A little over a year ago, I was moving out of the Red Door Inn, the home I had made for myself for the last 4 years. As I was leaving my keys with the new roommate, I felt this pang of sadness, much like you feel at the end a book that you were really enjoying. You're glad to have read it and it had to come to end eventually, but you're going to miss the story. And what stories the walls of that house could tell...
But it was onward up and upward (or just around the corner) for a few months before the big move to France. That summer was a difficult one. There were so many unanswered questions about when we would be leaving and what I was going to do when I got there. Jason wasn't exactly helping the situation with his indecision, though some of it was out of his control, and we fought. He didn't want me to go, and I didn't necessarily want to be in France all on my own but I couldn't stay in Baltimore with nothing to do for an unknown amount of time. I had to go.
A year ago, I was packing all of my worldly possessions into boxes and bags, some to be put aside for later, some to be given away and a special select few got to make the trip across the ocean with me. Those last few days at my parents' house were bizarre, this strange sort of limbo where we were all waiting for what was sure to be something big but we didn't really know what it would be. Looking back on it, I'm not really sure I was excited at that point. I had spent all of my emotions in the weeks leading up to that day and I mostly felt numb. Just get there in one piece.
364 days ago, I had never been to Bordeaux. I had forgotten most of the French I learned once upon a time and it had been years since I had stepped foot inside of a classroom where I wasn't the one giving instruction. I lived in a dorm room in Mérignac and I didn't know a soul in the entire country of France. The whole country! Maybe that's why I wasn't excited. Because I knew what lay ahead would be immensely stressful, lonely and just plain hard.
Fast forward to today. So much has changed since those first moments in France. I am fluent in the French language. I live in a cool apartment right in the heart of Bordeaux with the man I love. I know great places to get good wines for good prices. I have a favorite type of cheese that isn't Swiss or cheddar. I could tell you the best way to get across town from wherever you are (but only if you're taking public transit). I have a job that I enjoy and friends to hang out with on the weekends. I am fairly knowledgeable about French cuisine.
I don't quite know how to explain the intangible changes within me, though. So much about my identity has been shifted this year. I am not French but I don't know if I'm really American anymore, either. I am reading a book whose title translates to "How I Became French" and I can identify with each one of the stories. I no longer fit into nice boxes. In order to integrate into French society, do I have to give up a bit of my American-ness? Am I less like those who share a common birthplace because of my time masquerading as another nationality? Can I ever truly assimilate? Do I have the right to be here and pretend I belong?
What I have found in this last year is that I don't know the answer to any of those questions any better than when I came. The longer I'm here, the more complicated it gets. Bordeaux is my home, the home Jason and I have made together. The US is where I was born and my family and friends are there but it doesn't feel like the same place it once was to me. It has become the place I visit once a year for the holidays. Of course I look forward to going there but I feel like a stranger now. I have to be conscious of how much I talk about France for fear of being that obnoxious ex-pat who can't shut up about their fabulous new life abroad.
But what else do I have to talk about? It's my life. I'm not on vacation, I'm at home. That's the hardest part: A year later, I am still trying to explain that I am not just a tourist, both to the French and to my family and friends back in the US. A year later, I am in another limbo where again, I am waiting. I am waiting to figure out who I am, who I have become. But, unlike a year ago, I am not numb. I am alive.
Happy anniversary, Bordeaux.
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