Found in the Sea

 

 The roar of garbage trucks and construction. Whipped cream pooling over porcelain cafe cups. Sand dumped from shorts pockets and bras and brushed out onto linoleum floors. The faint sound of Portuguese music from open shutter windows. Melting ice cream. The rush of the train, motorcycles skimming past. Glass shattering under breaking tables. The fresh salt air after enclosed red velvet warmth. Waves crashing, again, again, again.
 

That was my Cannes.

The apprehension was there, of course. Studying abroad to me is like a walk-in closet. You go in this new place with what you think is important, and you are excited and/or dreading the fact that you have to figure out how everything will fit into place. It was hard to accept the fact that I would be the new girl again, the freshman walking through the hallway feeling like all eyes were judging the miniscule hairs out of place on my head. Yet in the moments before I was to be introduced to the group, I strolled around the empty campus and breathed in that salty sea air. I took a seat in a movie room and propped open my Fitzgerald short stories collection. The first line I saw:

 "When your eyes first fall upon the Mediterranean you know at once why it was here that man first stood erect and stretched out his arms toward the sun... The Riviera! ... the whole world has come here to forget or to rejoice, to hide its face or have its fling..." (How to Live on Practically Nothing in a Year)

 I am a very spiritual person. After reading that, I was bursting with happiness. 

Life has a way of just ending up okay.

The night before, I had sat on the beach with my parents for a final sunset with them by my side. Legs curled up into my chest, I watched the waves and the light cascade down over darkened mountain ridges, lights twinkling on from yachts and fishing boats still out at sea. I realized, as the sun's rays dripped down through the sky and slipped away behind the hills, that I was now alone. I knew I would make friends, I knew I would be doing a lot of things in Cannes and Paris with a group of people all on the same adventure I was. Yet there wouldn't be people there who knew how my heart ticks. I wouldn't be able to mosey down streets and eat crackers all day long like with my cheap dad, or get overly ecstatic about every animal in sight like with my mom. I knew that for awhile, I would feel disconnected in a way I had never felt before.

I would have to be on my own emotionally. I would have to preserve my own memories for myself with no family beside me. It is so much easier to treasure a moment when you are with your family. There is a connection there, a link between hearts that is so hard to replicate with newly made friends. The sun seemed to be slipping away into a darkness that I was afraid to dive into. I had to find a way to have my own moments of euphoria in a place with people who might have completely different goals and expectations and desires. There was not enough Fitzgerald in the world to truly comfort me in that moment of hidden panic.
 

Back in this closet. You have plopped all of your things in a heap and have now stared at it for awhile, wondering how to conquer it. Some tears, in my case, were definitely involved. So with a deep breath, you try to create something from the heap.

We spent our mornings in class, our afternoons at the beach, and our nights dancing with bottles in hand. We saw chic boutiques and topless beaches, climbed up castle walls and dove to down to jellyfish swarms. We danced on tables and in hallways and in front of mirrors, cried to movies and sang to iTunes, ate or avoided eating, drank relentlessly, wandered in markets and out of bars, walked and ran, hiked and climbed to the top of the world, slept on trains and giggled in buses, bought too many clothes and spoke too little French, and we saw it all and smiled and breathed it in.
 
Before I knew it, I was sitting on the beach again, two weeks later, for a final time. I looked at the rays slide through a swirling rose sky and glanced to the people, the friends, around me. The heap had turned out to be a treasure hold. The shelves were organized, and full of new things that made it look even more full. Filled.

 
I was fulfilled, even in just two weeks. My expectations, my goals, my desires were mirrored in these smiling faces around me. I knew we had a long way to go, a lot of new situations to encounter that would test these first strong bonds. But we had already shared so much. Maybe I could have what I thought was gone with the departure of my parents. Maybe I could start building a new closet. I always have followed the ultimate girl motto: you can never have too many things.

Fitzgerald in the final pages of his story said, "And though we have saved nothing... and except the time I tried to smoke a French cigarette... we haven't yet been sorry that we came." With leftover sand in my pockets, a few regrets in tow, and new bonds made, I closed up one closet and turned to another even larger one.

It was time for Paris to fill me to the brim.