Someone Else is Living Your Parisian Dream

I share certain personal aspects about myself in the online realm, but typically draw the line at writing about relationships in my personal-personal life. I often share about how I feel on certain days and my personal development, particularly as an expat/immigrant in a new world and now, a mother-to-be in approximately 1.5 months. As an unexpected challenge, I’ve been forced on most occasions and with almost every entry to reexamine myself and how my past relates to my present: my prejudices, my attitude toward control - or lack thereof, my deepest fears, and individual layers upon layers of experiences that have lead me here. I’ve been trying to write this for days now as I’ve struggle with whether I would publish this entry, and finally reminded myself that this entire blog was created with the intention to share one of the real and, perhaps, different experiences of a different type of expat/immigrant. Some may relate, and others absolutely will not; the Parisian dream is different for everyone. 

There’s a particular spirit that is shared by those who have the will to uproot in the name of Something Important, or in some of our cases, Someone Important. We choose to leave behind aspects of our lives that are precious: friends, places, family, comfort, familiarity, personal space, personal things, careers…the list goes on. I tend to see it as ‘putting all your eggs in one basket.’ Someone else’s basket. And though we know that we love that someone else and are ready to commit our lives to them, the real danger is in ourselves. Every aspect of our life changes and only those who have done it know the chaos, joy, the emotional turmoil and constant reexamining of who we are, our tolerance to stress and extra-severe change given a different structure all together.

Only those who have done it know that theres more involved than just a list of tangible things we ‘miss’ from ‘home’. It’s more than lamenting the old days of $3 happy hour beers, J-E-L-L-O, real peanut butter - the chunky kind, or even our best friend who was available at a moment’s notice. It’s even more than missing out on family bonding, nephews and nieces who will not know us, our own children who are distant and who will be very different from extended family and cousins, memories of wonderful times of the past that could be repeated over and again with equal joy each time for their simplicity. We acknowledge with a bit of pain that our relationships with close ones will develop differently or sometimes not at all, due to distance and lack of personal contact. Alternatively there’s the keen awareness that we may never approach our new life or new friends with that same ease of having known someone for what seems like forever.

For a very long time, nothing is easy the way it was. Nothing. In many cases, we are children again, learning to speak. We are paranoid that the cashier who sits idly behind the counter with glazed eyes, as we speed-bag our own groceries, thinks that we’re dumb and incompetent. We’re not funny anymore. We don’t make anybody laugh, much less capture their attention with our stories or subtleties and often times, we don’t laugh much either because the humour and language all flies overhead.  A beer at the corner pub isn’t easy. A trip to the supermarket isn’t easy. Talking on the phone isn’t easy. Another turning point….another fork in the road. Yes. Life is full of the unpredictable and choices. I’ve always believed it to be a blessing and a curse that I’ve had so many options, and the instinct to move toward newness. The newness of Paris, because it involved so much compromise, has been the most challenging of all. But I’ve never doubted that it in the end, it would be worth it. I’ve never regretted for a moment that I am here, though it has been difficult.

Maybe this has been told to death by me, in different ways, several times. I left a cozy life that was architected just so: of giggles with girlfriends, activity, hearty laughter over beer and dinner, a good salary in the online arm of professionally revered retail company where the people were highly intelligent and humble, and a cozy little apartment in which I rarely entertained because it was my haven. My retreat. As social as I was, I was alone quite often, happily. I had friends, easy times, activities, a social life to choose from and a boyfriend-fiancee overseas with whom I was immersed in a peaceful love, although there were troubles that inevitably stem from long-term, long-distance relationships. Theres a reason that most will quickly state “Long distance relationships never work.” But we worked extremely hard at staying together because there could be no one else, sometimes wanting to let go because while there was time for arguments, there was never enough time for making up properly on the phone. So the first year has passed in a confusing blur of changes, momentum, adjustments, resentments, bliss, insecurities, growing up, learning to live with each other for the first time, learning to be married. Learned to depend. Learning to need and be needed. Learning to be and rediscovering the person that we were at home, to the best of our efforts.  Lots of learning and getting through the year without my support network nearby. Everybody says that the first year of marriage is hardest, and we’ve taken on so much more. But here we are today. Here I am today.

When I came to Paris to join My Husband, my only dream was love. My dreams of change and life involved almost every continent other than Europe. As a result, I packed in my Paris-bound baggage with quite a bit of resentment and insecurity as I left a very secure life full of friends and family; but we’re equally guilty for contributing to some of this sentiment. This may not be the case for most other expats out there. Resentment bred defensiveness, and it was my fortress, as I moved to a place that wasn’t necessarily in my plans. Additionally, giving trust was never my forte; nevertheless, I followed the tunnel toward love. For the first time, we would be together on a non-vacation.

