I have to admit that I’m getting pretty nervous about my move to Paris in September, something that becomes more of a reality each day. I experienced this same anxiety before I moved there in ‘05. Then, I barely slept for a month, and not even sleeping pills would put me out of my misery. Up until now, I’ve been generally excited, but going to the consulate last week to deal with my visa kind of threw me off. When I arrived for my appointment, I couldn’t contain my nerves, almost certain that they’d look at some document and just say, no, no you are not the right person for us. As I aproached the counter, the man asked me, “Vous parlez français?” “Oui,” I said. He asked for my application forms and a few other papers that I handed out silently, asking only, “vous voulez la photocopie? ou l’original?” Then he asked (in French): “What will you be doing with your time in France?” I was expecting a question like this, but not exactly in the way he phrased. I was expecting something more along the lines of “Why do you want to go to Paris for a year? Why do you want this visa?” The what will you be doing seemed like a trap to catch me confessing to some activity I’m not supposed to be engaging in. Flustered, I came off as an airhead, “Je…je…je vais vivre avec mes cousins…Uh, sorry, can we just do this in English please?” “But I though you speeeek French?” “Oui, oui, c’est vrai, I do. I’m just very…nervous. Flustered. I’m nervous. Sorry.” Ugh. Faux-pas number 1. Faux pas number 2 included some errors in my paperwork (blasted!) meaning I would have to come back with the right supporting documents next week.
But since that incident, I’ve begun to freak out just a bit. Not so much about logistics because that always figures itself out, but with the issue of feeling alone, something that I’ve struggled with for years. There were only a few times I really felt at home in Paris. Now I’m going without the structure of school, and without a group of people I already know. (If you’re reading and have friends in Paris, hook a sister up!) And as a writer who works from home, I often find it easy to spend days and days completely alone now. It’s something that feels normal here in New York, where I grew up. I do have friends and connections in Paris, but it doesn’t feel like the same thing.
For me, that year was largely about missed connections. Not just with the hundreds of dissappointing missed connections between me and the handsome guys I saw in bars, on the street, in class, that I wanted to sweep me off my feet. But also between my idea of what living in Paris would be like, and what it was actually like. A lot of that had to do with where I lived. I remember arriving to my host family’s apartment for the first time to find it completely empty. There was something romantic about the emptiness as I explored the rooms of the Parisian apartment, running my fingers over the cold marble fireplace, stepping onto the living room balcony, listening to the wooden floorboards creak down the long, long hallway. It was a dream apartment. But I found out soon after that the people who lived in it weren’t what I expected. And outside, there were missed connections everywhere, in language exchanges, ideas, morals. At the same time, however, I still managed to fall in love with France on my own terms.
This is not to say I’m not excited - this will be a challenge. And part of me knows that I’ll be able to conquer it. This time I’m going in with a much, much, much higher language level. Better yet, there was a feeling of regularity that came rushing back to me when I was in Paris back in November. The feeling while walking around the Panthéon that it would have been natural to walk the next few blocks home. And the same feeling in February, in the Amsterdam train station, that it would seem only natural that I’d be there to get on a train to Paris, just like I had on a previous trip.
Next step: getting those papers corrected next week, connecting the missing pieces.
