Coming home to myself

I feel like i’m coming home to myself after a long long time. I’m in my near to Paris apartment of which I am the proud owner with my kitty, a very sweet girl cat, and I feel the possibility waiting to burst through the mists of interbeing.

I’ve spent the past few months travelling and wondering if Paris was still my place- it is for now, unless love brings me someplace else, but I do want to stay in France with all my soul, and have ready access to Paris. That is my wish.

Instead of 25 like when a lot of this blog was written I’m 35. I spent a few hours reading old entries and yes, I’m really the same person, jus tmore things are fleshed out and concrete about me. More of my intenstions have come into material form.

The husband and child(ren) have not yet, and I am awaiting them with rather bated breath but a lot of faith. Doing my part and letting God do the rest.

I am also waiting in stillness for my next job. I did leave the big steady stable corporate job for the unknown, when the corporate job literally was killin gme with a thousand different cuts, hard to say which one would have been the most likely to be fatal. But I left.

I left and I thought I had the material stability part figured out anyway but oops, I did not read some dotted lines and it would be truly helpful for me to bring money in. After a decade of learning independence to a fault, I’m now learning interdependence and to lean on people when I need it. And not to hate myself for it.

I am not with the man I loved so much, I don’t think too much of that love was illusion but a lot of the promise of our relationship was never fulfilled. In my story, he left me alone, cold, and naked feeling, totally bereft. Reconstructing myself after that loss, even if it wasn’t really a loss in terms of what the relaitonship actually was at that time, has been a big, big work.

I think this is probably one of the biggest lessons I’ve come to life on earth to learn. It feels like one of the biggest challenges of a lifetime.

And I tried to do my coaching business, but by try I mean mostly focus on general self recovery and travel and take clients as they came. It was my highest capacity at the time, and I deserved and needed some indolence. I really hate not having a stable income, so I’m not sure that the coaching business is for me right now. And I miss having colleagues, who better to potentially fall in love with.

I miss my old life in some ways, yet I don’t want to go back to exactly that. I have been practicing the pause, studying the actions and courses available to me, and learning to trust the inner voice and my sacred NO, and as always, let go and let God.

Just today I feel myself, especially reading and writing these blogs but not only, fully at home in who I am and who I’ll be. That there is no other place I am supposed to be, let alone would rather me. I am deeply, deeply content with my lot, including its seeming challenges. Which I have turned over to God.

So I guess they are not really challenges anymore.

I see how the red thread of my life has been very true and very constant. I’m still writing about the same things and I just got a literal degree in them an dhow to help people find their way.

Not that there is any one way to find, but to help them choose the path that’s their own. Maybe that would be a good name for a coaching business.

I’m happy with myself, despite or because of it all. Every pound, every penny. Every cell, every story.

I am exactly where I’m meant to be. This is my deep knowing.

The only thing that has changed through the years is how much access I have to that. Oh how I am not afraid of growing not old, but wise.

Being 35 is actually awesome. There was a lot of trepidation around age and fertilty and will men still find me attrative and bla blah, but honestly I am looking quite fine, even with a couple of extra pounds, I feel gorgeous. I don’t think I’ve ever felt more beautiful in all my life. I really do like myself.

I’m happy.

Well, content if not always joyous.

I am finding my voice again.

I am my voice.

It feels so good to be me and I feel a strange kind of comfort reading these blogs and thinking, yes, I am still the same sort of person! This is me! I was so wise. I am exactly the same as I am now.

As much as I have sometimes beat myself up for my choices, my core values are strong and consistent. I am remarkably consistent for someone sometimes pegged as will o the wisp. Honestly I’m anything but.

And this makes me realize that though job and life’s work don’t have to be the same thing, I’ve been doing the same kind of work all my life, thinking about the same big questions, and coming up with similar answers everytime. Especially when I listen to what my past self said about listening to my body, trusting my intuition, wanting to live in France, and motherhood is not the be-all, end-all. As much as I very much want to be a mother, and I want to do it from a healthy place of something that enhances my already full life, not something that gives meaning to it. I don’t want to put that on my kid’s shoulders. I have already lived a beautiful, marvelous and meaningful life. Almost 60 countries visited. An MBA, a flat near Paris, and a lot of deep passionate life and love. My life is juicy beyond beleif.

