angels in the form of strangers

part one

My beautiful friends. My angelic friends. My beautiful, angelic friends. 

It’s a rainy Saturday morning in Toronto. I just did a hydrating sheet mask with our lymphatic drainage legs-on-the-wall routine while listening to affirmations. And can I just say - I think that’s the best way to start any day. I just want someone to always tell me that I am strong and I am powerful and I am beautiful, while massaging aloe vera and hyaluronic acid into my skin. 

We’ve been “home” for a few days, “home” as in Toronto, and there’s something about coming back that always makes me feel like I can breathe again. Do you know that feeling? Where you can just throw on a pair of sweats and a long coat, run into Starbucks with a messy bun, and run right back into your bed to watch Vanderpump Rules with a bag of pretzels for dinner. 

It’s nice to not have to try, sometimes. To just be cocooned in your sweatpants and duvet. A relief. Home can be a relief.

And this isn’t to say that I can’t breathe on our second season of Emily in Rome (lololol), but, if you’re up to date on the newsletters of last week, there has absolutely been a build up to the boiling point of our season 2 finale. 

I do have a story for everyone. And I was debating on writing it in a way that goes back and forth and connects with other moments in time - but I realized, I kind of just want to pretend that we’re all gossiping in my bed with sheet masks and bowls of raspberries and mugs full of Nespresso beside us. 

I will be honest - last Thursday and half of Friday morning were spent on 2 hour FaceTimes with my beautiful best friend, and another 2 hour FaceTime with another beautiful friend who is a spiritual healer / meditation teacher / etc. 

“Let’s go to the garden.” My spiritual / meditation teacher friend suggests. Gardens are my favourite place to lose myself in. Nothing matters in the garden. Only roses and beauty and statues of angels, and the way things grow and the way things die and the way things always start to grow again. 

I close my eyes and lose myself in the imaginary garden. My place of peace. I picture who I want next to me, as we sit on a bench in this garden of eden. I picture her as my age, and us laughing together while she squeezes my hand. 

“Be here now” floats into my mind. Isn’t that interesting? My subconscious reminds me to be present, even though my Gemini mind knows it’s hard to be anything but. 

Feelings are complicated. Feelings are frustrating. And they’re as confusing as they are beautiful. 

“I feel like I go crazy every time I try to explain him to someone. It’s like he has this invisible hold on me that makes me feel immobile.”

“Or when you’re in a room, you zero in on each other and it feels like no one else exists in the world.”

This is why I’m thankful for my spiritual friend. She puts it more eloquently than I could. 

“And isn’t that beautiful, Emily? It’s this reminder that we’re all just souls dancing in the universe. And some souls dance together on a different plane, but it can’t manifest in this physical reality.”

That really is it. That really is as simple as it is. 

I woke up last Saturday feeling less out of sorts. Less needing of supportive voice notes. Less needing of venting, less needing of my rational mind to explain why we fall for those we fall for. 

So, I decided to take myself to church. 

I sat in the second pew, in front of a statue of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. I lose myself in the frescos. In the statues. In the candles. There never is a mass going on, and I appreciate the quiet and peace that comes from no one needing anything from you. 

I allow myself to fully be here now. 

Potato pizza and white wine is next on Saturday’s agenda. In my vintage navy blazer and extremely wide legged denim, I walk around Rome’s city centre. I find my favourite street corner, I find Patritzia from last spring, working at a corner wine bar. It’s always the driest white and a bowl of olives. 

On to the next, I tell myself. I have no plans for the rest of the evening, so I decide to stop at another wine bar on my way home. I’m sipping on my pinot grigio outside, chatting with my new friend Diego, who tells me: 

“Rome is like a casino.”

I write it down.

I associate casinos with gambling, with high risks and high stakes and high rewards. The chance of losing something but winning something greater. Of beautiful things and bright lights. Addiction. People who are here for a short time, not a long time. Chaos, confusion, creation. When the highs are high, and the lows are low.

The in between is always whatever you want it to be. And the come down is where you learn the most about yourself.

And, just like that, something drops on my Celine’s.

“Diego.” I freeze.

“Ah! From a seagull! Oh Emilia. Poor Emilia.”

Diego takes my paralyzed frame to the bathroom and gets the seagull poo out of my sunglasses and the few strands of hair.

“It’s not on the jacket. Thank god.”

Diego understands. 

I take the seagull incident as a sign to make my way home. It’s troppi cosi, but I am thankful for Diego, an angel disguised as a stranger.

My phone is at 14%, and it is imperative that we have enough battery for a soundtrack to our walk home. 

So, I do the most rational thing. Hop into a lobby bar to charge my phone. 

My phone is charging, and I’m on my third glass of a dry, afternoon white. The PTSD from the seagull incident is wearing off.

“Do you mind watching my phone charge - I’m just going to use the washroom.” I ask the man in a baseball cap who sits down next to me.

Hotel lobby bars and hotel bathrooms. Settings for stories that always seem to write themselves. 

“How were they?” He asks as I sit back down. 

“Beautiful. The entire hotel is beautiful.”

I don’t know what it is about him. It could be the dry whites, but it also could be the familiarity of a stranger who speaks the same language. 

We start talking. I tell him I’m a writer, and he tells me vaguely what he does - all I can remember is that there is a combination of projects and Palm Springs thrown together in his answer.

I’m never good at remembering what people do for a living. And I think partly it comes down to me not caring. 

I’ve never liked to remember people by what makes them money.

He asks me what I write about. 

“Love. But also death. Similar concepts.”

He starts to laugh. “I noticed something. You say thank you a lot - you’re very gracious. And that says a lot about you.”

“Honestly, I think it’s because I’m Canadian.”

“No, it goes beyond that.”

Do you ever think about how often we say thank you? Or when we say it?

Those two words: “thank you” can hold a lot of weight. Thank you for the experience. Thank you for making my evening a bit easier. Thank you for going out of your way to do something kind for me. Because I am just a stranger. Thank you for worrying about me. Thank you for loving me, even if it’s only for an afternoon or for an evening. 

Thank you for seeing me, thank you for listening to me, thank you for saving me.

Thank you, thank you, thank you. 

So, I decide to let this stranger see me.

“Ok. Honestly. I’m really appreciative of life.” I tell him. “Because when you see how quickly it goes, or can go - you don’t look at anything the same. And I think you can either numb yourself to it, or feel everything tenfold. And I’d rather just feel it all.”

He looks at me, for what feels like a long time (as it does when you start to open yourself up to a stranger), and nods.

Rome for one day, he tells me. And the universe happens to place him beside the girl that enjoys talking about death with strangers. The risks and the rewards. The casino.

“Your turn.”

“I’ll tell you anything. But you have to ask the right questions.”

Luckily, this is where I excel. I really would have made an amazing lawyer in another life. 

“One pivotal moment that changed your life forever.”

You can really ask anyone anything. But it’s the willingness to answer honestly which always speaks more to someone’s character more than the answer itself.

So, we take turns asking each other questions and telling each other stories that flow easier when you are two strangers in a hotel lobby bar. Transient.

“If you were to ask any of these guys one question - what would it be?”

I may or may not have told him about the semi dramatic love situations of the object of my past newsletters / my FWB / and my other new friend.

We really need to start using pseudonyms.

“If I’m being honest, I’d only ask one of them a question. I’d ask him if it meant something. If I meant something.”

He smiles. “And isn’t that all anyone of us really ever wants?”