When I miss Paris

I must admit that sometimes I miss Paris. Yesterday it was when I collided with speed bump on the way back to the office and I caught a whiff of another life, one of school trips and family vacations and wandering through the streets of the City of Love by myself just so I could hear myself think. The moment was cobblestones and ancient buildings, hot chocolate mornings and field trips to the museums. Paris, the city where I found a part of myself when I was fifteen and Paris the city where I devoured the world’s most wondrous macaroon and Paris where the clear, hard sky soaked me up and spit me out but I didn’t care. It was that incredible feeling of having the world open at your touch, as if miracles were a daily occurrence and the life you wanted was one movie montage away. How little I knew. I wish I could tell a younger me that it was my responsibility to find the miracles in the little things, that the life I once wanted isn't the life I want now. 

I missed Paris when I caught sight of myself in the rearview mirror. Silly, inexperienced me. Pockmarked, acne-scarred skin and eyes that saw not enough good and too much bad. I was immature the last time I was in Paris, and I'm left wondering if I will ever grow out of this skin that reeks of juvenility. It has been stretched so much that I’m afraid it’ll never regain its original shape. It’s stretched and scarred and folded over - as is Paris - in odd places, but it continues to expand with a grace that my scattered mind will never be able to match. There’s history in those scars. 

So in that moment when I ploughed over the speed bump and caught sight of my acne-scarred face in the rearview mirror and found myself back in Paris, I was left wondering if maybe one day I’ll truly allow people in. Truly allow people to see me for the convoluted mess of a human being I am without fear of the repercussions. Perhaps today is not that day. Today is the endless stars, and if I stare at their lights for long enough I remember those I’ve left behind. They’ve hidden in the back alleys of Paris, in the rain, and the rumblings of the underground metro. I’m sorry, my friends. I’m sorry for the times I’ve let you down. 

I saw Paris and was left wondering if the book of my future has those five letters written in it and if nostalgia has more power than I would ever admit. This world, this complex and glorious world, can never be defined by five letters but maybe that’s just the point. If I need my world to fit within the four corners of a French city for a moment, a single moment in time, then let it be. Let one thing in my life make sense for once, even if it’s only for a moment. I will allow my future to be beautiful and neat and demarcated like the definitions they gave us in fifth grade science for a passing moment in time, even if the scent of nostalgia and the taste of everything we could never have drowns me. 

Just for a moment, I will breathe in that chocolate macaroon and allow that imaginary Paris I've built up in my head to rise from the watery depths of my mind. It’s not real. I know this, but I’ll allow myself to pretend it is for a moment frozen in time. So I will breathe. I will fall into that sky so blue I'm afraid I'll cut myself on its colour. Then I will gather myself back up, realign my shattered realities, and try again.