Thank God I didn’t try to put myself in a box of what I thought I was supposed to be. How stale those crumbs would have been in my mouth, that might have been a feast for someone else.

Incantation

Tags

divine-feminine, divine-masculine, faith, law of attraction, love, manifestation, mysticism, self awareness, sensuality, witchcraft

Let this be an incantation, an enchantment for the Beloved, my beloved, to find his way to me.

I stand ready to receive divine love like none I’ve ever had before, knowing that it will challenge me, annoy me, disgust me at times, and probably frustrate me a lot.

It will not likely look like I expect it to look exactly- this life has taught me that home is not about language or creed or even a type (although I’ve got my preferences!). I’m willing to be amazed.

I stand as prepared as one can be for awe.

I’m coming this time from a deeper level of wholeness, knowing that at once you will be mine and you won’t, yet setting the standard that you must belong wholely to me, ready to receive my love as well.

I thought that my wholeness would come from career succcess, dreams fulfilled, a full bank account, an amazing community of friends, a clear vocation in this world- and I do have those boxes in the process of being checked no doubt.

But I am finding, in this moment where a younger me would have raged against not having a partner to share the storm and take it away, that my true wholeness is my willingness to meet the storm, knowing that the presence of God and his good angels in all their forms go before me, beside me, and guard my back.

I know that I am whole, even if all the materials elements do not seem to be fully in place.

I know I am ready, even if there are dreams yet in the process of dreaming and I’ve left behind the illusion of self perfectibility, not even close to satisfied by my rigorous standards and bountiful wishes for all I want to do and be in this life.

And yet, this time, I am satisfied.

I am proud of all I am, of what I do and clear sighted on who I want to be. I feel this deep sovereignty, this knowing of me, mine, and not you, not yours. I have this deep ownership of myself, knowing that no matter how much I give of my heart to you, no matter how much my life and body intermingle with mine, I will always be my own.

This time, I won’t try to lose myself in you, to leave behind a self I don’t really like or accept in flights of ecstasy.

This time, I won’t think that you are the magic that I need to unlock the door to all my mysteries and potentials.

I will not put you on a towering pedestal pretending you are a superhuman father God who should be an answer to my problems.

And I won’t put you beneath me as some hairy damsel that needs to be saved to assume their superhero status either.

Instead we will walk beside each other hand in hand. You can wear the pants but I’ll keep your balls in a jar.

I do expect a lot from you, but no more than I expect from myself. I know your sweat might be stinky, that you’ll just be human at the end of the day, and sometimes I will probably want too much from you.

But at least I’ll know it this time and I won’t make you suffer.

This time I have faith in God that is so so much bigger than any love I will share with you, no matter how beautiful of a reflection of our mutual love of God it will be. I will see God in you and you’ll see God in me, but I will love you as a man though.

As a sweaty, possibly sometimes stinky, incorrigible, flawed and even sometimes helpless creature. This time I will let you struggle, I won’t try to share burdens that don’t belong to me.

This time, I will ask for more presence from you, which will also mean asking for more presence from myself. I will show up as my whole self, and I will ask no less than you. If you hide from me, I’ll know you aren’t the one.

I know you have more to you than I can yet imagine, and that being with you will change me. I will become a soft and semi solid mess of pulpy heart and other organs, just heaps of loving, tender flesh.

I promise to give you all that mushy moist and tender stuff if you have the capacity to hold me.

I promise to show up and let myself be transformed. I know you will not just alter my DNA, but will change everything about the way I see the world. I won’t be the same after you.

And in this wholeness, there will be a heart that was exchanged to have yours beating in its place, and I won’t be so “virgin” and sovereign anymore. I will have really and truly let another penetrate my flesh.

I will surrender, I will follow. I will go with you.

I will leave my comfortable life behind to give up this huge chunk of my heart and being, and make space for you in what was me and mine.

I will give up all that I am – well maybe not all- bu tI will let go so much, and turn to jelly, not to be moulded by you alone but by the union created by the very hands of God.

