I’m Home

I like New York.

I swear, I do. I like my new apartment. I love my new roommates. I like being near my parents. I like the 24-hour Subway, 24-hour Duane Reade and 24-hour digital cable. It’s all very nice and very comfortable, and I had myself convinced, until yesterday morning, that it was where I wanted to live.

So I was more surprised than anyone when, upon getting on the RER B bound for Paris, I had the strange urge to hug the city. It could be the sleep deprivation talking, but all I wanted to do was to lie down on the concrete, to meld with it, to wrap my arms around it and feel the city surround me and never let go.

When I finally emerged from the RER C Pont de l’Alma station–my old home–I saw the Eiffel Tower. And I laughed out loud. Like a crazy person.

I went out to a bar in Levallois last night with my cousin–a friend of hers was playing a gig. The bar was tiny and cramped, the music American and delicious. It was packed to the brim with people who didn’t make sense: former international school students, people who weren’t French but somehow made Paris their home, as I had tried to do for so long. I drank glasses of red wine and collected names of people and schools that would get me a visa from other displaced Americans like me–one had figured it out and was here for good, the other was being shipped off in two weeks. I recognized myself in her when she told me. I remember what that’s like.

There’s something about this constant back and forth between Paris and New York that has been my life for the past three years that does this to me: I feel fine where I am, until I get back to the other. I feel like Paris is winning, and maybe it is: I don’t feel this sort of physical yearning when I get back to New York. I don’t look wistfully at métro stops as I pass them on the train, wanting to jump off my car at each one and touch everything: run my fingers along the dingy sign like it was the face of a lover I’d never see again.

I read what I write, and I know it sounds overly dramatic, but I swear, there is no hyperbole today: I spent last night running my hand along the edge of a stone building on my block as I walked home, wishing I could force myself to remember everything, to be able to relive Paris in my head every day.

Who knows what the future holds… I’ve stopped trying to pretend I have any idea. I have to admit that I’m hoping and praying that there’s some way I can stay, but I know that I have a whole other life back in New York, and it’s hard to imagine leaving it, especially now that it’s morning and I’m thinking more clearly without the Eiffel Tower’s revolving light muddling my vision. Until I leave, though, I’m making the most of it–it’s French espresso and real European cantaloupe (no muskmelon for me)–perfectly sweet and bright orange, and just the right size for one person. I had it this morning at my former home in the 7th, remembering days when this was my normal and it was meant to last forever.