Jeanine in Paris

This won't become a travel blog. Having said that, I was in Paris recently, as you can see here and here, and I WILL overshare based on that.

Since these entries are born from the truth of whatever life is gently (or violently) inviting me to experience, the present moment is all I've got. So Paris it is for this round.

On y va...

Paris and I?

We’ve got history.

I moved on my own for the first time when I was 18. I chose to study in Paris. I had never been to Paris before. I didn’t know anyone in Paris. I had a très basic French I picked up in a brief stint in Montreal when I was 15. 

Since moving to Mexico at 5 years old, I obsessively planned escape plans on how to get the hell out of the town I grew up in (I never got used to the heat and humidity unfortunately).

A year before "the move", my mother had miraculously survived a diagnosis of “3 months to live” and a “massive operation” where I had to say a "final goodbye" to her before she was taken to the OR. She's fine now, but she was very much not fine back then.

To say I was still in full body shock when I landed in French soil would be an understatement. 

I had no money. I had depression. I had anxiety. Feeling absolutely out of control in my life had been channeled into a “mild" eating disorder (food is something I can control! yay!).

I was an emotional, physical and psychological mess… And quickly crashing deep into a “dark night of the soul”.

I arrived to Paris with chic ideas created from Jean-Luc Godard movies, Audrey Hepburn, and Coco Chanel. A part of me hoping that moving to Paris would help me move away from the crushing pain I was in. Who knows, maybe the Eiffel Tower had a medicinal effect that would sparkle woes away?

You might already know what comes next. 

My dream was coming true! except it didn’t feel like a dream at all! but rather like a nightmare!

Everything in Paris felt difficult. It was as if French people didn’t seem to want me in Paris? And also wow is finding a place to live meant to be this difficult?

At some point I found a room. It was at an old woman’s flat. She wasn’t kind. At all. So I mostly stayed in my room.

And when I did venture out to try to “practice my French”, Parisians seemed to be offended by my trying. I quickly learnt to speak Spanish rather than English in case of emergency.

Good days I would explore by getting lost in an arrondissement while eating a fresh-out-of-the-oven baguette (it's a cliché for a reason!).

Bad days would have me crying in my room, while feeling shame and guilt for not being happy in the most beautiful city in the world.

Oh the spectacular scene of illusions and hope burning into smithereens. 

It was evident Paris had not distracted me away from my pain but plunged me right into the heart of it. 

I lasted about 10 months and then had enough compassion (or self-preservation impulse) to leave Paris. And I also quitted French. It was never to be practiced again. This is how my younger self dealt with pain, just pop it in a do-not-open box and bury it down, down, down, down.

It was a devastating breakup.

Fast forward 12 years and there I was again. With a tender and bracing heart. A subtle edge of PTSD in my nervous system.

Bonjour Paris… remember me? 

Except now, immediately upon arrival, a man in a suit approached me while I was last waiting on an endless cue to buy a metro ticket to just give me one so I didn’t have to wait. 

Then while leaving Dior’s flagship shop a man ran after me to ask me where my outfit was from?

Tourists were asking me for directions to landmarks.

People in restaurants were automatically speaking to me in French. 

Someone told me my French was “actually pretty good”. 

????

Woah. Did the pandemic change Paris? Did I change? 

Both. I guess.

While exploring Saint-Germain-des-Prés, I accidentally found myself walking my old route to school and felt 18 year old me there. I was able to hold her and tell her everything would be ok. And for a brief second it was as if time collapsed and I had always been there with myself. I sensed how much I had transformed since then, and also how much I was still the same.

The only way is through. The only way of healing is by being courageous enough to go where it hurts (sometimes it involves an actual geographical location, always it involves a part of our inner self). We may try to run away, and yet we will find ourselves running straight into it. There's no escaping the truth.

I know I am who I am because of what I experienced then. My Parisian experience wasn't what I wanted (the opposite!) but it was exactly what I needed to get to know myself better. I accessed the most vulnerable side of me AND the strongest part of me.

Lessons I learnt during that time are now part of my daily mantras. The resilience I discovered then allowed me to move to unknown cities many more times (I survived Paris, of course I can move to Austin! London! etc! without knowing a soul), it gave me the fuel to start my own business, it showed me that I will figure it out no matter what.

It was an initiation, even if I didn't know it back then.

Standing in the same pyre I had burnt in all those years before, I felt the incredible life that was born from that sacred fire. 

Here I was, 12 years later, more alive than ever.