I know there is more for me in this world with you at my side than there is for me alone. I know together, we will be bigger, more, plenty.

Maybe someday it will be more than just the two of us, God willing, but also, no matter how many more are along for the ride, your parents, my parents, our family, and all the causes you and I care for, it will always just be us.

At an altar, surrounded and protected by a din of well-wishers, it will just be us.

And we will be part of that greater whole.

And there I will be wholly myself, whole in my trust in God, knowing no matter my bank account or job status or where I live or who I live with, God is, and I am one with him, never to be harmed. And I will set clear boundaries for you, and only allow you to add to the bounty of my life.

But I know you will make me more. you are worth merging for. You are worth leaving a little of that individuality behind and you are part of merging into the greater cosmos, part of that big journey anyway. No mater how many elements get added to ou rwholeness, it will just be us.

Sneaking loks at each other in a crowded room. Laughing at an inside joke.

You’ll be my lover and a great friend, my best friend even, and before anything else, it will be the two of us on the couch, ensnarled, entangled, begininning to intermingle with each other.

I feel myself, like a fruit ripe for the plucking. A juicy, round ripe peach. I can feel how you will bite and the juices will flow down your mouth into your beard all down your neck.

You my lover, you my friend.

We have met many times before, and we will re meet each other , anew, many times in this lifetime. I am not alone. I am with you, above all, and before all else but God, with you. You are holding my hand on the seashore and the waves are lapping at our feet.

And it’s us, only us smiling to each other on a perfect day. Ready, expectant, like a peach waiting to be plucked off the branch…

It’s been a while

Hello there,

Thanks if you take the time to check out this post. I don’t think I’ve been back on this blog for at least a year.

A lot has happened- I’m now a professionally certified coach and independent consulting. So grateful for this. I’ve been able to hit a long pause on my stable job, for which I am extremely grateful.

The future seems wide open.

At this time last year, I was trying to erase nearly all aspects of myself as I had been before some kind of “enlightenment” and literally threw all my clothes, and a lot of relationships that were dear to me, into the bin.

This year, most of that has come back in a healthier way. And I am still learning.

I figured out a lot more about what love and trust mean to me, and I’m valuing myself more. And I have a ton more gratitude.

I am thinking about starting a podcast.

There’s a lot I have learned from as well.

I have suffered from burnout this year. I currently have COVID-19, though thankfully it seems to be fairly mild.

My life has more clear direction and meaning. I am so much happier. I am beginning to really let go of things I don’t want to choose.

happy new year!

I’m still here :)

Tags

expat, france, growing up, happiness, homeownership, hope, life, love, motherhood, thirties

Living a heart based life has not been easy, and my ego has fought me tooth and nail at every step.

I live just outside of Paris, in a flat i purchased a little more than a year ago.

I still have my corporate job which my MBA helped me get, and I find ongoing creative possibility in it.

We’re emerging from about two months of confinement, and they haven’t been easy ones.

But the most important news, the ones that should be shouted on the rooftops, is that I love someone more than I ever thought possible.

And after years of capitulation over whether I wanted to be a mother or not, the answer is yes, I desire it with all my soul. I want to be the mother of his child.

We are just at the beginning of our adventure together.

I had given up on love for years and had thought the best I could hope for was to get a high percentage of my desired checklist met in someone who thought the same about me. And then I found someone who made me look up from my ledger of accounts, and push the beaded abacus to the floor.

And with time I realized, he was everything I ever asked for and even more. We don’t live together at this time, but there’s nothing I wish for more than to wake up to him snoring next to me.

And as for baby, he is only a thought as yet, a dream, a yearning. But soon, I hope.

So this is what I have come to, the death of all my wandering, my running, my here-or-there.

This, I say.

NOW! my soul roars.

