Expectations are the thief of joy.

Well hello blog, it has been a moment and if you are here reading this, I hope you are doing well wherever you are in the world.

It's cold now in Paris and hibernation season is upon us. And this means it is almost the end of the year.... and what a year it has been my friends.

In the spirit of hibernation season, I am starting to reflect more on this year... and specifically what I expected out of it. Keyword: Expectations.

When I was at the end of my senior year in high school, I remember hearing the phrase, "Expectations ruin relationships." and it has stuck with me since. "What does this mean? Is it true?" I thought to myself. My immediate knee-jerk reaction was, "This is absurd, of COURSE, you can expect life, people, and things to pan out" that is, if we believe in others and ourselves enough. Since this impulsive, gut review of this phrase, I now understand that this could be entirely true. But of course and with anything in life, it comes with caveats.

Beginning life back here in Paris, I remember having a clear vision of how I wanted this summer and year to pan out. I wanted to make new connections, dive deeply into my writing, and feel as though Paris was my oyster. I thought I would start dating right away, find someone I really connected with, and dig my teeth into my new life as a spry 20-something in this lively city. And I did... sometimes. But then came the unexpected challenges.

Upon my return to Paris, I was doing the absolute most. Concerts, restaurants, meeting new friends and reconnecting with old ones. And after about a month, I became completely burnt out, overspending, and found myself extremely unhappy with how my life felt. I remember thinking, "This is completely unsustainable". And I was right. I felt completely disconnected from myself and my goals and knew I needed to reevaluate. I felt ashamed that I had lost my sense of self after only a mere month in my "new life". I began to constantly ask myself, "What the hell am I doing here?" "This doesn't feel good" and "Why am I here [in Paris] if this doesn't feel good?". I began agonizing over this decision. I started catastrophizing, thinking I had totally screwed up, especially after I had spent months of my precious 20's trying to get back here. I began regretting the sacrifices that I had made and truly thinking I made the wrong turn.

After a few weeks of panic and internal disarray, I realized life was moving too quickly for me to refocus. I had only weeks to find a new apartment, and in between it all, I wanted to rid myself of this internal insolation and loneliness I was feeling.

I have always been an "I can do it all" kind of gal, for better or for worse. It was the beginning of August and the stress started to compound. I had less than 3 weeks to find a new place, one that could actually serve as my home for the next year or so. And after weeks of looking, giving up, and getting distracted with dating, I had gotten nowhere. I found myself avoiding my imminent future of couch surfing at friend's apartments. Constant no's, not enough savings to prove I could afford the type of place I wanted, and as a foreigner, no one would rent to me without a French guarantor. I felt trapped. In just a month's time, I would be visiting the US to see long-time friends and their families at a wedding. I remember thinking to myself, "This will look disastrous. People will ask how I am, how Paris is, and there will be no way I can say I am happy or even fine."

And just as the clock was ticking to find my new apartment, I neglected my physical health and had my first run-in with urgent care. The stress started to compound, affecting not only my health but my work and I started to feel like a complete failure. And the cherry on top of all this was that I had just started dating someone I really liked. I felt defeated as I was nowhere in the right headspace to be fun and caring for anyone else but myself. I found myself sobbing on the bathroom floor, feeling lonelier than I had ever felt, and wondering if this move to Paris was ever going to pan out for me.

For months I hadn't admitted to myself that I needed to lower my expectations. I wouldn't let myself. This move was supposed to be my dream. But at this exact moment, sitting with myself in the bathroom, I knew I needed to start being more honest with how hard these months had been, not only with myself but with others. I began confronting the uncomfortable truth that I felt deeply alone, frustrated, and burdened by my high expectations of how I just wanted to be happy.

After this night of complete breakdown, I knew that in order to be able to move forward, I genuinely needed to take everything a day at a time. This meant a complete shift. No expectations and simply be present. I started to change the way I thought, thinking maybe, just maybe, every day could just be my lucky day. I stopped worrying about envisioning my life in a month or 2 or 3... and focusing directly on the present. I started asking myself, "What can I do right now, in this moment, to make myself happy." After a few days, I found myself refocused, not worrying about the conversations I would be having in a month with friends and their families, but focusing on how I could make my life just feel better today. The key here is no expectations, but hope and faith. Faith in myself that I could count on myself to be happy despite my overwhelming stresses and hope that things might just fall into place.

I noticed that within a few days, my expectations for how I would find my new apartment started to vanish. I started being more resourceful, open-minded and overall content with my reality. I stripped away this expectation of myself, thinking that by the time September rolled around, I had to have everything figured out. The reality is, that as long as I am safe, healthy, and responsible, this is the goal. Finding the perfect place, being a perfect friend and never canceling plans etc. were expectations I had put on myself. And perfection was never the goal, but happiness was.

I am glad to report that I have indeed, found my place now. It is nowhere near perfect, but it is mine. By the grace of the internet gods, about 2 days after my bathroom breakdown, my current landlord chose my application because I explained how important it was to me to be near friends. I was honest and said that living abroad has been difficult, that I didn't have a French guarantor, and that I needed to be near the people who make Paris feel like home. She said that when she read my message, she could relate, as she lived in New York as a 20-something back in the day.

My apartment search ended up being a calumnious experience of realizing that expectations do indeed ruin experiences, at least to some degree. While I don't think expectations are inherently disastrous for relationships or experiences, there is some truth to be told about how they can alter our feelings around said relationships or experiences. I expected my summer in Paris to be full of joy and wonder and when I didn't feel this way, it made me feel ashamed and disconnected from myself for weeks. The same goes with the apartment search; I expected myself to find the perfect apartment, and it ended up making me feel like I was a failure throughout the entire process.

I know that it is unrealistic to say that we cannot have any expectations, but sometimes it does more harm than good to put pressure on ourselves to feel a certain way. The only true way to live is in fact just to live, be present, and understand that life never pans out how you expect it to. The point is to embrace the good, the bad, and the ugly, and to remain true in honoring these feelings. In the end, it is the expectations of how we should feel or how we should be, is that will ultimately rob us of our day-to-day ability to be..well...happy.

If you made it this far, thanks for coming to my corner of the internet <3 Gros bisous from Paris and à la prochaine!