The one where she decides to go to France

"You must be brave," people kept saying to me. Brave? It might sound brave to some, I suppose, if not downright brazen, that I would suddenly decide to put the remainder of my English-teaching savings toward taking a two-month solo trip to France. I didn't know anyone in France. My mission, simply, was to learn a bit of French and spend some time on some French farms. I had a French school in Paris picked out for the first three weeks but, otherwise, I would be making plans as I went. "Brave." The choice of descriptor seemed logical and, yet, I didn't feel brave. I didn't feel anything. Not even scared. The fact that I was truly going to France--had paid for the non-refundable airline ticket and sent a deposit for the language school--didn't seem real to me. Empirically, yes, I knew I was going. But I didn't feel it.

This emotional numbness, this unshakable malaise, was one of the main motivations that led me to decide to go to France in the first place: I wanted to feel something. It seemed that I hadn't really felt anything for a considerable while. Which, in retrospect, was probably not entirely accurate. I was just depressed. And I think we've all experienced moments (I do almost daily) where we compare the present moment to a preceding one, and are filled with insufferable angst that things aren't as good now as they were when we were in that other town, other job, other relationship, other mindset. Of course, that earlier reality had its imperfections, too, we just don't consider them because we are depressed.

Such was my condition in February of this year. I was jobless, living with my parents, my savings from teaching in Japan trickling away slowly as I searched less-than-half-heartedly for a job. My sister, Lindsay, had just gotten married and, with no more wedding to plan and prepare for, I was left to face the void of my future, armed with nothing but a bachelor's degree in English and a vague intention to go back to school for something. I started to panic. It seemed that all of the career advice I had ever received--to follow my dreams, to do what I love--was rendered irrelevant by the growing realization that I had no dreams and, if in fact there was something I would love doing, I had no idea what it was because I had never done it before.

One day in late February I was hanging out with some friends. This is usually a good idea because being with friends helps me to feel better about my lack of direction in life because most of my friends are in a similar situation. However, since we share the same predicament, my friends are unable to give me any helpful advice and, as soon as I am no longer with them, I go back to being depressed. But on this particular day, one of my friends said something to me that changed everything. She asked me where I wanted to go on my next vacation. It was an innocent question, I'm sure, posed simply for the sake of interesting conversation. Without having to think about it much, I told her I wanted to go to France and spend some time learning French. It was an idea that I had toyed with for a while toward the end of my second year in Japan, and I had never completely discarded it, though the quizzical looks I got from people when I told them the idea and their unanswerable questions, "Why France? Why French?" had persuaded me, in my insecurity, to let it become obscured in the back of the closet of my brain. Now, with the permission of my friend's hypothetical question, I pulled the idea back into the light and, dusting it off, noted just how strongly it still appealed to me.

Yet, in answer to those questions as to my reasons for choosing France and it's language, "Because I want to," didn't seem like strong enough justification for spending several thousand dollars to go on vacation for two months. For the sake of explaining myself to others, I focused mainly on the reasons I shouldn't not go to France:

1. I may never have the time and money to do something like this again.
2. I'm 25 now and it's cheaper to do a lot of things in Europe if you're 25 or younger.
3. I don't have a family to look after.
4. I might regret it later if I don't.

Though it works unfailingly in arithmetic equations, in life, a double negative does not make a positive. Using a roundabout means to justify myself to others rather than simply having the confidence to be honest about my own hopes and passions provided me with a compelling enough argument to legitimize my trip to France and to motivate me to take the practical steps needed to get the trip in motion; but, it set the precedent that this trip was intertwined with my need to prove myself to others, a need that on several occasions threatened to destroy what otherwise turned out to be possibly the greatest two months of my life. It was not until the last week of my trip that I finally confronted this need of mine more seriously than I ever have before and, in a monastery not far from the border to Germany, glimpsed the road to freedom from self-deprecation. It is a road I continue now and will probably always continue to walk but, on the first of March, the day I officially decided to go to France, I was miles from the trail head.

In the three weeks leading up to my departure, I tried to mentally grasp the gravity of what was coming, but all my pondering failed to elicit the feelings of enthusiasm or nervousness that might be expected of someone in my situation. How can you be excited about something if you have no idea what to expect? And how can you know what to expect if you've never done anything remotely like it before? No, I wasn't scared. But one thing I certainly didn't feel--even as I packed all the belongings I would need for two months into a 65-liter backpack, as I sent emails to the absolute strangers who didn't speak English whom I would be staying with in Paris, as I hugged my dad goodbye in front of the San Diego airport on the morning of the 23rd of March--was brave.