Doux Comme Miel

It’s a beautiful, sunny Sunday in Paris and for the first time in a long time I’ve managed to make it out of the house in the morning.

This is an incredible feat for me because despite being somewhat of a morning person, living in Paris has trained me into not wanting to leave the comfort and safety of my apartment until well into the afternoon.

This doesn’t do me well on the weekends, when the morning is the only quiet part of the day outside.

I miss taking advantage of the outdoors when most people are still at home sleeping, but since Covid I have struggled to make it out.

Sitting on my favorite terrasse in full sun is doing a lot to charge my batteries. Maybe if it was sunny more often I could make this into a routine. It won’t be though, Paris isn’t really known for its sunny days.

It almost makes me miss when the borders were closed and Paris was just for the people who lived here, no tourists.

Last night I heard some people speaking English in my building and I texted my neighbor to make sure it was only guests in her Airbnb and not new American neighbors.

She called me thinking something was wrong and I said, “No no don’t worry I just don’t want any loud Americans moving in”.

This is my 9th year in Paris. It’s almost hard to believe. I’m so thankful that I moved here before the world went completely nuts during and after Covid. It gave me a foundation here before things started rapidly changing.

But even still, I don’t feel like my place here is secured. Even after 9 years. I’m not yet a citizen, and even if I apply now, I may still need to renew my visa in a couple of years before citizenship is granted.

People would tell me to find someone to marry, but despite having some really great friends, I haven’t met anyone I wanted to be serious with romantically, and certainly no one I’d be willing to trust with my legal status in the country.

My visa isn’t close to expiring, but it’s something I worry about given the current state of affairs in the United States. I’ve been gone for so long, and I rarely visit, I don’t think I would fit in very well there now.

When I meet Americans who are new to living in Paris or just visiting, I feel annoyed and find it more difficult to connect than before. Living outside of my native country has afforded me a different perspective, because I’m no longer immersed in the American propaganda machine.

It seems abundantly clear to me that the majority of Americans run on fear, but are conditioned to believe that they just work harder than anyone else and that’s a virtue.

Imagine actually having vacation time and using it regularly throughout the year instead of subsisting on the occasional long weekend.

The first time my parents came to visit me I asked them to stay for two weeks and eventually we settled on 10 days because they could hardly conceive of a vacation lasting longer than a week.

Imagine being let go from your job and having a two month notice, long enough to make some sort of plan and try to find another job instead of just going into work one morning and coming home unemployed.

All that to say, I can’t leave, because I don’t want to give up “la vie belle”. Or should I say, une vie douce comme le miel.