Aligned & Awake: Round Two in Bordeaux and I Finally Know What I’m Doing (Mostly)
Turns out life gets a lot easier when you already know where to buy your cheese, do your laundry, and stop walking in circles like an eejit.
Aligned & Awake
My reflections on life through travel, human design, energy, astrology, and emotional clarity. Not as a guru. Just one person figuring it out in real time.
I’m back in Bordeaux.
Last time I arrived here, I walked everywhere like a confused extra in my own life. Phone in hand. Google Maps spinning. Me, standing in the middle of a street like it might offer guidance if I stared at it long enough.
Every decision took effort.
Where do I buy groceries? Why is the milk on the shelf and not in the fridge? Why does the washing machine feel like it needs a degree in engineering?
I smiled through it. Of course I did. I was in France. Be chic, Tanya. Meanwhile, my brain was doing a full triathlon.
This time, I land and something in me doesn’t brace.
I already know the walk to the café. Not in an I think it’s this way kind of confidence. In a body-knows kind of way. Left at the corner. Cross before the light changes. The place with the slightly aggressive matcha and the man who never writes anything down.
I walk in like I belong there, which is bold considering my French still sounds like I’m ordering through interpretive dance.
He nods. I nod back like we’ve done this for years.
Something has shifted and it took me a beat to name it. Last time I was solving the day as I went. Now I already know which shop sells butter that tastes like it was blessed by someone important. I know the market, the streets, the rhythm of the place. I even know how to clean my socks and underwear without a full internal meltdown.
Progress.
The first time somewhere new, everything asks something of me. My attention, my energy, my patience. I’m translating menus, systems, people…myself. By the end of that first week, I’m usually exhausted. Smiling, grateful but slightly savage.
This time, none of that is happening.
I wake up and I’m already in the day. I walk to the market. I buy cheese like I’ve strong opinions about it. I sit in the same seat at the same café like I’ve earned it, because honestly, I have.
And because I’m not busy figuring everything out, I start noticing what I missed the first time. A street I never turned down. A boulangerie tucked behind a door I thought was someone’s house. A bookstore that feels like it’s been waiting for me specifically.
There’s space now for the easy kind of curiosity. The kind that wanders without needing to arrive anywhere.
⸻
My friends arrive from England and something in my chest loosens in a way I hadn’t realized it needed to.
There’s something about people who know you from before. Before the travel, before the unravel, before you became the version of yourself who owns packing cubes and has strong feelings about plug adapters. They look at you and see the whole timeline. They carry the version of you that existed before all of this, and they bring her with them when they come.
It’s a little bit of home, coming home to me.
We walk along the river. We eat far too much. We talk absolute shite over wine like it’s our full-time job. Someone orders something none of us can pronounce and we all commit anyway. Brave.
There’s laughter that doesn’t need warming up.
⸻
This is what I didn’t know I needed when I started moving.
New places are a kind of electricity. The novelty, the not-knowing, the version of yourself that shows up when nothing is familiar. I love that feeling.
But it costs something. And after a while, the body keeps the bill.
Coming back somewhere I’ve already been feels different from what I expected. It’s not settling. It’s not giving up on the new. It’s more like... permission to go deeper instead of wider. To actually know a place rather than just pass through it. To sit with the people I love in a city that has started to feel, just a little, like mine.
The new places will come. They always do.
For now, I’m sitting with my croissant, in my seat, in a city I’ve started to understand. The light hits the table exactly the same way it did last time.
It’s enough. More than enough, actually.
Tell me…
Have you ever gone back somewhere and realized how much easier life feels when you already know the rhythm?
Good for you, Tanya. Take the world by storm. But don't forget your umbrella. Lol.