Goodbye ?

It's been a while I know. I had some stuff going on with that one guy I've never told you about but I'm tired of talking (and thinking) about him because it's over before it has even started,  I really don't want to talk about it, so...

I'm saying goodbye again, soon. Or I'm actually saying Goodbye already. Today I had to give my 9-year-old host child girl her goodbye present - an album full of photos of our year together. With a smiling eye I see in the future, because I don't have to care about all those children problems anymore (like where's my stuffed animal? Or can I have ice cream? Why does my brother get all the attention? etc. etc. etc.) and I can make a new start. 

I'm really in for new starts. I'm excited to LEARN again. To actually put stuff into my head, to read, to improve my writing, my knowledge and my skills. I'm craving to learn after that year. The only "intelligent input" I got, I got through books (as normal) and cultural stuff I had to do in my free time. That was no bad, because I got to see many, many inspiring exhibitions, got to know more and different artists and ways you can perceive and do art and got to think about art and culture and how they can be impulses for my brain and my mind. 

I'm going to miss the endless, illimited access to art, music and culture I have here in Paris. I still haven't watched a theater play but it's overdue! I do visit a lot of museums, some seldom, some even regularly, like the Centre Pompidou, I watch a lot of movies (the cinema card, remember?) and I attended some concerts. I like to think I've done a lot during my 10 months here. 

Now, with July, the last month of this year abroad, this amazing time in Paris, starts. And there, the crying eye comes in... I'm using the last, the fourth toothbrush and my parents took my IKEA carpet and a not so small suitcase to Germany with them, when they visited, end of May. Ever since, my "chambre de bonne" looks empty, not as comfortable as in winter. It also reminds me adamantly of my departure and the Goodbyes that I have to face in a short while. On top of that, it brings back the memories of how it all began, the starting days in late August, when I arrived here for the first time.

When this was only a room, not home. When I didn't know the names of the streets or where to board exactly on the metro platform to change trains in the best way at République later. When I had no friends here and no idea how the other interns looked like or were like. When I imagined my year so brightly but also so differently as it turned out to be.

Open the boxes, unpack what you own.
Hang up some posters and make this a home.
Walk down the stairs and open the door.
Look at the things you've never seen before.

This is the beginning, of anything you want.
This is the beginning…
This is the beginning, of anything you want.
This is the beginning…

Get on the buses, learn numbers and names
Your eyes are the camera, your heart is the frame
Hum a new song as you walk down the streets,
Soon they'll be full with friends and memories. - BOY (This is EXACTLY how it felt)

Why did I put a question mark there, in the title, you may ask. I'm not going to stay here, that's for sure. But who knows if I will come back or not. Maybe I'll live here with my family, 20 years from now, maybe not, but I could. When I was babysitting two cute boys from my "Kindergarten" last week-end, I realized that I could do it. I could do anything. There are people doing it everyday. Moving away from "home" and making a new place what home is ought to be. Marry a French man, have kids with him, send them to a French-German kindergarten and school. Go to apérétifs and theater plays, go out in the parks, spend my days doing a job I love, have a nice appartment in the 10eme arrondissment in Paris. I could do anything. I could be anything.

I could just stay here forever. And lie in parks and drink beer in bars.

For now, I'm returning. But goodbye ain't goodbye. Because I'm sure I will come back. And I know, it sounds kitschy and cliché and everything. But I don't care. So here it is: Paris will always be in my heart. I found a new home there. I fell in love there. I won't forget it. So this Goodbye will just be temporary, while most of the other goodbyes (real goodbyes - with people), will be for long, maybe forever. This is hard. I feel the tears coming but I won't let them run down my cheeks. All these kids and their futures lying in front of them like an endless pool of possibilites and chances and failure and changes and love and death.
I love them, each and everyone of them - and some won't even remember me. 

I wish them luck on their way but I know I can't be there for them to help. I can't educate them or raise them any longer, I can't be their mentor, nor their friend. They have to make it on their own. It hurts. But they will.

Paris, tu vas me manquer. Je te dis Au Revoir mais c'est promis: Je vais revenir, mon amour!