Saying Goodbye

As I sit here alone in my apartment for the last night in a city I've come to love and a culture I feel I've become a part of, the tears are flowing with no end is sight. David is having one last hockey hurraw with some of the guys from his team and I've just returned home from a dinner with our dear friends Robert and Corinne, to whom I've had to say an emotional farwell.

I'm not sure how to process the fact that Paris is no longer my home, when all I feel is how I've changed in so many ways such that in some ways, its all I know. I'm scared to find out how I will feel when the things that used to be normal for me, will feel foreign and yet, are supposed to be who I am because they are where I've come from. I know that the girl that came over here for an experience is staying behind and in her place is a different person with different thoughts, views, personality traits, likes, dislikes, habits, visions, dreams, aspirations, wants, and needs that make sense in the world she knows at this moment. I have no idea how she will fit in to a world she used to know.

Finding a way to express the emotions that are leaving me feeling raw and weak seems like such an impossible goal. David and I set out to try an adventure that involved just the two of us. We wanted to get away from all that we knew and put ourselves in a world where only we mattered and were there to rely on. We wanted something that would bring us together and draw our focus to each other to get a head start on our new marriage before children came along. But what we found when we arrived in this wonderful dream was so very different. Things turned out to include more then just ourselves. Our lives have not been focused on each other but instead have included some amazing people who have enhanced our experience and made our journey the incredible journey it has been. We've learned more about ourselves and about each other by having more then just us in the picture. The friends we've made and people we've met, in many ways, have become a second family to us and the pain I feel in having to say goodbye is something I had not realized would become a reality.

We've changed, David and I, for having an experience like this one. And as much as rewards like these come with some very difficult consequences, I wouldn't have had it any other way. I feel like I was meant to live an extrodinary life. Like ordinary things weren't meant for me. Too many times I have not fit into a normal world and the only people who ever have been able to, and ever will be able to understand and relate to me, are those other people who are not meant for an ordinary life either. Its been a hard and painful reality at times, but I've come to understand it now and can accept it with a resolute peace. Its no longer a hardship to bear, this difference. It has become a comforting freedom that I'm embracing more and more. I feel that this move was anything but ordinary and while the dream of this, before it happenned, only included the amazing things hoped for, the unkown sacrafices that came up along the way have all been worth it. And I wouldn't change a thing. I wouldn't trade certainty for uncertainty, comfort for the absence of comfort, and normality for the strange. I am more sure now then ever before that sacrafices are necessary for a life of extraordinary. And it takes courage give up the things that bring us the most security when we pursue our dreams. I know that many people would only ever dream the dream and never take the risks required to live it, and I know now that I can never be one of those people again. We've changed, David and I, and while the time that lay in wait for us will have its moments of sadness, despair and longing, we will continue on in our dreams and forge on to the next moment of extraordinary.

Thank you to everyone who has made my time here what it was. This doesn't only include the people who live in France as my truest of confidantes needed not be here to get me through this journey. I love you all.

Love Mindy