"Only in the agony of parting do we look into the depths of love."
- George Eliot
- George Eliot
On a smoggy August afternoon, my parents drove me to the St. Louis airport. They hugged me at the security checkpoint for my portal to my semester abroad in Aix-en-Provence, France. In my dad’s cloud of aftershave, I melted out of fear of the unknown. My mother told me that everyone would love me in France, as tears rolled down my chin. I silently cried all the way through security. As I loaded my bag onto the gunmetal conveyor belt, I ignored my parents’ painstaking, feeble waves goodbye in my peripheral vision. I couldn’t acknowledge the hesitant fear in their crinkly eyes. I couldn’t admit that I didn’t even know how to get on the plane. Parting with my sweet, tangled family and my brilliant, goofy friends and my snowy, rigorous school meant that I was losing my context. I was losing everything and everyone that I could not take in my suitcase. Despite a consistent body, I was even losing myself.
As predicted, my identity escaped me when I arrived in France. Amidst fresh faces speaking in tongues, I couldn’t cling to my academic, political persona, because I didn’t have the words to express those pieces of me. My flimsy grasp of the French language and my identity meant that I had to assume different roles. I had to tend to different pieces of myself.
Thousands of miles from my academic snow globe and my dusty yellow house, I was forced to face a relatively blank version of the person I thought I was. Stripped of the person I was hopelessly devoted to for twenty years of my life, I fought to create a new place. I fought to feel significant again. I fought to find something that made me feel like more than an empty twenty year-old. I was so terrified that no one would understand me.
Somehow, in the bone-shattering chaos, I made friends who braided my hair, revised my essays, laughed at my jokes, and made me feel significant in a sea of uncertainty. They brought meaning to the unknown. They also brought laughter and rosé.
They took me to countries I’d never heard of (What is a Malta?) and subsequently helped me create memories to write a new chapter of my life.
With them, I remembered how much I adore writing. How much I wish I could paint. How much I love goat cheese. And how much it means to have a place, especially when lost in one of the most charming cities in the world.
Merci mille fois for being there. For helping me make something magical out of four months. For dancing all over Europe with me. For listening. For being incredible friends.
I cannot bring myself to say goodbye, because I know that I carry a tiny of piece of you everywhere I go. I will need morsels of your warmth as I go back to my snowy college. So I refuse to let you go.
I love you all to Malta and back!
Gros bisous!
Lucy
Xoxo
As predicted, my identity escaped me when I arrived in France. Amidst fresh faces speaking in tongues, I couldn’t cling to my academic, political persona, because I didn’t have the words to express those pieces of me. My flimsy grasp of the French language and my identity meant that I had to assume different roles. I had to tend to different pieces of myself.
Thousands of miles from my academic snow globe and my dusty yellow house, I was forced to face a relatively blank version of the person I thought I was. Stripped of the person I was hopelessly devoted to for twenty years of my life, I fought to create a new place. I fought to feel significant again. I fought to find something that made me feel like more than an empty twenty year-old. I was so terrified that no one would understand me.
Somehow, in the bone-shattering chaos, I made friends who braided my hair, revised my essays, laughed at my jokes, and made me feel significant in a sea of uncertainty. They brought meaning to the unknown. They also brought laughter and rosé.
They took me to countries I’d never heard of (What is a Malta?) and subsequently helped me create memories to write a new chapter of my life.
With them, I remembered how much I adore writing. How much I wish I could paint. How much I love goat cheese. And how much it means to have a place, especially when lost in one of the most charming cities in the world.
Merci mille fois for being there. For helping me make something magical out of four months. For dancing all over Europe with me. For listening. For being incredible friends.
I cannot bring myself to say goodbye, because I know that I carry a tiny of piece of you everywhere I go. I will need morsels of your warmth as I go back to my snowy college. So I refuse to let you go.
I love you all to Malta and back!
Gros bisous!
Lucy
Xoxo