dear myself: i spent my summer being sad, now what?

Good morning my angels and happy Wednesday,

In great news, I finally had a normal night’s sleep and woke up at 6:45 ready to start the day. I will preface that this actually happens often (not the good sleep part, but the waking up at 6:45) - I get a morning burst of energy, tell myself I am going to be a high-achieving 5 AM club person and go for a 2 hour walk and do Everything Else. 

But, I am only human after all. My mornings go something like this: I wake up, examine my skin in the mirror (lol), pour coffee into my little pink espresso cup, eat a yogurt and a plum, write down things I could do today, decide to “do them all tomorrow”, and then end up back in bed for four more hours until noon. During this time, I will scroll. I will write down newsletter ideas, I will meditate, I will go back to sleep. I believe we can all be high achievers from the comforts of our own bed.

I want to be completely honest with you today. I want to talk to you about why I’m leaving Italy. I’m pretending we’re at a café in Summerhill, preferably the back patio at Boxcar. I’m having an iced chai latté, and we’re timing our afternoon coffee meet-up so we can order Pinot when they start serving pizza at 5. 

Since 2019, I’d actually been toying around with the idea of moving to Australia for a year. I have an amazing friend there, and I’ve actually had two different psychics tell me I’m going to find love in Australia (lol). And to be honest, I’m really not mad about that, and also to be honest - I kind of love that for myself. 

Then, the pandemic happened and I had to put a pin in meeting my Australian soulmate. 

I have been coming to Italy for years (as many of us do) in the month of August for a 2 week vacation. And during the pandemic, my need (and I’m sure everyone else’s need) of escapism skyrocketed.  

So, because my friends and I were on this Italian escapism lifestyle kick, we’d get together every Sunday and spend all day cooking and drinking Bellinis and wine (I will preface this in saying my role  in “cooking” was primarily assembling charcuterie and cutting tomatoes - we are not getting ahead of ourselves here). 

Sundays easily became our favourite day, because our 8 hour lunch would turn into Monday’s hangover, but none of us ever complained about it. 

I slowly started writing about the Italian lifestyle. The community, the tradition, the love of food and the long dinners and the long conversations. The art of slow living. And luckily enough, I met so many amazingly talented writers (that I now proudly call my friends) along the way.

When the borders started to reopen, I pitched the idea of taking a little jaunt to Italy to my family. When those plans fell through, I decided to go on my own. I told myself - book 4 nights in Rome, and if you hate it - you can always go home.

Those 4 nights turned into 5 weeks. It was 5 weeks of me strolling on Via Guilia, eating potato pizza and lemon gelato, drinking white wine at noon, running around my apartment causing issues with my hot landlord, all of it. And you would be doing a complete disservice to yourself if you didn’t let yourself fall into the storybook of the eternal city. 

I remember telling my friend on FaceTime one night: “You know what being in Rome reminds me of? When I first started to fall for XYZ.”

We will call him XYZ, because as much as I would LOVE to call people by their real names on here - we, like I’ve said before, are not in the business of outting people. XYZ was the first guy I started to like - and I mean, actually like, after my first boring + disastrous Iong-term relationship had ended. 

And looking back at that comparison - that mini “relationship” was one that was based on nerves + excitement, passion that had never existed before him, and a lot of novelty.  

But it was also one of those situations where you constantly questioned the longevity and stability of it. It’s so beautiful in the moment, but there’s this invisible ending that always seems to be looming in the background. But, we’re too busy being being spun around in our rose-coloured glasses and holding onto the hopes of something that seems like it was made just for us. 

April and May of this year were two months of complete whirlwinds. Every weekend, there was always some sort of story or drama that had to be told over Sunday evening FaceTimes to each one of my friends.

And that, to me, a Gemini sun, is one way to know that you’re truly living. 

But then, summer came. And with it came the unbearable heat, and the whirlwinds came to a halt. And, the truth behind those whirlwinds started to reveal themselves.

That dangling, invisible ending. Reality. My couch became my refuge, as it was too hot to do anything else besides lie down and escape the escapism.

Week after week, I carried this feeling that I couldn’t shake. The same feeling I had years ago when my “relationship” with XYZ was starting to fade out. 

Heartbreak does this thing to us, which is why I had spent the last few years avoiding it.

And this heartbreak really did a number on me. And it wasn’t the loss of the specific person that I was grieving, but it was as if I was grieving the life I had spent 3 months living, and grieving the life I thought was going to be mine.

Anticipatory grief. When that invisible ending starts to become visible. 

All of the sudden, I felt distrusting of my surroundings. My apartment felt like a stranger’s home. I felt vulnerable, I felt objectified, I felt used. I questioned everyone’s motives around me. And I was mad at myself. I was mad at myself for not being happy, I was mad at myself for crying every day in such a beautiful place. I was mad at myself for taking off my rose-coloured glasses, because life is always better lived in complete delusion and oblivion (as I like to tell myself).

But you know what I was mostly mad at? The fact that I had to deal with all of these emotions that I had spent years running from.

I had everything I had ever wanted, or thought I had ever wanted. And I was miserable.

When the whirlwinds, when the noise, when the novelty stops - as it always will in life, we are only left with ourselves.

In July, I slowly started to find myself becoming smaller and smaller. Shrinking into places, always aiming for the back corner table, trying my best not to be noticed, to not be a bother, and to be invisible.

I had a moment. And it was a moment that doesn’t come often. But I thought about my life here, if I had a daughter. What would she absorb from tradition? Would she feel as though she needed to shrink and pray for invisibility too? Would she be able to trust the environment around her?

And I thought about, really for the first time ever, what values do I have?

Do I compromise the values that I was raised with, as a result of my own mother who undid everything she was taught?

Do I undo almost 60 years of her work? 

Do you remember my Nonno’s saying? We are not for sale.

And on this day, on one of the last days of August, and at 29 years old, I can really, truly, and finally understand the sentiment behind that statement.

We are not objects. We do not need to sacrifice or give up the best parts of ourselves in order to make people more comfortable, to try and fit into spaces that are not meant to be ours.

Leisure is beautiful. A life of pleasure is exactly what we need, and what we deserve. But escapism, it comes at an expense. What lines are we willing to cross, and what values are we willing to give up to have what want in the moment? And for what?

Anything that makes you feel like you are slowly selling parts of yourself away, isn’t love, and it isn’t right.

No matter what people try to disguise it as.