I got lost in a daydream of silence and peace.

Paris. who does not love Paris? right? well, I'm not saying that I hate it, but I'm saying that living in Paris is not the same as just admiring it from afar.

I remember when the teacher asked the class once what their dream house would be like, and the majority said they want a grand mansion with a big backyard full of flowers and strawberry plants and live the best life they can get while cooking in their fancy white kitchen inside and their kids would be playing outside waiting for their father to come home.

I mean...it is cute. really. But boring. No offense to anyone who dreams of this life, it's beautiful and cozy, but this is not what I think about when I think of home.

I remember saying I'd like to have a small apartment with a busy balcony full of flowers that I can't even pronounce their names and have it view a cramped neighborhood in the middle of Paris. waking up to the beautiful sunlight and heading down the street for fresh croissants and hot coffee before heading to work. 

That is what I worked for. That's what got me out of bed every morning because I needed independence, and I needed the peaceful life it could offer me. I got lost in a daydream of silence and peace.

Now three years later I did make it. And I'm so thankful to be writing this from my messy bed in the three rooms apartment I own while the sun paints everything gold.

I love it. But it's not perfect as I thought it would be.

It can sometimes be very crowded where I live, drunk couples arriving at their apartments at dawn while wavering and knocking things down and giggling their lives off. It drives me crazy sometimes. And sometimes I like it, it made everything feel alive. sometimes strangers don't even know they are keeping me company. As I said, I don't hate it, but I also don't adore it as much as I planned to. It's complicated, you know? 

I love to think that the birds are singing for me every morning. 

I love the fresh air.

I love the mixed fragrance of pastries and flowers at the end of the street.

I love the moment when everything turns to a gold orange while the sun is setting indicating that this is a beautiful ending to the day. 

I love the comforting silence that embraces the apartment when the only sound I can hear is my vinyl playing.

I love going to the beach at the weekends and sailing my stress away to another land. 

I love getting lost walking in the middle of the night while the gleams flicker. 

I love the feeling of being an adult when I get back from college and heat some leftovers for lunch.

I love all the memories I gathered.

I love hoping that I am never getting old. 

but that's not all.

I hate when it's winter and I'm all alone.

I hate the fact that I can't smell my mother's cooking when I get back after an exhausting long day. 

I hate that I sometimes feel like a stranger walking between all these people.

I hate to think that this is all just a dream. 

I hate getting lost.

I hate missing my family.

I hate the loneliness.

I hate when everything gets too loud and vociferous that I regret my decisions and feel like I need a quiet weekend in the most faraway place on earth, like waking up in a small house near the sea and look up at the bluest sky. 

And I hate the fact that I'm hating all of this because it's my choice. But I love the fact that my list of lovings is longer than the things I hate. 

Paris is very beautiful. really. It's one of my favorite places in the whole wide world. The idea of living in it is still kind of surreal for me. I don't think I can imagine my life not living here anymore. This is home. Even though it isn't where I was born and raised and created memories while being a kid.

But I realized at some point we all discover our brains. We discover that we have imagination, and we have dreams, and we have stories in our minds that nobody knows about and maybe no one will one day. We discover that we can't just sit and accept that the life we were given as children is the life we are going to live for our whole lives. Once we discover that we can be more than humans who wake up to go to school and eat and sleep and that's it. we can't just accept that. we are given the glorious gift of imagination. everybody has it. Whether we created funny scenarios in our minds as kids when we got bored sitting with old guests or in the dentist clinic waiting for our turn. Or when we were sad with some situations that happened in our lives so we escaped it by creating this perfect world with our favorite people in it. once we discovered it, everything felt better. Once we believe that we can do stuff that nobody else believes we can, life gets better.

So, this is the city. this is the life I built in my brain when I got bored or when I needed an escape. And now it's more than a daydream. It's my life.

so whenever it feels like the world is ending, look up at the sky, and listen to the birds singing as if nothing happened, we all get another day, and we all get the chance to breathe and begin again. And whatever happened you can change it. Because you can change your life.

Whether you like the city, the country, the suburbs, the most crowded place on earth, or the quietest cottage beside a beautiful blue lake, the world is beautiful.