Red-Tape Revolt

Shortly after Ryohei left I had another run-in with the French bureaucratic system - this time not quite as light-hearted as my Christmas-package-retrieval expedition to a far-flung post office. During his visit I had the misfortune of losing my new Visa card in a Paris Metro station. Of course, "misfortune" is the word I'm using to avoid saying that I got what I deserved for carrying my card in my coat pocket; and in the end I was quite fortunate to find that it had been turned in at the ticket booth by a VERY Good Samaritan.

This could have made a great story about how the French don't deserve their reputation for being self-centered and inconsiderate if it weren't for the fact that, once found, my Visa card became a hostage of the Lost and Found labyrinth controlled by the Prefectural Police and the RATP (Paris public transit system). As I watched my Visa card slip from arm’s reach into the depths of a plastic bag and disappear into the safe behind the counter I was assured that it should be available to me at the Police station in no more than 3 working days. I could wait that long.

Watching my Visa card slip away from me...

Ten days later, having given the bureaucrats a little extra time for good measure, I rode into Paris (a two-hour, 20€ return trip) to retrieve my beloved credit card. I practically waltzed into the Police station, one of the first visitors of the morning, armed with every piece of ID I owned and sure that they would have my card at the ready. Not so. The white-collared man behind the counter made a taut grimace as he sucked his teeth and told me that my card was nowhere to be found, the Metro probably hadn’t sent it yet.

I cried.

The man became a little more sympathetic, switching from grimace to watery smile as he searched the system one more time and gave me the phone number to complain to the Metro, who told me, in turn, that they had sent my card the day after it had been lost and found. I walked back into the Police station, now filled with people retrieving everything from umbrellas to passports, and cried again.

“It must be in storage,” they told me. Shoulders shrugged as colleagues united to defend the most inefficient administrative system I have encountered in all my travels; and I wished for the first time ever that a little baksheesh transaction were an acceptable means of rectifying this unexpected “delay”. I left with a bitter taste in my mouth accompanying the salt of all the frustrated tears I had shed.

Suddenly nothing was right.

As I pounded my heels into the pavement on my walk back to the train station my spirit began to revolt. Good wine and cheese were not enough for me to love a country! Good sushi and a beautiful language were not enough for me to move back to Japan. Even the prospect of building a life with a wonderful man was not going to be enough for me to spend another year on the road.

I had to go back to Canada. After a year of rationalizing my every plan – from extending my career-break for a year in France, to the way my life would evolve when I moved back to Japan to be with Ryohei – I lost all sense of rationale. My heart was saying loud and clear, “you need to go home, to communicate, understand the things around you and feel comfortable again.” In the space of a train ride my life plans transformed themselves from an exciting adventure to a hellish nightmare in which I could only envision a very tired me going crazy trying to change who I was at the core.

After two and a half years of wandering the earth trying to find where I fit in best, I had to stop denying that I could ever be anything but Canadian.

I agonized over what to say to Ryohei. If I wasn’t moving to Japan, I was narrowing to the size of a sliver our chances of ending up together. In the end I dashed our hopes and dreams – every plan made in the course of the last year – in one 25-minute Skype conversation. He took it stoically, said he’d be in touch and disappeared.

Juju and L-Daddy, luckily, were compassionate as I poured my enlightened heart out at the dinner table. Unlike me, they weren’t surprised that I was suddenly aching with desire to get back to the place I truly belonged. They experienced the same sensation when Big-L was born and they made their hasty return back to France from Canada.

With their sanction to stay if I want but go if I need to, I’ve begun to seek out other opportunities that will bring me back to my home and native land. Though I still don’t have a definite return date, it’s quite likely I’ll repatriate myself before I reach the 11-month mark of this latest leg of travel-challenge. In the meantime, I’m indulging in a little extra good wine and cheese (and family time, of course!) to make up for what I might miss out on by leaving early.