 

I love you, madly.

gros bisous

femmefrancofun

I am enough: losing my ambition part II

Crazy that it has been exactly one year since I posted on this site, one year to the day, and the themes keep getting more similar.

so in this time, I bought a flat! in the suburbs of Paris, I’ve stopped travelling for the most part, I cook confit de canard instead of eating fast food all the time, and I’m just generally more like the girl who left for Paris and found herself there all these years ago, and so much less in pain and confused

So here is today’s

In the past few months since I bought my flat, and in the events leading up to that decision , I have felt a curious lack of what I would have previously referred to as ambition.
I decided to grow roots because I realized I am finally happy where I am.
I thought I would either become a digital nomad so i could travel more, take an expat role elsewhere in a cosmopolitan urban center like Hong Kong or Dubai, or completely reinvent myself professionally to do something more fun, sexy, creative, mission -oriented etc for example go back and become a French teacher.
Then I went on a long trip and realized how much I missed my life. Not because it’s perfect or because I am afraid to get out of my comfort zone, but because it’s a good fit for me. With my strengths and weaknesses and personal preferences and sense of purpose. I want to do good for others while doing well for myself and work in a healthy environment that helps me grow both personally and professionally. I am not in line to be the next CEO, but to be honest that’s a bit of a relief.

I am so happy and blessed and so satisfied with the countries I’ve seen and the diverse cultures I have had a chance to witness, but I don’t need to go everywhere right away anymore. A trip on its own is not going to change my life and make sense of everything and magically fix everything I feel is wrong. I followed my heart around the world as long as I felt pulled to, and now my pull is towards my new hearth and home. I’m not saying I will never travel again and it’s not important to me and hasn’t been the best investment I could have made in myself at the time, I am just saying that my path looks a bit different now.

I want to be healthier, but this weight is my happy weight. I dont need to lose any amount of weight to be beautiful or deserving of love and kindness and I am so grateful for my health, and I do genuinely want to make the s everyday changes that really matter in the long run, continue moving my body in ways I enjoy, and prepare nutritious and tasty meals for myself with love. But the fact I weigh more than I once did does not mean I am less happy or less of a person than I once was. Dieting and trying to force my body to take a certain form is violent and stressful, and I don’t feel the need or desire to do that anymore.

As for my personal life, I do aspire to lifelong romantic partnership. I want to be with the person who makes me feel like Johnny Cash said of his wife and paradise, “this morning, with her, having coffee.” But the most important thing to do to get there is to enjoy every moment with myself and be a great friend to myself and others, and have enough belief in my own worthiness and courage to face my own vulnerability that I stay open. God works in mysterious ways and I don’t have to reverse engineer the perfect match. I am pursuing my own happiness and letting things happen in the perfect time.

So here I am, without any big plans or schemes, not striving for anything but well being. Yes I want to write a book but I don’t want to force that either. The point is not to write something, the point is to write a book that wants to be written and just create the conditions in my life and my soul for the words to flow.

I officially give up, I surrender to the ground of being, I am ok with being exactly where and who and what and how I am, and why I am the way I am and everything that has brought me here. I have faith in the future and what will be will be.

I don’t feel passive at all, there is so much to do just living a full and rich daily life. I don’t need to strive beyond that. The best Megan is the happiest Megan, is this Megan right here, right now today.

And you are enough too, and I hope you are gentle with yourself and life is full of ease for you.

Embracing my genius

Tags

depression, happiness, joy, life, paradigm, philosophy, soul

It’s everything that doesn’t quite fit in the box, whether it seems good or bad. I have thought that business school and the depression that took root at that point broke me, when actually it is what opened me up to life and made me real. The masks I’ve worn consciously have exposed those that I didn’t even know were there, so that a lie told on purpose revealed a greater truth.

I don’t want to go back to my pre-Fall self, when I was a holy angel who didn’t make big mistakes. I learned things in moments of darkness I could never have walking in the light, suffused with my own smugness and self satisfaction.

This self feels much more vulnerable and more deeply lovable and loving. The cracks, the scars, are rivers of compassion and mercy.  I feel real, like the Velveteen Rabbit that went from an idealized plush to a truly breathing living thing. I am loved, even if my eye has fallen off and some stuffing is sticking out,and the stitching shows signs of wear. I feel aged and yet more childlike than I did as a child.  I feel that by fucking up royally, I finally gave myself some permission to color outside the lines, and that’s a grand thing.

