Prologue

If I were to allow myself to hope, it would be to hope that I would pour my heart and soul into writing here and showing all that I do, and I would immediately become a national phenomenon like Julie Powell. I would think about one of my plethora of followers from around the world to be a big-time publisher, who would send for me to meet with them at some ritzy hotel that an old Hollywood actor had a heart attack in, and I would be offered the chance of a lifetime to write forever. 

I don’t know if that’s going to happen. But I’m allowing myself to hope.

For as long as I have thought of college, I have thought of going to some far-off land at least one ocean away from my hometown to study. I began learning French my freshman year of high school out of sheer stubbornness; my parents told me to take Spanish one year early, and I said no. They asked what I would do. I told them I would learn French in high school. They said, that if I learned French in high school, then I had to be in a play in the eighth grade. I refused. The arguments rose in passion and ridiculousness as my parents slowly lost the ever-patient-teacher-of-the-world act, and if my memory serves we all shed tears for the side of our cause. Unfortunately, the desperate need to make up my own mind far outweighed any stage fright I had, and that year I played a Russian spy in a middle school production of I Don’t Remember The Title, phony accent and all.

I completely forgot where I was going with this story.

Oh, right.

By the time I graduated high school, I was well-versed, if camera shy, in French, and had made up my mind to plan on studying photography in a small university on the other side of town. To say that my stubborn need to make my own decisions has abandoned me in my adulthood would be similar to saying that Hawaii has left the union. Not only has it not left, I’m not sure it would be allowed to if it asked. My family pushed as much as they dared for me to continue seriously studying French, and it wasn’t until sometime in the spring of my freshman year that I took them seriously. By that time, the formal art world had finally led me past its orientation that shouted that I was always great, to the real human opinions and prides that hid behind. I was drained, lonely, and desperately wanted to give up on school. I told my family this, which prompted them to take my worldview and flip it on its head with just six words.

“Why don’t you just change majors?”

Needless to say, I’m a French major now. 

This Tuesday, I’m leaving for France for five months. If you were to ask me how I was feeling yesterday, I might have divulged into melancholy or a sentimentality that held me like a vice to the familiar. But I just said goodbye for now to some of the most important people in my life, and I’m listening to music that makes me feel like I’m in a very successful coming-of-age movie, so I can say with absolute certainty that every bit of me wants to go. Not that every bit of me didn’t want to go before, but the problem with loving people is that you give them bits of you when you love them. For the longest time, the only thing people would tell me was that they would miss me, but now, all I can hear is encouragement to run as far as I can go, and to be sure to come back with great stories and a newfound arrogance for Americans. I intend to do all this and more. 

My name is Cassidie Cox. I am not going to the place I am from. And I can’t wait to tell you about it.