Mistake? I resolved to make the marriage work, but I didn’t resolve to make my life in Paris. Foolish and indignant, I straddled the porthole to a New Life, one foot in and one foot out, but never fully stepping through to Paris. I never allowed the door to click closed behind me so that I might continue to move forward into our life together though there surely were many great times. All the while, I tried to make myself believe that my love for My Husband would shine through my reluctance to accept and live in the present, as I criticized everything Paris - some warranted and others not. Afterall, I didn’t have to love Paris to love him. So I fought Paris actively, instead; a futile one sided battle when the real battle was internal.

I needed to be fair and to make an attempt at adjustment to life. For us. Accept that this is a different place. But I wasn’t fair. The challenges posed by our circumstances of pursuing a bi-cultural marriage and the misplacement of my identity are difficult enough without me fueling the fire, but that’s exactly what I did which each rejection of My Husband’s efforts to help me acclimate. There were some efforts to make friends, but it isn’t particularly easy or appealing much of the time when the common denominator - the lowest, in my opinion - is merely that we both speak English. So I met people, but didn’t attempt to keep in touch with many. Others are keepers, and some of them have moved away - another casualty of expatriasm.
I continued to make my way around Paris with blinders and a tin heart. Nothing was good enough because it isn’t California with the sun smiling down warmly on a sunkissed back, outwardly friendly people with offers of genuine smiles - friends-to-be or not, or the oceans or mountains surrounding me. I felt exposed to all elements of the city. Vulnerable. Like an outsider. Like the Goldilocks story, nothing was quite right. Too cold. Too hot. Too hard. Too soft. And even when ‘just right’ with The Husband was right under my nose, I focused on everything else that wasn’t because I was insecure with myself. Without identity or language skills to express my intelligence. Or my humour. Or my interests. If anyone spoke to me at parties - which I always appreciated - it was small talk, but rarely interesting due to our lack of common language. Thus, I felt boring and uneducated (read stupid) with my broken French, where in a former life, I made people laugh or engaged them with off the wall stories or snippets of this and that. It’s taken a toll on both of us, The Husband and I, as I find myself during a period when our life continues to change rapidly together and individually.

With the stress of everything bearing down on us most recently: the pending birth of our baby, the pregnancy, the fear that I won’t be a good mother, his distractions, my raging hormones, the high stress of his work, my lack of work, far too many hours working on his part, too many leisure hours on my part, far too little time together, adjusting (still) to Paris, (still) learning the language, it’s been really, really diffucult. This move has been one of the hardest things that I’ve ever chosen to face in my life but now, just over 1 year later, I am committed 100%. This is a drastic change in attitude from my lifelong, unspoken motto of “Always have a Plan B.” An escape hatch. An emergency exit. In everything.

Perhaps it took the fear and devastation of losing the most important pieces of my life. Perhaps it’s that my friendships here are growing, based on the highest common denominators; I’d gladly be friends with this handful of people anywhere in the world. Perhaps it’s that I have work lined up, to begin at my own pace, after the birth of our son. Perhaps it’s that my French is getting better slowly, and I can feel the difference. Perhaps it was even that little moment on Christmas night, as I looked down Champs Elysee on our way home from The Parents and remarked, “God, that is beautiful” only to have My Husband respond somewhat teasingly, but serious, “No it’s not. You hate Paris.” That’s the impression that I’ve drilled into him over and again. No. The truth, I realized over time, is that I didn’t like me in Paris. I don’t hate Paris. I’ve hated the uncertainty and insecurities of my place in Paris. No matter how many times people have encouraged me, I wasn’t able to get used to not having control over every aspect of own life. Someone told me yesterday that life has been easy for me because I have controlled it. Even those times when I’ve appeared to be lost were meticulously accounted for by me - they were planned. But I’ve fallen apart in the worse ways each time I didn’t have a handle. I don’t know how not to be in absolute control of my life and here in Paris, I had a grasp of nothing.

Perhaps I’ve realized that an escape plan works in my single life and situations; with people that I don’t care much about. It’s destructive, though, when loved ones are involved. Although, it may never be executed, the planning itself is a distraction from making the real plans work.

I supposed part of the reason that I decided to post this is that a certain online someone else pointed me toward her old blog, describing very similar emotions, obstacles and turmoil as she went through two years of adjustment period. They eventually affected her partner as well. But they worked at it, and now they’re great. It helped me to know that I’m not alone in this. I didn’t invent these issues that some of us encounter and I won’t be the last to go through them.

