Published on BonjourParis.com, September 2008.

I came to Paris to find an escape. I don’t have money, I don’t have working papers and I don’t speak French. I’m scared as merde. But I’m ecstatic.

For as long as I can remember, I have done what was expected of me. I obeyed my parents, cleaned my room, got good grades. In high school, I ran myself ragged editing the youth section of the local newspaper, heading the debate team, participating in student government, playing sports, volunteering for my church and holding a string of after-school jobs. The hard work paid off; I graduated with honors and an acceptance letter from Princeton.

College was more of the same, but on top of the intense workload, there was also the pressure to land the perfect internships, make the right social connections and, for the girls at least, stay super-skinny. By the end of it, I was exhausted. For a while, I was tempted to join the group exodus to Wall Street, but a violent aversion to numbers and 80-hour work weeks killed that idea quickly. I considered other options – fellowships, grad school, Teach for America. In the end, I chose none of the above. I packed up my life and moved to Europe, and now here I am, in Paris. My plan is to read a lot, write a lot, eat a lot and absorb as much art and culture as I can.

My story is by no means new. Paris has long attracted people who, like me, dream of something beyond what’s in front of them. Countless writers, artists, musicians, filmmakers and ordinary people have come here looking for inspiration, and found it. I want to be inspired. Many others have come here looking for love, or sometimes just lust, and found it. I want to fall in love. A thriving ex-pat community is proof that this city has the power to keep you here. I never want to leave.

My fascination with Paris started, as it often does, with a movie. I’m not referring to “An American in Paris” or “Amelie” or any of the other famous films immortalizing the City of Light. No, I am talking about “Passport to Paris,” a 1999 movie released straight to VHS which starred the Olsen twins, before the eating disorders and before the bizarre fashion choices. I remember being captivated as Mary Kate and Ashley, circa age 12, worked their way through Paris. They goofed around the Eiffel Tower and sashayed through the streets with fashion models. They made groundbreaking speeches on municipal water policy before a room of French diplomats. And, naturally, they flirted with a pair of cute French boys on mopeds.

Wow, my hormone-driven adolescent mind thought, Paris is a place where dreams come true.

I still feel this way. I felt it as my plane descended on Charles de Gaulle at sunset last week. I feel it when I step out my front door onto the cobblestones of the rue des Rosiers in the Marais each morning, and I feel it every time I successfully ask a storekeeper for directions in my terribly broken French. It’s a sense of excitement, a sense of possibility, a sense that anything can happen.

For a girl of 22, without a job, a mortgage or a significant other tying me down, this sense is intoxicating. As I walk the streets of Paris, energy flows through me. The grin on my face is so gleeful it’s almost embarrassing. Inside, I feel 12 again, like anything can happen if I just dream it.

And so I’ve decided to become an ex-pat. You know us; we sit in cafés, smoking cigarettes and reading Hemingway. I am writing this in the Café L’Etoile Manquante, Marlboro Light in hand, with my busted copy of “A Moveable Feast” (naturally purchased at Shakespeare & Co.) sitting next to my MacBook. It’s a complete cliché, the ultimate escape, and I’m loving every second of it.