"You've changed so much since Australia!"

My heart sinks. Could I have changed so much in the past eight months since I'd left Australia?

In some ways, it's inevitable. I had had pretty much no friends in Melbourne except for my lovely housemates. Travelling often, working at home and living in the suburbs didn't help much in the friends-making department. So, I lived a pretty quiet, boring suburban life.

Get up, work, dinner, weekly Game of Thrones session with flatmates, sleep.

In Bordeaux I have more friends. Spanish friends I run with, French friends I met back in New Zealand, expat friends I explore the food scene with, and, of course, French friends I met through work, through my housemate.. Plus the old friends I'd been missing for so long, since my last time in Europe.

Yes, I changed.

I like spending alone time, but I also enjoy spending time with others. I'm trying to make the most of what this city offers, and there are a lot going on here, if you look for them.

Admittedly, in a way, I feel like I'm on a second Erasmus, with all the wine and beers I get to drink all the time.

It's the cities that
change me. Once I move from Bordeaux, my next city will change me again, no doubt, depending on its environment and the people I meet there.

I don't go to sleep as early as I did in Melbourne, it's true. But maybe it was in Melbourne I had changed, and I'm more me now, in Bordeaux.

And that is why my heart sinks.

Maybe you fell in love with the wrong me. A different me. People change all the time, and this is me now, the present. No going back. But I don't want you to feel that we are growing apart. Could you love the now-me?

...

I'm changing. All the time.