I’m not accustomed to early starts anymore, but it felt good this morning after being holed up at home and in my own head for the last few days. As I boarded the metro for yoga at 9:30am, so did a metro singing man, with amplifier in tow and guitar in my face. I hoped he didn’t think that I was digging for money, because in fact, I was really digging deep for my phone and chapstick. Leaning my head back, I hoped he wouldn’t jab me in the eye, lost in his own little world that deemed amplifiers acceptable for morning commutes in closed quarters.

As he lip synced Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds (Beatles), one of my favorite songs, so did I, self consciously at first though. As many people as there are, on the metro, who accessorize with headphones, I’m convinced by expressionless eyes and clamped lips that no one’s got their groove on.

My eyes moistened with a perpetual reservoir of hormonal tears, and the emotional trials of the last couple of months. Or maybe the cumulation of this last year’s changes. In reality, I’ve been having a good cry at least every other day for the duration of this third trimester, except for the week of days and nights when I was too occupied with learning how to fix the back end of the this blog. As our metro musician unplugged his amp, I handed him a 2 euro piece for giving me a good reason to sing to myself and for making me smile through a repressed gutter of tears.

One of the serious, non-petty downsides of moving abroad has been going through this pregnancy virtually alone, without the support of my old network of friends, my cookie baking sister-in-law, with whom I spent 3 hours on the telephone the other night in laughter and tears, and my mom. Everytime my friends urge me to come home, because it’s not the same to go through this without family and friends, I’ve been that close to crawling through the receiver and allowing them to pamper me as I curl up on their familiar sofas in front of the TV with a blanket a big bag of chips and a soda. But I’m not going back. Paris is my home.

Still to date, I’ve had few pregnancy issues worth mentioning, however, the emotional turmoil has been a bit more than The Husband or I can handle gracefully at this time. With his very, very, very long stressful work hours, and my need for emotional support during this time, we’re like ships in the night where his very few spare hours, when he should be catching up on sleep, are spent engaging in battles with me. Feelings of abandonment for his work hours that inevitably keep him away for upwards of 20 hours per day on some days to return home exhausted, only to be pounced upon by a frustrated and insanely hormonal pregnant woman, contribute to a cycle that has us spinning. It’s is sometimes days before we have quality time to spend which also means that I have days worth of hormones, complaints, emotions, and physical discomfort brewing by the time I finally see him - often in the dead of the night or on the weekend. The end result is that he gets no rest - none, and I a walking hormonal nightmare.

I have often wondered, through these 7-8 months, how I would manage, if indeed, I had/ did have the common symptoms that so many women go through such as morning sickness, swollen limbs, horrible, body possessing rashes that cannot be relieved, bed rest, eratic cravings, etc…. I also wonder and fear what the next year has in store for us, with his schedule, and our new responsibilities. I’m actively working on learning to cope with his schedule, which really is inevitable, I’ve learned from recently digging in to a slew articles and books written specifically for the wives/husbands who work in his particular field. Though their advice is slightly outside of my comfort zone, I’m learning a thing or two and have been glad to have a small toolkit of ‘a-ha!’ information to mull over. Fortunately, a few good, solid friendships developed over the year here in Paris, and with some responses from online contacts who are in similar situations or have been - without whom I would surely have had a severe breakdown - have stayed unwaveringly by my side, cheering me on all the way through. And I think to myself, despite some other hardships, that Paris is looking up for me. Rather, I’m finally looking up.
Next week, The Husband will attend his first echographie. With the baby at 33 (34?) weeks, this should be an amazing one for him to witness and listen to.

Until this week - 32 weeks - I’ve been able to move around without tiring or effort. “Amazing!” my friends and family say. I walked the town for hours and hours with my sister-in-law, dragging her behind, wandered with friends, raced up the stairs to the Sacre Couer - alongside the tram that starts at the bottom of the hill, as it drifted by, and have purposely taken the long way everywhere for the sake of exercise. I stood for hours at a party the other night, feeling neither the fatigue, the extra weight, or the 4 glasses of wine and 2 gin & tonics, heavy on the gin. Just kidding. I had a few licks of champagne and chugged Schweppes.

