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sacred moments, airport playlists, + goodbyes

Hi my beautiful friends ♥️

You know what’s funny - how I start out every week telling myself - omg maybe I won’t write a newsletter this week because when will I have the TIME. And then I realize I can’t stay out past 7:30 on a Friday night anymore, so I always manage to find the time. 

I’m having a tea (I’m also a bit hungover), sitting on the couch with my sister, and she’s playing songs that I need to immediately add to my airport playlist. I’m flying back home to Rome soon, and I usually go back and forth between the Folklore album or my coveted 3 AM playlist.

I am also 100% always the person who listens to melancholic music and stares out the plane window, making up scenarios of an ex finally coming to his senses, and running onto the plane for a ninth chance. Ugh, would I take someone back if they made a scene like that? Most likely, yes.

I love the phrase “back home to Rome”. 

Rome is home for a lot of people. And sometimes I ask myself - but why me? What made me so special that Rome chose me?

I think back to last August, when the plane hit the tarmac at Fiumicino airport. I walked out in my graphic tee and bike shorts, and into an airport scene of flowy linen dresses and suitcases, and crowds lined up at the bar for a midday espresso. And this feeling of home, in the midst of complete chaos, came over me. I also made a mental note to never wear bike shorts in Italy again.

It’s hard to describe a feeling of home. If you had asked me what “home” was when I was younger, I would say a family of four, living in a suburban house. A routine: work, dinner at 5:00, watching a TV show, and then bedtime. “Home” looked and felt like stability.

And to think back to August - I had 0 concrete plans, because I have learned that I truly hate planning things in advance. Itineraries and check in times give me anxiety. Along with men who travel with backpacks and cargo shorts. But, what began as a trip booked for 4 nights, easily became the best 5 weeks of my life.

Maybe it was the heat and the crowded piazzas, the fact that I had only packed slip dresses, and also the fact that I had a mortadella glow - but I had never felt more at home in my life.

What I love most about Italy is their love for every moment. The trips to the market for fresh fior di latte, drinking espresso with the nonni, eating pizza rosso on church steps, and my personal favourite - midnight in the piazza. It’s the lingering dinner tables and couples who sit by the fountain, the men in linen and women in silk. They light cigarettes while the waiters fold up chairs, and you can’t help but feel that there’s always a beginning hidden in each evening.

I’ve always had this piece of faith inside of me that believed that one day, Something would fall into my lap. I’ve also always believed that the less you look for that Something, the more of a chance it has to find you.

You know when you reach the end of a relationship? And you both know it’s over, and you’re trying, but it’s just not fitting. And you try to switch things up - a different date night spot, a vacation - desperate pleas to change out of this fear of loss. 

And you’re going in circles, trying to fix something, that will eventually have the same outcome. And the worst part is - we’re only lying to ourselves when we say that it’ll get better. 

I don’t know if anyone ever talks about how healing it feels to be lost. To not see exactly where you’re going, but knowing that you won’t ever end up back where you started. 

There is a beauty of letting go and letting yourself fall. Letting yourself fall into the arms of a different city, and letting yourself fall into starting over. 

I think I forgot how beautiful life could be for a while. My definition of home has drastically changed. Recently, home became a group of people. A chosen family made up of people that have known me from 17 to 27. People I can fall into.

Goodbyes are never easy. But they’re easier when they’re filled with love. And there are many things we’re never prepared to say goodbye to, but it makes it easier when you’ve loved something with every part of you. There are no regrets. No love lost. Just new beginnings. And I’m ready.

I’ll love you forever, I just know it.

Emily 

Ps. I’m self promoting one of my favourites to get us in the mood: The Art Of Travelling Like An Italian Woman. ♥️