The blue door.

There’s a very specific place that I can describe as the epicenter of my life : 48.8322584, 2.3213939, also known as

46 rue de la Sablière
75014
Paris, France

It’s where I spent the first 6 years of my existence, where I celebrated my first birthdays, learned to walk, and read my first books, it’s the first place I called home.

Aside from the school down the block, 46 rue de la Sablière was my entire world. The occasional outing to the Jardin du Luxembourg could have been a trip to the moon for all I knew, and the humble blue door was my planet Earth.

Then suddenly one day, without understanding why, I left the Paris galaxy. My world was destroyed, my childhood torn in two. My parents had divorced and my mother had moved to America, taking me along for the intergalactic journey.

I spent the next eight or so years viewing the blue door numbered 46 like a distant memory, like the vague remembrance of life as a child. Like how you may remember your favorite toy you played with when you were 4.

I had become definitively American. Coming back to France to spend the holidays with family had always felt foreign, like I was an impostor in a culture that wasn’t mine.

My father ended up moving in to an apartment nearby, as it turns out only a few streets away from the blue door.

It wasn’t until I was about 15 years old, on an afternoon stroll when visiting him that I ended up standing in front of it.

Face-to-face with my past, staring at the life I had left behind. The blue door reminded me of what I had been, this inanimate object reminded me of where I had come from.

This realization was the driving force behind my move back to France for university. Realizing that my past was who I was helped me find myself in the present, and gave me the confidence to return to my homeland.

After that moment, the blue door became my own personal tourist attraction when spending time in Paris. The center of my universe had been restored, and with it, my identity.

• At 17, I walked by it with my first girlfriend during a summer trip.
• At 18, I stood in front of it with my bags and my train ticket to university in another part of the country.
• At 19, I stumbled past it drunk and full of life on a bright spring day, stopping my friends to tell them the story of the blue door.
• At 20, I shed a tear on it’s doorstep after a breakup, taking a moment to collect myself and mend my broken heart.
• At 21, I dragged my luggage past it through the snow on my way back from vacation.
• Etc.. etc..

The blue door remained unmoving, watching, but not judging, as I lived my entire life in front of it.

With every opportunity I had, I took a moment to stop in front of that door, it was a physical reminder of where I had come from, where I was now, and every little crazy thing that had happened in between. That door probably knows more about me than my parents or my friends.

Some years, the door was scratched up, the paint was chipped, the metal rusty.

Some years, the door had a fresh coat of paint, as well as a set of brand new locks and handles.

I’ve found it funny how I could attach so much of my life to such a simple object.

How chance happens to bring me back to that specific point.

How I’ve traveled the world, and yet keep orbiting my home planet.

Today, I’m moving back to Paris, this time as a 25 year old man with a career and a new point of view.

And here I stand, at 46 rue de la Sablière, feeling the same way I did as a child.