While I am, indeed, still standing, I can’t really say, I’m better than I’ve ever been.

Nor feeling like a true survivor. Right now I’m just trying to survive hour by hour.

I can’t think straight. It is 5a.m. in the morning to the other me — that’d be the one I left back in Paris, at the corner of Boulevard Raspail and Rue Vaugirard.

That me feels much more real than this me.

This me? Is trying to settle back to her previous life, that resembles more a couple lifetimes than a couple weeks.

Isn’t it amazing how that can happen to us? How we can come back, so changed, so different, yet we still look the same, we say the same things, our lives are right where we left them … except … something inside of us has shifted.

We are forever changed on the inside. And so the in and the out try to sort things out but it just becomes a big ‘ol cluster F and now here I am.

Half in tears. Completely drained and exhausted. Wondering how the hell I am still even up.

I’ll tell you why I’m still up. My delusional protest. If I am awake, France is still real. There’s a chance maybe this is all just a bad dream and I will wake up to the sound of horns honking at bicyclists early in the morning on Raspail.

To fall asleep, is to accept. Not ready for that yet.

I feel torn. Let’s add rather confused to the list, too. At how I’m supposed to do this life thing tomorrow?

I didn’t think about anything while I was away. I didn’t worry. No work. No thinking of anything future related … just each day as it came. It was a luxury.

Trying to now recall and remember how I did things before is one big blank.

But something tells me, everything is okay. More than okay. It is just as it should be, even though it doesn’t quite feel that way yet.

This is one part Higher Self and two parts the warm spring breeze blowing through my open office windows.

Spring … new, fresh beginnings and possibilities. My favorite time of the year.

So much to do; to look forward to. Paris will always be there, waiting for me. And I’ll always be ready.

For now it’s time to look ahead towards the new, whatever that may be.