But the biggest thing I have learned is the smallest- that there is no revolution, no epiphany, no fabulous journey, no eat pray love moment, no paradigm shift, that saves you. Redemption, or rather, reinvention, is a choice made in small moments rather than tremendous choices. It is daily boring nurture rather than a grand adventure, and it leaves you vulnerable to the power of what’s already surrounding you, rather than waiting for tomorrow or to find some mystic land beyond the western sun.

And that’s a very scary thing, to think that’s it’s all here and now and has always been waiting for you, whether you were ready or not. It’s a little sad to think you’ve been passing by all kinds of wonders, and also that it was not one tragic choice, but a series of everyday decisions, that have brought you and kept you where you are. And yet, there is something so wonderful about being able to spend the day without getting dressed watching Netflix till five pm.

Sometimes, it’s when you are meant to be getting ready for a party, and you’ve thrown in a load of wash finally, and you feel ready to attack the kitchen and the bathroom and all that jazz, that of a sudden, your soul starts calling, saying, listen I’ve been here all along…

That moment when…

You’re lonely

You wish your search was over but it’s not

You feel that happy sweet ache f missing a beloved friend

You go to the movies to avoid dealing with all your shit

You realize you spend all your free alone time either in moveies or traveling

Or sometimes walking.

 

The moemnt you realize, you aren’t the person you thought you would be, and if you let yourself, you can be a million times better.

Fillefrancofun is not just a phase Part II

Tags

happiness, liberty, life, love, philosophy, self-help, single, twenty something

I don’t know if I will ever leave Paris, she says again to herself. I am happy here. Maybe I could be happy somewhere else.

But when I’m not happy here, I’m happy to be far far away. Paris is where I learned of my love of travel. Paris is where I figured out that my home is in the adventure. Paris is when my life stopped being about waiting for love and normalcy and realizing it’s all about me, here, this, now, and some conflicts will either fade or force the creation of a new self.

I had thought my desire to own a piece of Paris had faded, and then shifted to the suburbs, and then now I odn’t know.

And then I realized maybe I could go live in Dubai or something and then get paid $$$$$.

 

And then I realized maybe I can find a way to make the whole travel writer/adventure tourism thing work, maybe?

And then maybe the point is just to find happiness within.

 

Which might include madmitting you will never be normal and you do have ADD and it’s a real thing and a lot of grown up things are going to be hard, even if you are motivated and not depressed. And you will always feela bit extra and do more to try and cover it up and get depressed that you aren’t perfect or normal and life will be a glorious adventure or nothing at all.

Bu tyeah, I’ll be nearly 30 it’s hard to imagine taking care of a small person and all the routine that would go into it, I know I could do it, but I don’t know if I am willing to sacrifice everything for another person be it mqan or baby, so I”m not sven sure I want or deserve those things.

Although I’m pretty sure men don’t ask themselves that question.

 

I’ve caleldmyself a feminist my whole life, but I’ve only truly been one recently. I always thought finding the ONe would be a crowning achievement, and if I as on the right track he would find me, or if I was on the wrong track he would save me , or more than likely, he would be on the wrong track and I owuld save him. Bu tyeah, that’s not my current situation.

I am afraid of myself, of my explorer, of my rebel, of my ridiculously sle fassured impulsve charismatic crazy chick. Who can’t bear to live a lie and would nevertheless prefer it to a sterile truth.

The truth is , I am Lara Croft Tomb Raider. I am Diana princess of the Amazons and daughter of Hippoltya. and all of this has been an elaborate ruse by my soub and sometiems not ttso sub comnscious to be something I elt more confortable with and that others owuld find themselves mroe comfortable with.

Maybe I will be that journalist or that whatever who rolls around the world sometimes in iffy place going to share a truth with the world, not worrying if she meets Mr Right in time or has a kid.

Or maybe she does care btutr trusts the universe.

It’s hard, to trust theniverse.

But I do.

Fillefrancofun is not just a phase Part I

Tags

feminist, happy, life, love, travel, twenty something, woman

Today I watched Lara Croft Tomb Raider and Don’t worry he wont’ get far by foot. I realized that I am covering my pain and with it my gift with so many false identities.

