Paris and I

Over the years

I first visited Paris in June 2015 with a friend’s family. At the time, It was my biggest dream. People often speak of “Paris Syndrome”, a sense of extreme disappointment experienced by some tourists who feel the city is far worse than they expected. For me, though, it was everything I could have hoped for. I had never experienced such a slowness to life, such a desire to cherish. We sat in coffee shops, had pastries in the park, and slept with the windows open. Piano music floated from the bar across the street, and the sun set late at night. The parks were green, and the people were happy. My friend’s family took me to the big sights, but also the small ones, like their local cheese shop or a neighbour’s dinner party. We took the train to Giverny and I cried in Monet’s garden. I wrote in my journal that my “soul had been revived". A big statement for a fifteen-year-old. But, back then, there was nowhere else that I felt the most like myself, the momentary romantic I was.

When I got home, I cut my hair like the titular character in Amélie, my favorite film at the time. I read old books and drank tea. I looked at university programs in Paris, convinced that the only way I could feel that same joy again was to move there permanently. It wasn’t until I got older that I realised how little that craving had to do with my geographical location and more about my mindset at the time. Until then, I had experienced my life in relation to other places and people, and it was my first time being so far removed from them. Paris was a place to break away from everything I knew, to see how my identity survived on its own. I became hyper-aware of beauty and my surroundings — each moment there was digested in my young brain like a sponge absorbing water, each drop a reminder of its purpose. I felt the weight of myself, by the end.

It was that trip to Paris (combined with a small reality check) that pushed me to look into other universities abroad — namely, in London, which I visited for the first time in 2016. I fell into rhythm with the city the moment I landed. It was a different kind of love, a more grounded one than in Paris. My soul found a home. (I couldn’t tell you why. Sometimes you just know.) I applied to some undergraduate programs in the UK and received a test score while I was in Europe with my mom in August 2019, which didn’t meet the criteria I needed for acceptance. Heartbroken, I continued, and we went to Paris for a couple of days with my aunt and cousin. It was my first time since the trip in 2015, and my heart settled in quickly. I remember the moment everything changed — early morning, running through the streets of Paris with a fresh croissant. It was pouring rain, and I was umbrella-less, but each drop of water glistened with joy. It soaked through my shirt and my jeans, and suddenly, I knew the direction I wanted my life to take. Looking back now, I don’t think it was only the desire to want to return to that feeling as often as possible, but also the desire to render it, to sit with it and recognise the limitations of time. I wanted to pay deep attention. I went home and emailed the university, asking them to reconsider. A week later, I got in.

Fast forward three years later, I visited Paris again with my best friend on a whim in March 2022. It was the first time since I had made the Big Move. It was unseasonably warm and sunny — I wore a cardigan and shrugged it off most of the day. I kept looking over at her, face always illuminated, in awe of my life. We knew each other when I had taken that trip to Paris for the first time, having had one short class together during my freshman year of high school. She knew me then, albeit briefly, and now here she was. In Paris, in the sun, with me, in my new life. We hooked our elbows together as we walked, and I imagined that she was holding me at 15, and that I was holding her at 15 too. How lucky I was, how lucky we were. We frolicked around until late afternoon and then headed back to London in the evening, where we reminisced on my couch and ordered delivery McDonald’s.

by Camille Pissarro

Here I am now, writing this a week after returning from my fourth trip to the city. A new friend, about a year after we met for the first time, invited me on a weekend getaway with her cousin and her roommate. It was a lovely time. We walked a lot and talked even more. Perhaps it was my dramatic reflection, or how the cold air shocked me into a hyper-awareness, but I felt a deep connection with my 15-year-old self. Maybe she left a piece of her heart there, and it has been planting roots and climbing vines for the last eight years. It felt different returning with people who didn’t know me back then, and it spun me into a bigger realisation of how much my life has changed. It made me wish I could have pocketed those innocent, teenage moments of joy, and felt regret at the fact that I didn’t pay more attention. And then, we started walking, and I was grateful that I paid any attention at all.

In Montmarte, there was the Halle de Saint Pierre, and its cafe with the collaged tables where my friend’s family and I sat and had coffee. The crépe stand where I accidentally ordered in Spanish, but received what became my go-to: lemon and sugar. In La Marais, the little mono’p market where my mom and I stopped for water on a hot August day. I wore a bright red dress and got a Lipton peach iced tea, my favorite. Near Shakespeare and Co., the brasserie where my best friend and I stopped for French Onion Soup. It was there that I opened a random envelope of poems from the bookshop, which contained “Trees” by Joyce Kilmer — a poem symbolic to my elementary school, the place where I met the friend who brought me for the first time. And finally, the Musée de l’Orangerie, with the rooms of Monet’s Water Lillies, which I have visited each time without fail. Still, to this day, it’s one of my favorite places in the world. I imagine it was there that I chose to subconsciously place a piece of myself at 15, an orb-like time capsule floating between the paintings. Upon each return, I opened it, not just leaving behind a ghost of a present self, but releasing a bit of the old ones, too. The magic lies not in the memory but in the recalling of it. I couldn’t remember where these memories lived until I walked past them — a moment, unchanged by time, pointed out by a younger heart of mine, a less-distracted loving guide. Look, look what once happened here.

“Turning” by W.S. Merwin:

Going too fast for myself I missed
more than I think I can remember 

almost everything it seems sometimes
and yet there are chances that come back 

that I did not notice when they stood 
where I could have reached out and touched them

this morning the black shepherd dog 
still young looking up and saying 

Are you ready this time 

Me, at fifteen, sticking to my sleeve and constantly asking: are you ready this time? What about this time? Maybe this one? Me, at 19, at 22, at 23, responding: I’m not sure. But I’ll give it a try. I don’t know when I can give the answer she is looking for, which is yes, of course. It has taken a lot of reconciliation, to seek forgiveness for waiting, and to believe that she would be proud of me regardless.

There will be a point when I return to Paris for the last time. Maybe it was this one. In the meantime, how blessed am I to remember, remember, remember.

---

Over Christmas, I saw the friend who took me to Paris that first time. She told me that the apartment her family had rented for two decades, the one I stayed in, had been returned to the owners during COVID-19. They weren’t able to return, to say goodbye. I hope that, when they do go back, the memories greet them like a flood, joyous and pouring. I think of them often, and hope they know all they’ve done for me. That trip echoes throughout my life. I am so grateful.

Thank you for reading.

<3

Tara