The bad thing about going to Paris is that unless you are well off, or well connected enough to actually move there, eventually you have to come back home. When I board the return bound jet, I die a slow, agonizing 9 hour emotional death. I never feel more like my true self than when I am in Paris, but when that plane begins to descend, I feel myself drain rapidly away, like sand sifting through my fingers. Within a couple of days, nothing is left of that woman or the spirit that rang so true within me. And I struggle to believe my memories were even true. Did it really happen? Was it really that beautiful?

When I return, the sunlight I so joyfully celebrated takes on a cruel intensity. It highlights everything, the poverty, the dirt, and the utter not - ness of how this place is so unlike Paris. It makes me want to shrink away, pull the blinds, pull the blanket over my head and ultimately my mind. I hate it here, because it is not there.
I try, and barely contain my resentment of everyone around me. The only reason I am here speaking to you is because I am not there. And you are not my friends from Paris. You are not the ones I miss. You are not the ones I connect with on a level I never before felt possible.

I chide myself. I tell myself I an suffering from nothing that a big dose of maturity and adulthood would not cure. It does not work. I rack my brain trying to think of ways to make my dream a reality. I scour the web and read over and over how nearly impossible it is for an American to find work in Paris. But I don't need a lot of jobs, just the one.