Sure there is no fixed self and we are always changing, but despite the fact I’ve fallen out of love with Paris a lot recently, and my MBA self has been scoring points against my bohemian self, it’s my “gypsy” self that always wins. All I really want to do is be a gentlewoman explorer. I think that’s my real calling, and I’m afraid of it.

I’m afraid to be my real self with the world, to be so intimate as to take off my masks. I am afraid to wear my heart on my sleeve, and make love without labeling as either marriage or a one night stand. I’m afraid to live with “feeling,” to let my intuition, and not my fear and practicality and the voice of conventional wisdom win.

I don’t know if I will ever really be done living in Paris. Each time I get bored and think there’s nothing new left for me, the city shows me a different world which embraces me more tightly.  Just when I thought it was time to move out to the suburbs, and who knows, maybe I still will, I went to a club I actually enjoyed. And while I was dancing with one guy, another looked at me with what I thought was envy for my partner, but I realized as I was passing him in the cloakroom that it was actually me that he was sad to see me in the arms of another. Sometimes I feel my beauty like a radiant light.  I feel humility at the gift.

I have an intimate friend now, who knows all about me and my ADD and my messy room and many flaws, and he still loves me anyway. He’s not my boyfriend, and this is the experience that has taught me not to put too many labels on things. I don’t love him like I would hope to someday love my husband, but I am happy to be with him and I miss him when I don’t see him. And that my friends is a blessing.

I was filled with fervor to write  a post about meeting almost the French guy of my dreams, and then realizing I don’t want almost anything and I don’t actually want a boyfriend that badly, and I don’t want to organize my life around the hope of being a wife and mother and the hope that this will fulfill me.

Recently I’ve been going through what might be a phase of wishing I was a calm and controlled person and thinking if I changed my location that would fix me, or if I changed my field, or any number of other things.

The truth is that , adult life I think is always going to be hard for me. That’s just the way it is. And I’ve been trying to fit a circle into a square, and most of life is super square, and since I’m intelligent and have so much potential and everything I’ve always felt like I should be the squarest of squares, but as per a private reference between me and my friend about our teacher who would purposefully choose to cut out cloud shapes from construction paper making every one unique so she wouldn’t make a mistake. Mening we are all perfect as we are and God makes no mistakes like Lady Gaga says.

This isn’t just a phase. THis is the real me. I’m not going to wake up one day and finally be a good adult. My shit will not come together and then leave me in a much better situation. I do think I will get better at coping and managing.

Also i don’t think I’m going to stop liking or valuing travel, or that it will become less important to me than creating wealth or building my career. At least my current career, and any career I do should have travel and international stuff in it.

I”m ready to stop bullshitting myself and really take inventory. Instead of being disappointed at where I am now as opposed to wear I thought I should be and wanted to be at 30, look where I am.

I’m not killing it in the ways I thought I should be in the career or money department, but I do have a very good and steady job and even if I’m still finding myself professionally, I’ve learned a lot about myself and have really grown as a professional. I’ve visited 45 countries. I don’t have a boyfriend and I’m hopefully not going to get knocked up in the near future, but I have had a lot of wonderful men in my life, even if things didn’t work out in such a way that I got a ring on it. And being honest, there’s no one I truly knew well and wantedto p t aring on it. Bu tI’m convinced he’s out there.

 

 

 

 

Leavin’ Las Vegas/that Paris or bust state of mind

Tags

buying a house, depression, dreams, expat, growing up, happiness, lebanon, life, Paris, twenties

Sometimes it takes breaking one’s 3 month travel fast two weeks earlier to go to a war-torn Middle Eastern country rife with sectarian divisions to realize that Paris is not the navel of the world, and it doesn’t have to be the center of my life, or its constant either.

I don’t plan to physically leave Paris in the immediate future except for travelling, but I might move out of the city for the suburbs (strong possibility of that actually), and I might someday leave the country for some new expatriation.

