The conditional has always been my favorite French verb tense. Probably due to the progression of grammar lessons throughout my beloved Barstow French education, the compounding of futur stems and imparfait endings made conjugating in the conditional fairly straightforward. Or maybe it's the way the conditional looks written and spoken. Or the way it softens requests (Dear Yale-PhD-Bearing-Philosophy-Professor-Whose-Class-I'm-Taking-to-Fulfill-an-Ethics-Distro, could I have an extension vs. can I have an extension) and adds a certain elegance to more delicate social interactions.
I never realized the implications of loving the conditional tense in my life until we read Philippe Delerm in my composition class this past spring quarter. It's a bit of a stretch, maybe, but bear with me. Our professor – who fulfilled my longtime dream of having a French grandmother with her effective but understanding pedagogic style, her styling of Doc Martens and colorful sweaters, or the fact that she made her daughter’s wedding dress BY HAND – introduced us to Delerm’s On pourrait presque manger dehors (We could almost eat outside). Delerm paints the picture of a lovely outdoor picnic that, ultimately, is never experienced, because of the weather. The conditional, in this sense, creates une vie presque (‘an almost life’, if you will). He laments the nostalgia of adults looking back on a life of ‘almost’ days, that were almost at hand, but have now slipped away. We look back on the small fantasies of having almost eaten on the grass. But the chairs were too wet. The grass was too hot. On aurait presque pu. We almost could have.
The beauty of Delerm’s prose is largely lost in my awful attempt at conveying its meaning, but essentially, I realized this – I’ve been living my entire life in the conditional. I go from conditional present to conditional past. Straight from “I could” to “I could have”. From I could experience this opportunity to I could have had that opportunity. When regret strikes, I rant to my roommate or consider other potential outcomes for brief moments in the shower or while running, only to compartmentalize the situation into a corner of my mind never again to be revisited.
From the moment I began applying for a fall quarter study abroad program, my choice was obvious. If you’re close to me or if I met you past 10 PM in college, you most likely know of my admiration for anything and everything French. I’m going to refrain from using the word ‘Francophile’ because it’s pretentious as hell, and I’m annoying enough about all things French as it is. The friends who have dealt with my Maps app spitting out directions in French, or the people to whom I’ve sent links raving about the Paris apartments I could live in this fall understand that spending a semester in Paris was never just another part of college to me, or some necessary worldly experience to slap onto a resume. It’s not Laudurée macarons or shopping or, God forbid, Boomerang videos in front of the Eiffel Tower. It has been a part of me for years, an inseparable part of who I am and what I love. It’s an indescribable love for the French way of doing things, the way things are taken a little less seriously and achieved in an almost whimsical way, the ease of a culture in which people can just be. It’s falling in love with the intimate corners of Paris or the rhythm of life in the south. It’s the way French words make you feel, the inexplicable significance of certain phrases, the acrobatics of sentence structure. It’s the cool elegance of street fashion or the tomboyish femme fatale; the way French music makes you nostalgic for a time and place you’ve never even known.
My conceptions of Paris are, of course, idealized. I wrote my entire Common App essay on this, so I’ll save you the painful reliving of that life stage. Paris balances on a delicate framework of racial injustice and institutionalized systematic violence. We need to understand the colonial past of French culture that laid the groundwork for current tensions and frustrations. We can’t ignore the 2003 riots and resulting issues or the danger of the Front National – there are more complexities in these relationships than I can understand or will attempt to write about. Paris, like any cosmopolitan city, represents a changing landscape of social volatility. Vibrant cultures make up the beauty of Paris in a way that often lacks glamorous representation, despite its fascinating nuances. I’ve spent my time at school taking classes that discuss the ugly underbelly of tensions in French society, as evidenced, for example, by that one trainwreck of an oral presentation last year during which I tried to explain intersectional feminism, Islamophobia, and French anti-hijab legislation in a disastrous fifteen minutes. And while I find beauty in the changing landscape of this situation, in the movements of Maghrebi women and this rich intersection of cultures, there remains much progress to be made.
A little over two months ago, I was sitting in the waiting room at the French Consulate General in Chicago, anxiously awaiting my visa interview. With me in that room were several other college students, including a girl who was moving to Paris for her entire undergraduate education in fashion. I thought of the vastly different veins of the country that we would be experiencing. There was a palpable potential in the air – one I now recognize as conditional. That girl could launch her entire career in the fashion capital of the world. That one blonde guy could study the cultural insights that influence media communications in France. I could live my lifelong dream of wandering the city or walking home under streetlights in the rain (yes, a Woody Allen reference. I went there. I’m sorry.)
In a painfully ironic twist, the conditional informed my situation in a different way. For my family, the potentiality of “I could live my dream” was overshadowed by “You could be killed or be injured.” After a tumultuous week at home, I ultimately had to give up my dream of studying in Paris this fall. I’ll spare you the details of the arguments made and things that were said, but the choice became non-negotiable. I love my family and I just can't subject them to four months of sleepless nights. Their risk threshold is different than mine, and they’ve sacrificed so much for me to be where I am today. I wish I could say I fully accept the situation with some sort of new appreciation for filial piety, but I won’t lie. Of course I resent the fact that our world, and largely my own family, has become crippled by the fear of terrorism and a radicalized hatred for the unknown. I resent that my dream has been stripped from me, but far worse things have been stripped of people who experienced the attacks first-hand or live in communities marginalized by the French state. Despite my love for Northwestern and its people, I resent the idea of living another quarter on the cusp of the stress breakdowns so characteristic of our campus culture while my peers experience other countries. It’s a part of myself that will never come to fruition. Regardless of how many nights I spent this past week crying into a pillow in my closet or sobbing through the entire opening scene of Midnight in Paris, I do not think the weight of the situation has fully dawned on me. I feel alright today, but I’m terrified that I’m only temporarily numbed to the situation and will somehow be hit by a 100-foot, crushing wave of regret and conditional potential when I realize I could have been in Paris.
There’s a certain security that lies in the conditional tense. You never really have to commit to anything. Every sentence could be a potential, imagined version of reality. Given how devastating this decision has been for me, I need to abandon the conditional in my life and speak in terms of the future. I could have been in Paris this fall. The striking regret in that sentence can be crippling, and it has been for me this past week. But in an embarrassingly similar conclusion as the one to my Common App essay, life moves on despite my nostalgia or regret. I could have been in Paris this fall, but I won’t be.
For the friends and family who already know about my situation, thank you for your kind words and encouragement. To those who will say “I’m glad you’ll be safe” - with all due respect, those words won’t make me feel better at all. However, I do understand their sentiment. It’s the same one in my family’s pleas for me to wait on my dream. I feel blessed to have people concerned about my safety. No amount of words will suffice to make me feel like I made the best decision, but it's the right decision in this situation. Knowing that my dream is still a living, breathing part of me that I will live out in the future gives me some reassurance.
Healing from the difference between my dream and my reality will take time, but it necessitates new goals and a reformed motivation. I'll do my best to exchange my lamenting of the metaphorical picnic that almost was (it's a stretch...I warned you) for what will happen this fall. I could have been in Paris this fall, but I will be in Paris at some point in the future. I will pray for understanding between governments and the people and cultures from whom they have taken so much. I have hope that eventually, I won’t have to choose between safety and living my dream, and I appreciate that I even have this choice, because it's a privilege.
So I’ll be in Evanston this fall, but someday I’ll pursue my dream. In the meantime, I’m exchanging j'aurais pu habiter à Paris for j'habiterai à Paris.