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Paris.
2023-09-28 · 7 min read
Recently a couple of friends and I were talking about a potential winter trip to Japan. I was listening to The Chainsmoker's Paris and suggested it.
And then it hit me. It just hit me, you know? Recently a couple of friends and I were talking about a potential winter trip to Japan. I was listening to The Chainsmoker's Paris and suggested it.
It just hit me, you know? Am I living in an alternate universe, one where I don't sleep where I used to sleep, don't live where I live, don't go to school like I used to go to school, one where suggesting a trip to Paris is... possible?
It just hit me, you know? One of my friends (and favorite people) just turned 19. I'm turning 17 in three - no, two months. I feel abnormally young in the presence of older people and abnormally old in the presence of nostalgia. They say your teenage years are the ones with the most change. The ones where the current year is almost always exponentially different from the last. If I had to give a sentence description of what happened since I officially qualified as "no longer a kid", you can see the statistical significance of this. 10: I graduate from elementary school. 11: I move, with my siblings and parents, five of us in total, in a broke-down 2013 Toyota Corolla from Brooklyn, NYC, to a small town in Massachusetts, packing up our entire lives in one night. 12: I suffer from the worse bout of social anxiety I've ever had and find out I'm queer. 13: COVID means I get back into programming. 14: Just living through COVID and trying to figure out the weirdness of returning in-person, this time not to middle school but high school. 15: I find out about Hack Club, and fly across the country to attend Assemble, which has changed the trajectory of my life.
And 16, current me: Took an Amtrak to Vermont. Ran a club at my school. Took an Amtrak to Washington DC and a flight to Salt Lake City alone. Sitting alone, thinking alone for a week, people watching. Helped run an event in New York City. Did a summer program at MIT. Most importantly now: Broke off from my parents, no longer going to school, working full-time, and all the priorities that come with being an adult: finishing school through alternative education, finding a home, learning to drive, thinking about the long-term. If 15 changed the trajectory of my life, 16 has been like freefalling in the air and then finding out how to use the parachute you have.
It just hit me, you know? There's so much to process. Maybe now's the time for alone time, to do something drastic like the DC-SLC trip.
I walked home (temporary, a temporary home) from a game night (Magic: The Gathering!) tonight and told everyone I was just a bit tired. The truth is, I'm a bit tired emotionally. Maybe the reason why I've been struggling lately is that - is that - I just need time to think things through.
paris \ 'pa-res\ n 1 : a sentimental yearning for a reality that isn't genuine 2 : an irrecoverable condition for fantasy that evokes nostalgia or daydreams
When I got home, which was about an hour ago, I pulled out my laptop and started watching The Mitchells vs. The Machines. I remember watching this sometime during 2020, 2021, 2022 - when it's unexciting, time still flies by, just in a blur, as I've learned - and thinking: this is what I want to happen to me.
In The Mitchells vs. The Machines, the main character, Katie, gets into her dream school, a film school across the country, on the west coast. The night before she's slated to leave, she gets in a fight with her father over her interests, which he doesn't believe are the best for her. (The classic: "How are you going to make money off that?") In the process, her father accidentally breaks her laptop, and to make it up to her, decides to bring the whole family on a road trip across the country. From there: fighting robots taking over the world, which leads to them reuniting as a family.
I remember watching this movie and doing the thing I tend to do: map the characters to my life, as if I'm living in a movie. (Maybe I am living in a movie, and the camera people will hop out any moment.) I was Katie - the queer girl, the one with the interests that no one else shared - but I just had to find my people.
Maybe I am living in a movie doesn't need to be in parentheses, really. I am living in the movie. I am Katie. I loved programming, but I didn't know anybody around me that did. I found my people now, though. I found my people.
Except the rest of the movie never happened. It's a feel-good movie. A feel-good movie about families, families that make up, families that never fight again, about inseparable families. From Paris:
We were staying in Paris
To get away from your parents
And I thought, "Wow, if I could take this in a shot right now
I don't think that we could work this out"
Out on the terrace
The irony of this. If we actually went to Paris, it would be even more ironic. "To get away from your parents" - to get away from my parents, who abused me physically as a child and verbally and emotionally as a teenager. And it just hit me - I should be really happy right now, that I'm away from them physically, that I don't cry every two weeks. I should move on, I should start living the life that I wanted to live when I daydreamed, when I yearned for a reality that I thought never in a million years would be genuine.
I'm taking this all in a shot right now, and I don't think I can work this out. Maybe it's because I had it different in my head: I was going to finish school, help my parents run their restaurant, go to a college my parents would (hopefully) be proud of (?), and start living my life. The revolving factor: my parents my parents my parents. Holy fuck! And now: start living my life. Jumped straight to the step. I should be excited about it, I really should.
We were staying in Paris
To get away from your parents
You look so proud standing there, with a frown and a cigarette
Posting pictures of yourself on the Internet
Out on the terrace
We breathe in the air of this small town
On our own, cutting class for the thrill of it
Getting drunk on the past we were livin' in
The one thing I've learned is that problems never end. Humans have this horrible, horrible tendency - or maybe just me - to make problems appear out of thin air. Maybe it's the world we live in, where we survive by making problems appear out of thin air and then attempting to solve them over and over again. The wheel's right next to you, you say. Your problems? They can be solved.
I was talking with one of my past teachers recently, and her advice was to finish what I need to do in [redacted; where I used to live] and then move on to the exciting life I was about to start leading.
And maybe that's why it's been an overwhelming two months: I'm already leading that life. And I should pick up the reins sometime. Put aside the nostalgia? Maybe not. It's different from putting aside the past.
So then? It's time for me to start putting aside the past, I guess. I know what problems I need to fix right now. It's up to me, no one else now.