Yes, France is my home away from home, but I was right to leave all those years ago when I feared I would never find my way back and it was just my fear and coldhearted calculation that stopped me from following my dream to Paris. And yet, like my friend at the time who was Paris or bust and who also read the Alchemist and has since become pretty much my best friend in Paris told me, Paris, and France, weren’t always my clear cut dreams, and I should continue on my program, suck it up, and come back if I still wanted it. I came back, I complained and complained better than a French person, I adjusted, and I started thinking that yes, this is it, Paris and its environs for life. Not to mention my vacation days and all that jazz. I called a mortgage broker, thinking despite the fact I wasn’t exactly ideally financially placed to do it, it couldn’t hurt to move to the suburbs to an area I could eventually afford to buy, man or no, and buy that apartment on my own in the ultimate act of woman taking charge of her destiny #feministmanifesto .

In fact, as men are concerned, I have finally accepted with some grief that no man is ever going to make up for anything I”m missing inside of me. Being in a relationship, while it might meet some intimacy needs that are hard to scratch with just friends and lovers, won’t fundamentally improve my day to day quality of life outside of the initial passion and validation part. It won’t give me purpose. IT will just be another ting to make it harder to find my way towards myself. Just another constraint , though potentially also a source of support, like marrying Paris. I believed so strongly just a few weeks ago, that this was my great love, and I wanted to get married- to Paris, to France, to something.

And then, in an act which may have set my budget back a bit but also saved me countless amounts of time, money, and misery in the future, I took off for a new world, for the Middle East, and I fell in love with Lebanon. Where there are more Mexican restaurants, friendly people, and attractive men than in all of Paris.

The answer of course, isn’t just to abscond to Lebanon, tempting as it was to consider just buying another ticket and prolonging my stay despite my responsibilities at work and the fact I have to find a new place to live in 2 months and all the other adulting stuff that lies ahead of me. Just two more days in the sunshine.

I kind of like being a mess, to be honest. I am glad I am not the straight jacked straight laced self I have always inspired to become. I love my crazy, my fire, my genius that won’t let me what I feel like “they ” have always wanted from me.

My depresion can be explained somewhat thusly: I tried to lobotomize myself, and just be all that is good and innocent and sweet. I couldn’t admit , couldn’t allow my ambition, my desire for more, and that part of me that wants to step up and take control and make decisions based off my own good sense instead of what I should do. There is a long road from an english teacher to an MBA, and I felt icky about my participation in a wicked and corrupt system, and turned my hatred of the system on myself.

I tried to stop all hint of superficiality and materiality, and just concentrate on being deep and moral and good. But in doing so, I broke the boundaries self love would have wisely maintained. I wallowed in guilt and shame, unable to wake up from the cycle.

I haven’t done the minimal things to help myself out because I was afraid of making choices from a place of freedom, afraid to take responsibility for myself.

But yes, romantic ideals like “paris or bust” and that having a man or baby or four walls of a home will give some meaning to my life have fallen like the walls of troy.

Maybe it’s ok to be a bit more of a fighter, a bit more pushy, and it’s ok that I’ll never eb truly French.

Maybe it’s not about choosing a new culture but about making one’s own lifestyle.

I’ve spent too much of my life looking for a place to fit in, and not enough time accepting myself.  I do have a conscious community that does surround and support me everywhere I go.

Paris was not my dream- traveling and writing and leadership is.

 

 

Maybe I don’t have to own a piece of Paris. Maybe it’s enough to have lived here for a time, and maybe I will even continue living here.

It feels very sad to have lost faith in this dream, and to realize I have grown out of it in some way.

I prayed so hard that finally I would get everything I wanted, and I got most of it, and it still didnt’ feel enough.

I prayed that Paris owuld be my true home where I could stay forever, and now I recognize it is not.

As Paulo Coelho says, life is the train, not the station.

So today I am hanging around not getting dressed, watching TV, not doing anything of great help to myself for the moment, and just being.

I have a big week coming up, and a lot of things to think about.

or feel about rather.

My depression has lifted even more than before. Happiness came not from getting what I wanted, but from realizing my freedom.

I am a gypsy. I have feared this would make me unlovable, and I would never find someone as a result, and so I tried to plan myself in Paris, and I have blossomed.

Bu tI will bloom again.