"I’m putting miles on my body, I’m ‘bout due for a tune-up and this airport food ain’t really helping,
But I’m loving every minute; every road sign is a reminder of exactly why I did it to begin with..."
~Gym Class Heroes, Seven Weeks

I walked into "my" room at my mom’s house in Raleigh last night at half past midnight, Eastern Time. Which meant that it was 6am on Monday, May 28 in Paris, and that the last time my head had awoken on a pillow was 8am on Saturday, May 26. To be fair, I slept for probably four hours on the planes, but they were both full, and I couldn’t find a place to put my head. I have never felt as miserable as I did on those two flights. I had two carry-ons with me that weighed 38 pounds and 18 pounds, respectively, AND my winter coat in my arms. And I just kept thinking how all that trouble could have been avoided if I had just STAYED in Paris. I am still in denial about being back here; denying the fact that I am IN the US, that "home" is no longer Square Alboni and that I am going to be speaking English for an awfully long time. I woke up this morning (with, of course, no idea where I was) and looked in the mirror to see my inSANEly jetlagged face, circles under my eyes, hair sticking out wrongly, in a t-shirt I hadn’t seen in nine months.
In the corner of my mirror, I found this written:

"Today is all you’ve got now
And today is all you’ll ever have.
Don’t close your eyes, this is your life:
Are you who you want to be?
This is your life, is it everything you dreamed that it would be
When the world was younger, and you had everything to lose?"

It’s from a song that I liked three years ago, when I was in the process of graduating high school, which makes me highly doubt my musical taste, but that is irrelevant. It’s kind of dramatic... but so is my life, I am beginning to realize.

I’ll always miss Paris, the same way I’ll always miss a lot of the places that I’ve been. But I’ll be back; the way it seems to me, I don’t really have a chance. Paris has my heart, and until that changes (or maybe it never will), I could never imagine not returning. I know I can never have the life I did for the last year, but returning to a place I have such fond memories of will be amazing no matter what.

So I am sad, I miss Paris, I miss those friends, those nights, those conversations and those moments... but I also refuse to let myself revel in what I am missing. For the moment, it’s on to Los Angeles, where I will live with my eyes wide open.

And in a year? Who knows?

I am finally learning that being 21 is probably the most exciting thing in the world because it means that in JUST ONE YEAR I get to do whatever I want, wherever I want. In true Gypsy form, I’ve already got a pretty good idea of where I want to end up...

I always knew I’d have to leave Paris eventually, which in theory should have made it easier to go, but it still hurts so much more than I thought it would. What scares me about it is that as soon as I got to Paris, the Mountain seemed so far away, and before that, as soon as I got to the Mountain, Emory seemed a world and a half away. So when I get to Los Angeles am I going to forget Paris?

Luckily when I got back to the US, my mom presented me with a stack of papers the size of one of those sheaves you put in a copy machine.

"What is this?" I asked, flipping through it listlessly and exhausted, my eyes widening as I realized I had written it all, every last word on those pages. The "manuscript" edition of this blog is four and a half inches thick. Trust me, I measured. What a present... I am thrilled to have a solid tangible copy of it– the funny part is that I have often, in the last year, felt at a complete loss for how to explain my life in Paris, limited by the constraints of language and my lack of time. If you added the letters I wrote to other people, the emails I typed out frantically every time I made it to the internet bar, and my personal journals, the size would be more than doubled, I am sure. And I could keep writing for the entire summer about anecdotes and culture and experiences and thoughts about my time in Europe, but that would mean me accepting and admitting that it is, truly, over. And I am not quite ready to dwell on that yet.
I’ve got one year ahead of me.

I was in Paris for a year, right? And that flew by... so give me a twelvemonth here– I ain’t scared, I’ll make it back to the other side of the pond on my tadpole legs and I’ll show the Parisians what they missed without me there.

So I’ve got a year. I’m moving in four more days.

From the City Of Light to the City Of Angels...
~Always yours,
Always Gypsy.

Also... in case you're interested:
http://www.americangypsyinlosangeles.blogspot.com
I can't help it; now I'm addicted.