I uprooted my life and moved to Paris
A love letter to doing hard things alone
I’m living every eldest daughter’s dream because I can officially say that I’ve packed up everything and moved to new country. While it probably seemed sudden on Instagram, I have actually been dreaming of and planning this move for half a decade. Sorry to everyone who’s heard me blab about it for the last 5 years. But hey, we did it!
I’m reporting live from France, a month in, writing this from a road trip through the south of France with Janice Fong. We’re on our last day in Marseille, where we started the morning with my current food fixation (see below). Today was a particularly gloomy day, with bursts of hail storms that were clearly abnormal as every one pulled their phones out while golf balls pelted umbrellas on patios. This weather would usually put me in a funk, but it rolled off the shoulder much easier here. We carried on with our plans, ducking into cafes when it got too wet, walking around Vieux-Port and doing some shopping.
My moving week feels like lifetimes ago and such a difference from the peace and quiet I’ve been enjoying in France. With the purging, packing, and worrying long behind me, I’m finally feeling settled and ready to write.
The struggle behind the move
I’ve been saving the logistics of my move for another article for anyone who might be thinking of doing the same thing. While I did decide on my move over 5 years ago, most of the execution happened in the last 2. Visa decisions, document gathering, understanding how each country’s bureaucracy and timing works, pet relocation research…the list goes on. What the list didn’t account for was the ending of a 4 year relationship and suddenly having to trim a plan that was built for two to now work for just one.
Some things got a little easier. My ex had already used up some of his visas in the past so not having him to worry about meant I actually had more visa options to choose from. I also no longer had to consider where he wanted to live, what he wanted to do, and how to make sure he had a plan too.
Other things felt a lot scarier. The budget was cut in half. The luggage load was suddenly an obstacle. And to be frank, it was hard going from knowing you’d have someone with you to just tackling it all alone. Even something as simple as figuring out where to call an Uber in an airport you haven’t been to before started to sound terrifying. I kept overthinking every little detail hoping that if I just over-planned everything, it would feel less intimidating. I think I just made myself unnecessarily anxious to be honest.
It took me a while to get used to the idea of moving on my own again. There was a line I kept rewriting in my journals as a reminder but also a prayer. “This move was always going to happen, with or without him. It was never meant to be a plan for two. It was always mine.”
Bring back being delusional
While Notion boards and to-do lists helped (a lot), I don’t think this plan would’ve been possible without a healthy dose of delusion as well. I sometimes think that a lot of it felt “easy” because I screamed it into the universe one too many times over the last 5 years. I said it aloud. Told everyone who would listen. Wrote it down religiously. Sometimes it feels like I willed it to happen. And slowly and surely, everything in my life reoriented itself to support it.
I am lucky girl syndrome’s personal PR rep. I honestly have no idea where this irrefutable belief in myself comes from but I wholeheartedly live off the idea that everything will always work out in the end. Maybe because it’s proven to time and time again. I also trust that I’ve earned it.
Looking back now, it amazes me how many things shifted into place without me noticing. I left my downtown apartment and moved in with my ex an hour away from the city. The goal was the experience living together before we made an international move together but it was also the perfect opportunity for both of us to start putting more money aside into our savings.
If that hadn’t happened, I wouldn’t have had the extra bedroom to turn into a studio/office. Being away from the city also meant that I spent a lot more time filming and editing.
Somewhere down the line, I also miraculously got invited to attend the Superbowl with Adidas. I’m not a sports creator. Didn’t even talk about fitness at that point. What made them choose me (a girl who’s never watched a football game in her life) for this insane opportunity? Because of that opportunity, I discovered what it felt like to be in a room filled with young, ambitious, creatives and feel like I actually belong. This ended up being the final push I needed to quit my full-time job in tech.
Had I not moved in with my ex, I also wouldn’t have realized just how incompatible and toxic we really were for each other. While the hopeless romantic in me once believed that a change in environment could’ve made a difference for our dynamic, the reality is doing this move on my own was the best thing that could’ve happened to me.
None of these events were ever on a to-do list yet they all sneakily led me to exactly where I needed to be to wholeheartedly do this move.
Teodoraa phrases is perfectly in her article: “What you focus on grows, not because the bad disappears, but because it stops being the only narrator in the room.”
If that isn’t pure magic, I don’t know what is.
Since I’ve been here
Life in France has been a dream but anything but perfect. On the day I arrived, there was an animal transport ban after 1pm so the relocation agency could no longer bring Mika to our Airbnb. A minor panic attack and many phone calls later, I was thankfully able to book a last minute car service just for her. A week and a half in, I locked my keys in my apartment. Shoutout to Google Translate for coming in clutch while I negotiated with a local locksmith entirely in beginner French. Oh and did I mention I arrived during the height of the canicule? It was 40 degrees on my second day and my single floor fan was working very VERY hard.
I’m sure there will be more mishaps. More things that feel extra hard to handle alone. But hard things don’t feel as hard when you’re where you’re supposed to be. Being in France still feels a bit like a fever dream but it also feels like the foundation of a new kind of security. A confirmation that I was kind of right all along…that everything always works out in the end.
All that is to say—I will be writing to you from France for at least the next few months. I’m in this magical phase of my life where I’m just going where the road takes me. And even if this season’s figs drop and rot, I know more will grow in following seasons so long as I keep watering the tree.
Here’s to doing that.
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Angel xo