And so it begins...

As of today I leave for Paris in exactly two months and one week. I`d say about a month and a half ago I was able to honestly say that I couldn`t wait to leave and I was so excited and had absolutely no hesitations or reservations. All of that began to change when I started meeting with various advisers, scheduling doctors appointments, receiving larger checks than I`ve ever seen in my life, taking pictures for my visa, making copies of my passport, filling out stacks and stacks of paperwork, and particularly signing a document declaring who my beneficiary was going to be. I guess you could say my feelings towards leaving all started to change once it became real.


Up until this point all I`ve ever wanted to do was run off to Paris, become a Parisienne, fit in perfectly with the culture, have a trendy apartment in the upscale 8th arrondissement, make the most fabulous memories of my life, and hell I`ll admit it, fall in love. The reality of the situation and the magnitude of what I`m actually doing has been completely jaded by all my fantasies of an ideal life in Paris. I completely ignored the demanding coursework I will surely face, the sharp contrast in classroom structure, the solitude, the loneliness, the insanely high rent prices, the cold winters (hey, I don`t even own a jacket !). Not to mention the fact that I`ll most likely only be able to bring half of my wardrobe and an even smaller fraction of my shoes. My future life in Paris is undoubtedly going to be much less luxurious than I`ve been imagining and not gonna lie, it`s hard to get excited about settling for reality when I set the bar at "in my dreams."


But all of this aside, I can`t help but fall asleep every night smiling to myself and laughing at the jokes I make in my head when having pretend conversations with my pretend future friends. I can`t help but play every French CD I own on repeat in my car everywhere I go. I can`t help but nonchalantly remind everyone I know that I won`t be here next year because I`ll be in Paris. Yeah I`m going to miss my friends and family, yeah I`m scared shitless and yeah I know it`s gonna be hard. But at the end of the day no matter how much I bitch and complain about everything I`m going to miss and how sad I am, I am exactly where I want to be, I`m doing exactly what I`ve wanted to do my entire life, I`m doing something that hardly anybody gets the chance to do, and I am creating my own destiny. Now that is absolutely something to be excited about.