is.

The last time I was in Paris, I was still a student, still fresh off the experience, still reliving it every day. Now, I've entered into the Big Bad World of Adulthood, and have spent eight months in an entirely different universe, and Paris became a word.

Not a place, but a word, a word that means a time, a moment in my life when everything changed, when I changed and everything I thought was my essence was burned away, and what remained was so much more than before.

But just a week ago, I pushed on the word and found it a door, and behind the door was a world, a city, a place that exists and lives and breathes. Not a dream, but flesh, rock, and bone, and not just a place but a place I know in my bones. It took a couple days, but it's not Paris the city of light, the grand European city that everyone talks about and loves, but a place I know. 

The streets, the metro, the buildings, it's familiar. It's not out there but right here, not a city in the world but a city in my heart. A different language, but one that came rushing back after a day (albeit still imperfectly) to the point where I've started dreaming in French again, and the first language that comes out of my mouth.

I have to say -- it's confusing as hell. It's equally as disconcerting as returning to the United States was after my year abroad. There is a girl in Paris who I knew, the girl I became, but I don't really know her anymore. My life is different now, I'm different now. How do we live together?

It's perturbing, to say the least, to reenter a dream you had. I don't know how to explain it, even to find the words to say why it's so perturbing. Is it good to be back? I don't know. Bad? Can't say that, either. It's not what it was and yet it's exactly how I left it...and that's as much as I can say.

Of Paris, I have no idea what to think. But as for the people here, it has been a very great joy to rediscover them and I have enormously enjoyed it. It makes leaving, once again, very difficult.

Paris is beautiful, but it makes my heart hurt.