Be Real

I said goodbye to my husband. It was six in the morning, Paris was dark and cold and he was leaving for a long week. As I closed the door, I started feeling tears blurring my eyes.

I mean, tears of joy.

I ran around the apartment, la la la, Catherine Deneuve in Les Parapluies de Cherbourg. I poured myself a blistering coffee, popped a croissant in the oven (my version of popping the champagne), displayed the whole thing on a tray—not without its vintage embroidered linen cloth—and put myself back to bed where I sat right in the middle, entirely spread out, for hours.

I stayed there long enough to text the entire list of my contacts—except for my husband, of course—and I thought about all the delicious things I would do in his absence.

—

I became so much happier when I decided to accept reality.

It took me a long time to welcome it into my life. I knew the theory that good comes with bad, but practically, I did nothing of the sort. I wanted everything to be perfect.

I think that, deep down, the dreamer in me had never truly grown up.

Because perfection doesn’t exist, I had to make it up…