flashback

it's mid-january, sunshine is crashing against my face, i am going to pick up my best friend at the bus station and the feeling of complete rightness is rounded out. all of this mixing with the pitch-perfect songs coming up on the shuffle on my ipod makes it all but impossible for me not to stomp down the street like i'm on the season finale of antm. 
i'm reeling in the sense of rightness. not that this is the best moment of my life, not that it doesn't get any better than this, but rather that this is exactly where i'm meant to be in this point in time. designed, privileged, somehow stumbled onto this beautiful life, that all the mistakes and heartbreaks and failures and bad timings somehow led me to where i am now, 23, single, living in the south of france, and going to collect my best friend.
my best friend who has cared so well for me. she encouraged me and told me i was brave in deciding to come to france and then continued to support me in every practical way possible. she drove down for my last weekend to help me pack up my things, plan a going away party, and gift me with a frame she made herself filled with pictures of us and of virginia, with an inscription to not forget, as if i could. she anticipated what a struggle my birthday would be thousands of miles from home and made sure i would have presents to open that morning. it's clear my name came up in the best friend lottery, that i found, to quote her, my once-in-a-lifetime friend. 
she held my hand all the way here and throughout and now i get the chance to show her a bit of the life i've built and try to care for her in a fraction of the way she's cared for me. that i get to experience this season of life with her is so right it sucks the air from my lungs. i am so lucky. 
days will come in the future with more gravity of joy, but in this moment, when the future could not be less clear, i have the sublime feeling of being in the right place for this moment and an urge to savor it because i feel it's all changing quickly.  


i have never made it from the airport to the gare routiere in less than an hour, but despite not speaking the language, sam is an expert traveler and manages to make it in far less time and is there waiting for me. 
what follows is a week of chimay, cheese, rollerblading on the boardwalk in nice, art, yelling at cats, learning french, self-timer photographs, nutella, gros bisous, and an over-turned gas tank leading to a missed flight leading to the silver lining of a bonus night. 

"i thought about one of my favorite sufi poems, which says that god long ago drew a circle in the sand exactly around the spot where you are standing right now. i was never not coming here. this was never not going to happen."