Just spent the last hour deleting (most) of what I'd written of my stupid never-ending never-gonna-be-finished book/memoir/still don't know what to call it.  Came across this tiny segment in a part that I had written about Paris.  I am the most sentimental bitch I know.

"Waking up way too early AGAIN, and goddamn it this alarm clock is annoying.  I forgot to shut that big bay window that faces my bed AGAIN, and my toes and nose are froze.  I wish this stupid clock had a snooze button on it.  Do they not have snooze buttons here?  They don’t have a lot of useful things.  Examples: fitted sheets.  Peanut butter.  Large dogs as pets.

Okay I seriously have to get out of bed right now or I WILL fall back asleep and miss class.  Then I’ll get yelled at and probably fail and end up failing college because my credits won’t transfer back to my home university.  If you can even call it a university, but, yeah, whatever.

The city started lighting up about an hour ago.  Buildings, cigarettes, sunshine.  I never want to leave this stupid little bed that I’ve already shared twice, but there’s so much to see outside these four walls I almost feel forced to.  Tough life, having to wake up early to learn a new language and explore a foreign city with the most haphazardly fabulous group of people I've ever had the pleasure of exploring with.

This is legitimately the last thought that goes though my head as I decide to get the hell out of bed and into the shower.  Damn it I forgot my right shower shoe is broken… looks like I’m walking to the showers barefoot this morning.  Again.

I somehow manage to make it through my entire morning routine without thinking one single thought, no electrons firing through my head, no words escaping my lips, nobody to share some dialogue with, and so I forego monologue with myself.  I really love this city, even if I don’t know it yet.  You know that quote from Johnny Depp in Blow, “life passes you by while you’re making grand plans for it?”  When I reminisce on these mornings, that summer, those afternoons spent wondering ‘what should we do,’ I understand exactly what it means.

Babies. Actually. Wear. Berets. Here.

Sitting on the cement shores of the Seine drinking wine from the bottle and dangling our feet dangerously over the edge, pretending we could never fall in until one of us got so drunk that we did.  That is a filthy river, by the way.

Kissing strangers on boats at night, buying drinks whose names we forgot the next morning but whose retributions we paid in full.  Shots of espresso to clear the mind and rubbing with fists to clear the eyes.  Beginning our days with the long commute to school, classes held in buildings older than our country, languages spoken so fluently and interchangeably you’d almost never guess you were somewhere other than home.  Such beautiful mornings, even more breathtaking evenings.  Cathedrals exploding with light and sound at night, street performers and people selling cans of beer on the corner before the holy dirty combination of beauty and humanity.  Nobody can’t fall in love with this city.  You don't have to come here to fall in love.  I’m in love with it all.  I want to put my hand against the cool marble stone of the Sacré Cœur just one more time, just to see if it feels the same as when I was deliriously happy that summer there, with them, with my heart in a million pieces.

Je pourrais rester et de ne jamais quitter.  I could stay and never leave.