Yesterday, though, despite my unwillingness to ever succumb physical handicaps, I told Amy that we needed to walk a little slower. Today, I was slow, as I made my way around town on my own. I’m feeling pains in my pelvis and neighboring joints that prevent me from moving at my usual pace. I also cut some errands from my list today because I just couldn’t cover the distance without fear of causing some type of harm. For a while now, I’ve felt the load of my belly, as it tightens and weighs me down when I move too much. “It feels like you’ve overeaten, and still continue to eat and drink beyond capacity,” I’ve explained. I keep going anyway, always, but my doctor gave me some advice. Sit down when that happens. You’re having contractions. I had no idea…..It happens basically everytime I step out, so it’s difficult to imagine how many contractions I’ve tried to walk off, unsuccessfully, for the last two months. I thought I was doing what my coaches in the younger days told me when I injured myself….“walk it out” or “shake it off.” That’s what I idiotically thought I was doing. Shaking it off. I’d been so fortunate to escape any of the side effects of pregnancy, aside from complete sleeplessness for many months now, that I’ve taken it granted. With certainty that there will be repercussions, I have been mentally preparing myself for cosmic-payback: an extra long, difficult, labor.
It’s a bit frightening not to know what’s happening to my body. Even more frightening, though, is to self diagnose on the Internet for warning signs of this or that. Everyone has something to say. One of my more immediate fears, now, is being put to bedrest. Uncomfortable. Horizontal. In Bed. 23 hours each day. I’ve seen enough women go through it, that I’ve suddenly found religion.

During my last visit to San Francisco, three awkardly large, heavy DELL computer boxes were packed full of ’stuff’ and shipped from San Francisco to Paris. Two boxes arrived today and I emptied the contents of the first, examining each small item; imagining how it could be used. A Baby Tad that speaks English. Soft blocks with their respective colors embroidered on - in English. Onesies - lots of them, some with each day of the week stitched onto the chest - in English. Nalgene sippie bottles. Lots of soft blankets in a green and brown theme. Sets of Baby Bee’s products. Overalls. Fuzzy vests. Hand puppets: a dragon, a frog, an octopus, a dinosaur. Childrens books, in both Chinese and English. All items to prepare for a future of nurturing, teaching, cuddling, loving, entertaining and embracing new cultures.

In the other box sat albums and supplies, waiting for a free day of simple, non-extravagant scrapbooking. I opened an accordion folder to find years upon years of old photos - the black and white kind with the ornate edges of various members of my family in Burma.

My mother and father both young and handsome are an unsmiling couple looking back at me as I study the photos for my resemblance to their twenty-something selves. I am my father’s daughter, indeed. I admire photos of my aunts, looking beautiful in their 70’s inspired fashion dresses with hemlines that barely covered their behinds - in the same way that mine barely covered my cloth diaper. I recently learned that they were made of rags from my father’s old longyi’s (traditional male sarong). My mother recently told me this in a ‘cloth or disposable’ conversation.

One set of photos strikes me each time. A short series of my Aunt Helen as a recent immigrant from Burma to San Francisco in the early 70’s before I was born. She immigrated alone, as a young adult, attending university full time in San Francisco and working full time, bearing the financial burden of sponsoring 11 individuals to bring to America. Inspite of her difficult existence at the time, she was striking in each of these photos, her long dark hair held back by stylish, large framed sunglasses. Her dresses short, boots high, pants flared, poncho’s hanging - all just so as she posed simply in front of this or that landscape; exploring her new world. In her eyes was a glow, framed by a smooth complexion. She beamed of life. I turn each photo over and read the short messages to my mother from another world and time. (Grammar slightly corrected)

“The shoes I have on are called ‘boots’. They keep the legs warm, and are fit for rain, or even the summer with hot-pants (short pants.” My Aunt Helen? In hot pants?

“Wish that all of you are as happy as I am…”

“This is not a beautiful photo, but just to let you see how I look. Find any changes? Alot!”

“Do I look fat? or slim?”

She was very slim.There are several, but my favorite is one that was taken at an amusement park that might have been Magic Mountain, in the LA area.

“The white mountains and the blue sky made my think of all of you. I had said to mother, “I wonder if the sky in the US will be as blue as it is in Burma.” How stupid was my question?”

Digging deeper still, I found an old handkerchief, cleaned but interwoven with sentimental value, condolensce cards from friends, and a piece of binder paper. On it, was a sentence or two from each student in my senior year Psychology class - more fun than scientific. Each was an anonymously authored line, preferably sharing with the person - who’s paper was circulating - one nice thing. Consistent among descriptions of me were admiration for being along the lines of ‘independent’ and ’strong.’ I thought to myself, that this same independent streak eventually lead me here, to Paris, where I am re-learning to build these same qualities. Where I am relearning independence. Relearning my strengths. Especially in light of my new role in life.

One box filled with the future. And the other, with my past.