Year two in France is well under way. The novelty is gone, replaced by the chilly quotidien of fall, and France is no longer foreign to me. We were in the US for a few days for Ben's brother's wedding, and I actually felt more at home when we got back to France. Long ago when I visited Ben for the first time when he lived near Aix, everything about France looked bizarre, exotic, wrong, weird. Now the small, turtle-like cars, the road signs that are just slightly off, the sing-song lilt of the language, even the diesel and cigarette stink are comforting to me. I feel like these are my people now, and they've accepted me. I go to class and understand all the French, I've started reading books in French for my thesis, I can speak in paragraphs without stopping to give thought to vocabulary and structure. The intense anxiety from this same time last year has melted almost entirely away. I don't feel like a visitor anymore.
Now that I'm fully ensconced in life here, there's something I need to address. I got these questions a lot over the summer and earlier this week when in the US. Living abroad is not vacation. When you live abroad, it's just regular life - in a foreign language. When I lived in DC, London, New York, and Boston, I went around to see the touristy sites pretty much only when people were visiting me... and it's no different here. And more to the point, I'm a starving grad student, so shopping in chic French stores is a far-off dream, especially when we rarely turn on the heater because we're so worried about the gas bill. My first instinct is to get really annoyed at this inquiry of shopping since going shopping is like fresh air in my lungs, but I've realized I need to get past it. In fact, there are a lot of indelicate questions I get asked (and many that other people get asked, and I'm sure I've asked a few myself), so let's settle on this topic for a moment, because my subconscious needs some lecturing.
Recently, I've gotten so caught up in the green jaws of envy and desire that I've completely lost sight of what's right in front of me. It's the easiest thing in the world to look at what someone else has and covet it for yourself. How many times do we roll our eyes and mutter, "The grass is greener..." and grudgingly turn back to what we think is our sucky life? Maybe the lawn over there is manicured and all the same lovely green color, but how do we know it's not fake turf? What if the people who live in that house with the perfect lawn are miserable? And money can't buy happiness either, if we want another awful cliché. How do we be content and thankful for our own lot in life when everyone's faux joie de vivre is forced down our throat at every social media outlet? Sometimes I want to throw my computer out the window I'm so sick of Facebook and Instagram and all the fake platitudes and over-filtered photos. I'm just as guilty as the next gal of doing all this, but I'm having one of those days (ahem, weeks... ahem, years) when it's all just too much.
This sounds awfully bitchy, and I promise I don't mean it that way. There are lots of people I'm genuinely happy for. But after all the online exultations, being happy for someone in real life, face-to-face feels so much more real to me. For the moment though, I need to be a little selfish. I've stopped being happy for myself. I think this is a problem of the human condition. We get what we want, we're happy for a split second, but then it's on to wanting, needing the next thing. For years, I wanted NOT to be in a long-distance relationship; for years, I wanted to be with Ben in the same country (much less the same city or household); for so long I've wanted to be able to speak French, and I yearned to get into grad school and further my education. Suddenly, I have all of these things, but I'm like a spoiled kid after opening all her Christmas presents: WANT MORE *tantrum* Honestly, it's exhausting, and it paints a pretty ugly self portrait. I don't like myself this way.
So maybe life here isn't vacation, but it's not so bad either. 21-year-old me would have swooned at my life right now. Dealing with these feelings has been especially difficult for me with all the back-and-forth to the US within the past few months, but it's probably because I feel so torn with a foot in each continent. I would give up almost anything to be able to see my niece every single day. I dream of being her cool auntie and having a close relationship with her one day, but that feels just so much farther away while I'm living in France. And I feel like I can't really complain to anyone because the immediate reply is, "But how can you want x, y, z... YOU LIVE IN FRANCE!" Sure there's good wine and bread here, but my family isn't here, my maternal language isn't here, and that little homesickness eats its way into my daily life with a sharp little edge. Then it feels bizarre to be homesick for a place that brought me all sorts of topsy-turvy, uncomfortable emotions this summer and last week. I don't know what I'm supposed to feel no matter where I am. It's confusing and a little harder to deal with than I anticipated.
I should probably take another step back and realize these are all the good kinds of problems to be having. Things could always be worse, but I think it's still important to check in with one's mental health. After all the excitement of this summer and early fall, I feel a little deflated. "What now?" keeps rolling around in the back of my mind. No more vacation, no more special events planned, so now it's just life. Some of my daily struggles from living in the US are gone, some have remained (I still can't get up at a reasonable morning hour, and I HATE washing the dishes), and some are new. There will always be a little something that is annoying or irksome, something that we try to improve about ourselves or our daily lives. There isn't always something to look forward to in the near future. Sometimes we just need to find it within ourselves to appreciate the dreams we have achieved rather than side-eyeing the accomplishments of others, or coveting material items we can't afford. There is joy in the calm of the here and now, and that can't be bought. But that is something that can be easily achieved.
