Please don’t visit me.

I feel like such a bitch for complaining…but I had a friend from college visit me this week and it was the most physically and mentally exhausting 3.5 days in Paris so far. In my defense, I feel if it’s not your best friend, mother, or boyfriend, you can’t really hang out non-stop with someone and share a stupidly small attic room without wanting to kill them. The guilty party was an acquaintance I hadn’t seen in two years and hadn’t really talked to until right before Barcelona. So it was awkward. And I got grumpy. And annoyed. Until a point where I went into “quiet, brooding, homicidal tendencies” mode. When someone looks around in disgust at your life, proclaims “If my parents saw me living like this, they would pull me out and take me home” it’s more than a little offensive. First off, my “friend,” you have a free place to stay in an incredibly expensive city. Secondly, I’m spending every second of my free time taking you to crowded, obnoxious tourist shit that I’ve already seen a bazillion times and costs me money I don’t have. Then I’m having to rush home and take care of two bratty kids (while you relax and take a nap upstairs), and then immediately go out with you in the evening, all the while trying to plan outings and make sure you have a good time.

Plus, she is the type of person who walks up to people and demands loudly, “Hi! Do you speak English?” or exclaims in the metro, “OMG! I smell pee! I think it’s that homeless guy” and points at the dude or has to buy three huge Eiffel Tower statues that you then carry in your backpack all day or asks you every five minutes “How long is this gonna take? Have I seen everything? Can you take my picture five times with two different cameras?” GOD I know I’m a monstrous bitch. I don’t deserve to have friends.

So I basically felt like an au pair nonstop this week with not a single moment to myself. Let’s also add in the fact that my French dad had eye surgery this week and was HOME ALL WEEK. That meant I couldn’t even wake up in the morning, go down in my pajamas, play on Internet, and call boyfriend and family. It was absolute torture. I’ve grown so accustomed to complete independence and alone time, plus having the mornings to myself, that it was very difficult. The plus side to all this complaining? I’ll appreciate the upcoming week (all alone, no dad cramping my style) soooo much more. Plus, it’s hard enough taking care of kids, but having a dad in the kitchen eavesdropping on my shitty au pair-ness was excruciating. Most of the time I’m 60% mentally there with the kids, usually zoning out while they watch BBC cartoons or try to kill each other with pillow fights. But with him right there, I actually had to pretend to like the kids and take care of them! Hard!

There’s been strikes all week and I was stricken with fear my friend’s train to Switzerland would get canceled. One more day with her and I might have checked myself into a hostel to get away. But she did indeed finally leave (not without asking me to escort her to train station and wait up until the second she left) and I celebrated by meeting up with Leora at absolutely cozy, charming tea shop near Place d’Italie. It was very much a girlie kind of hangout, as they also sold yarn and had little cakes and cookies. It reminded me of a tea/yarn shop Andrea and I visited a long time ago in Portland, Oregon.

I miss Andrea. She’s my best friend of 18 years and it’s hard to believe only a few months ago we actually lived in the same town, on the same street. Like much of that former life, I took it all for granted. We’d wake up at 6:15 on cold, winter mornings to force ourselves to walk a mile or two, then head back to her place for coffee and delicious Hazelnut creamer full of corn syrup and hydrogenated oils and talk about our shitty jobs.

I was so unhappy in Dallas. I felt like I was suffocating. I felt like I was losing my identity in my job. I felt like I could never decompress and just breathe and not check my email on a Friday night. And I was only 25. Was it really as bad as I thought it was? Or should I just have gotten on anti-anxiety medicine and dealt with it? Looking back it, my life there doesn’t seem so bad. But I remember calling my mom on my lunch breaks and sobbing about how much I hated it there. I wish I had done this au pair job first thing out of college. Not to harp on about it, but there are days where I really felt I am regressing. I went from being financially independent, own apartment, own car, successful job, single lady…to living in a shitty attic, getting paid shit, starting all over living in a difficult city where I barely understand the language and every minor errand can turn into a bureaucratic nightmare. To sum it all up in one word: humbling.

Yeah, I can sit at home and feel sorry for myself (which I definitely do), or I can learn from this experience. First and foremost, there is no perfect job or city or significant other. I have a tendency to run away from my problems, especially when things get too hard or demanding. But I can’t spend my whole life changing cities and jobs. I often wonder if I spend a lot of my energy fighting my true self. Am I secretly a homebody, a creature of habit who wants to settle down in a rambling old country home with a vegetable garden and be domestic with a husband and two pugs and just a couple close friends and family near me? Or do I secretly crave a “glamorous” job writing for a sitcom in LA, hobnobbing with “important” people and being fiercely independent—but I deny myself this existence because I don’t have the ego to withstand the rejection and soulless existence that it requires? Is there a happy medium? Maybe songwriting in Nashville? Or am I just a spoiled brat who wants to have their cake and eat it, too?

Why can’t I just be happy to know I have these options? I could be a Chinese indentured servant having my father make all my decisions for me. Why can’t I just relax in Paris these next two months, knowing it won’t last forever, know that by Christmas I’ll be back home with my family and then moving in with a guy who’s crazy about me and knows all the bad stuff about me and still likes me? Two factors would really help me in Paris: good weather and more money. When it’s fucking cold and blustery outside and I have to walk twenty minutes to the metro and it’s dark by 7pm and I am burning through my precious savings and can’t even have coffee and dessert with my friends without feeling guilty…that’s when I hate Paris.