Chez Moi, a Paris
By Erin Deborah Waks
I’m sitting on the floor of the packed Eurostar terminal at Gare du Nord, drinking a truly terrible filter coffee and watching a frozen departures board glitch awkwardly as hundreds of coat-laden Londoners and Parisians stare intently.
My fingers are frozen, my nose is running, my passport is stuffed brazenly inside my overflowing Italian leather handbag and my scarf is wrapped too tightly around my neck.
I’ve already finished my book, my train is delayed, the only food options left are disappointing and my bag is so heavy I’m regretting everything I packed.
And I’ve never been happier.
There’s a unique sensation that comes with being a person whose ‘home’ is neither a place she grew up, nor one where she has any real, tangible links. It’s almost indescribable. There’s no reason I should feel so alive when I’m in Paris. I was born in Johannesburg. Most of my childhood was spent in Bristol. My fundamental adolescent years took place in London - or, rather, Hertfordshire. And my adulthood thus far has also been in the British capital.
Except the year I spent in Paris, a mere starry-eyed twenty-year-old with dreams as big as they come, is perhaps the one that marked me the most. The greatest love story of my life so far is with this city.
I have other plans right now. I have a job in London that my younger self would be so proud of she’d probably cry - or, actually, squeal with excitement and ask if I get to wear the knee-high boots and vintage bags I always dreamed of to the magazine-editing job I always wanted (yes, honey, you do).
I have an apartment with two of my favourite humans in the entire world, and a circle of friends nearby who are, right now, the centre of my universe. Living in Paris is, sadly, not on my nearby horizon.
And still, as I board my train home after spending a weekend in Paris, I’m left with the exact same sense of excitement, nostalgia, and home I felt the first time I moved here all alone.
Walking around the streets that are so familiar to me, I can’t shake the notion that I belong in this city. Everything about it - the uniform buildings, the bakeries, the language, but also the bins strewn across the roads, the rudeness of the people and the grey skies - makes me feel like the smartest, sexiest and, somehow, most beautiful, most confident version of myself.
I feel alive, hopeful, meaningful even when running for the metro. I smile at men I’d normally feel inferior to. I flirt with waiters. I watch them flirt back. I keep a straight face and pretend not to notice the trench coat-wearing, bearded man checking me out. I order my coffee and croissant with the certainty of a girl who knows her mind.
It’s not a city that was thrust upon me by birth, not one that was given as a family legacy, not one that was part of a greater scheme of academic or career development.
It’s a city that is mine because it’s where I learnt how to be confident in myself. Mine because it taught me my second language, my language of love, of passion, of beauty, of romance. Mine because it showed me how to dress, and gave me my sense of style. Mine because it’s the place I learnt to be okay on my own.
It’s my city because it’s the one I chose.
