As I sit at a lonesome table in Paris, within a room designed for joy and the enjoyment of fine drinks and soft pastries, I prepare myself for a moment of stillness. I’ve gifted myself with the pleasure of pure reflection at this moment. There are two waiters at the bar, and people coming in and out. People stop at the sight of the small cafe and consult with their spouse about whether or not they should go for a little pick-me-up, and they do. Behind me, a group of friends takes up a few tables on the other side of the room. I do not dare even look at them. The waitress arrives at my table.
Bonjour!
Bonjour! Parlez-vous anglais?
She looks at me like she doesn’t even know me. Fair enough, because she doesn’t, but it’s sad because it reminds me of how I might choose to look at myself in the mirror today. I order tea—which was always her favorite.
As the waitress walks away, reality begins to tighten. Suddenly, I hear the sound of laughter from the group behind my head, and my heart begins to suffer from soul-crushing heart palpitations, convincing my mind that I will soon die unless I am able to experience that kind of joy in enough time to save my life.
It is less of a symptom of jealousy that fills my pores with sebum—the seeds of my acne that I will quickly pick off at the next wave of anxiety, leaving scars as proof of my inability to deal with such feelings—it is more of a symptom of homesickness. I have become quite acquainted with this illness, and it does not always have to do with my physical location. Often, it is a sort of mental homesickness that only worsens when the distance between my body and a place becomes too far, longing for the state of mind that I once inhabited.
I have always been one to long for adventure, so I know that if my conscience gave me the opportunity, I would walk the world, aware that, with each step I am taking, I am walking paths untraveled by this body ever before. Instead, as I sit here in Paris, my mind is more occupied by the fact that I believe I find home within myself and have been on an epic manhunt for years trying to find it. Usually, in such an incident, the townsfolk will gather together, with all the king’s horses and all the king’s men. But for me, they won’t. They do not want to help aid me in the search, as they think my intentions are neurotic, saying things like, “It’s right there!” and pointing to my face—thinking that what I am looking for can be found by simply looking in the mirror. Despite my supposed physical closeness to it, the complications of finding it are something that few could even fathom.
I figure this is because I left the truest version of myself somewhere that I am unable to pinpoint on a map, and until I find her, I will be unable to truly enjoy the wonders of Paris. My first thought is that she has been left in Chicago with my lover, and my grief comes with my inability to access the way she can cry when she needs to cry, laugh when she needs to laugh, and love fully when she has the desire to love.
But at the same time, I know she is not the woman I am looking for, as those tears that I’ve mentioned are the blood shed at the hands of my sick body still searching for her and striking the heart of every woman whose soul does not align with what it is looking for.
While she is able to grace the hardwood floors of her apartment with authenticity, outside of those walls is what makes her sick. Chicago is not what she wants, as she longs for Arizona, the place where I believe I’d left a part of the girl I am looking for. There is a girl somewhere in the SouthWest from a long time ago, unfulfilled yet safe in her mother’s arms with the sun kissing her shoulders and the heat evaporating her sweat.
Simply put, I am unable to grasp the strength to take on the world fearlessly until I am able to heal this sickness, mending two souls of my past together, producing a full woman without worry of whether or not she said the right thing in order to get people to like her and instead confident in the reassurance that she feels at home in her own body. For now, I fear that the people who walk by me with their dogs and their bikes and their hands in hands with their lovers will look at me through the cafe window and see me like a glitch; a figment of myself gasping for air in and out of my body in jerking motions, blurring my image like a pause on a VHS tape, where the TV feels all staticy when you get your arm hairs too close to the screen. Everyone is looking at me, even the dogs and the babies as they pass. Anyway, the waitress arrives with my tea.
Merci.
I take a sip. And just like that, everyone goes back to being blissfully unaware that I am even there.