Blue Dress Hot Mess

The Paris Diaries: 03/02/25. Before I Leave.

It is one of those grey February days when there is nothing to do but listen to the puppy snoring. I have so much going on in my life – as everyone does, surely, when we are suddenly told to kiss goodbye to the ‘January re-set’ (full-on snog) and hello (a tentative cheek-peck) to the year itself – but there is just now an oasis of calm; a nothingness, which I suppose I could choose either to relish or to drown in. I think this is the calm which shall pervade my month, travel with me to Paris (we leave at 7:15 in the morning next Wednesday; I have just worked it out, and doing so has eaten up my nerves and secreted pure, tingling, taste-able excitement), and seep slowly into 2025 as a New Year peace which, somehow, lasts. I think it is because I am aware now, this year, this month, this day, of Possibility; more notably, I am aware of the distinct possibility that everything might go wrong. When you’re in a relationship, your own happiness relies too much on someone else. That is at once the most beautiful and the most dangerous thing in the world. To build the foundations of one’s own strength upon the reliance of the hand of another. (The good Christian reader is privately singing ‘All My Hope On God is Founded’ in their hearts. The choirboy within them smirks at verse 4, but croons the tune so forcefully they are singing from the depths of their tummies). That is why, this year, I feel better: no one can leave me; no one can show up one evening and walk out the door, having calmly retracted two years’ worth of love. Frankly, it is a relief. I know things will go wrong; things will die. But I am in control of this tiny section of my destiny, and I choose, wholeheartedly, wildly, passionately, to steer my particular ship towards pains au chocolat and croissants, and dog walks along the Seine. I am fulfilling a life-long dream, but I choose to put no pressure on it. If I pressurized it, there’s a chance my dream would become like my relationship; too reliant. So I retract my pressure, calmly, and submit myself to my fate of boulangeries and boursin. There are worse fates for a girl of 21 and her small spaniel to submit themselves to.

Paris, sois douce. Je te promets que je t’aimerai pour ça. Be kind to this girl and her dog. She loves you already.