Oh my friends, my friends, my friends.
It’s been a while. It’s been approximately two and a half weeks, which is a very long time for me to go without talking to you. I have to be honest, sitting here with my giant water bottle and tiny little espresso cup, typing away - something about it - just feels right.
My landlord messaged me today, letting me know that my lease will be up in the fall. I keep reminding myself - things happen for me, not to me. So I keep the faith that the universe is preparing something beautiful for me. Maybe a Roman apartment with a terrazza? A bedroom with floor to ceiling windows?
Or maybe, it’ll be a completely new chapter. Somewhere by the sea. I’m not exactly sure where I’ll end up, but I’ve been in the unsure before. And whenever you’re in the unsure, the next place to go is to the surrender.
I want to talk to everyone today about, something, that I’ve realized has come completely full circle. Or rather, in the infinity loop, as my spiritual friend says. Because does anything ever really come to an end?
Do you remember, back in September, I had a few of my closest friends come to Rome? It’s documented in one of my favourite newsletters: friendship, art, and lovers.
In that letter, I spoke about how important it was to speak our truths. Because our truths set us free. And over that specific weekend in September, my truth was about letting someone know how I felt.
That certain someone. The same certain someone that this newsletter is about.
And there was no hidden agenda or intention behind any of it - other than the fact that, I have realized - the more we run from our feelings, the more they demand to be felt.
The more they demand to be felt.
This past week in mid July, my beautiful best friend stopped over in Rome.
And is there something significant about how my closest friends from across the world are always present when the truth of my stories start to reveal themselves?
It all happens the way it’s supposed to. My spiritual friend tells me over a FaceTime last night. She needed to see it too, for whatever reason.
And there are many ways in which the truth can come out. Sometimes, the truth comes out in words and in letters. In the final pages of our poetry books. In drunken phone calls, or a few 4 am messages after one too many dirty martinis.
And there are other times, where the truth comes out in the most surprising of ways. Sometimes the truth is hidden under tears and fury. Buried so deep within us, then landing so unexpectedly in the open, dying to be set free.
Feelings demand to be felt.
“I wish I never met him”. Leaned up against that same white brick wall, tears stream down my face while my best friend hugs me.
“That’s not true. And you know it.”
“I know.” I wipe away a few tears. The white dress effect. It always does something.
-
“I was telling you with my eyes, Emmy. Don’t do this to me.”
“And I was telling you the exact same thing with mine. Don’t speak to me like this. Like I’m a child. In front of everyone.”
It wasn’t about you asking him for cigarette, or for asking for help with the dinner reservation. It wasn’t about any of that. My best friend tells me. It’s all of it. It’s about you forming other relationships over the past year in front of him. It’s about you living. And it’s about him being stuck. You both were having a completely different conversation with your eyes. And everyone knew what it was really about. That’s why no one wanted to get involved.
-
“Do you know about karmic connections?” My spiritual friend asks me. “Souls that were together in a past life, but can’t seem to figure it out in this one. You’re both meant to teach each other something.”
Karma. The infinity symbol. Feelings that demand to be felt. It all comes back around, doesn’t it?
-
I have been going to this bar for over a year. It’s become a second home to me. It’s comfort, it’s familiarity.
So, when I decided to come back from Australia in January, the bar had to be one of my first stops.
“Hey! I haven’t seen you in a while. Where have you been?” A man I spoke to once or twice over the last summer, greets me at the front with a smile. He’s handsome and sweet, and takes me to a speakeasy after his shift a few nights later.
I wonder if he knows about Past Newsletters, but I’ve put Past Newsletters in the Past for a reason. I don’t bring it up.
“Most girls here…a lot of them don’t do this alone. You’re free, it’s very beautiful.”
And it was a beautiful moment, a moment where I decide to get honest with him.
“I love this life. It’s my favourite life. But sometimes I wonder what it would be like to have that one place, that one spot. Instead of carrying it with me everywhere, I wish I had something to always sink back into.”
“Ah. It’s the yin and the yang, isn’t it?
-
“So what did your best friend say?”
I’ll never forget the way he looked at you when you walked in. It’s one of the moments that is forever engrained into my mind. It was the way his eyes followed you like you were his everything, and as soon as he realized the mask came off, he put it back on again.
“And after his outburst last week?”
“She thinks he feels like I’m toying with him. Like I did all of this as a fuck you. The other guys. The little dresses. All of it.”
“Well, there was a tiny fuck you behind it all - wasn’t there?”
“Absolutely. But that wasn’t my main intention. I just…I just wanted to feel free.”
“There you go, Emily. And that’s exactly what he wants, too.”
He didn’t really give me a choice. We were never going to be together in the way I’d want to be. I want to tell her. I had to move on. It’s Rome. And it’s this girl. It’s this girl who craves the stories and the possibilities. The freedom. All of it. This girl who is boundless.
-
Two glasses of white wine sit across from us. He comes over on a Thursday afternoon of last spring.
You know those moments leading up to a first kiss? When you’re sitting side by side. You think of the logistics. If I turn towards him at any moment in this conversation, who will lean in first? My heart is racing, and I settle my nerves by focussing my green eyed gaze on a spot on the wall across from me.
“I told my best friend how much fun I had at the bar the other night. You create a good vibe in there. I always feel safe, I always feel comfortable … I can’t describe it.”
The nerves and the age difference make me immediately regret using the word “vibe”. What about atmosphere? There are so many other words.
But right on cue, he inches in closer until I have no choice but to drop the mask. I turn my head towards him, slowly becoming aware that no matter how hard I fight it, I am going to have let myself sink into those sad, brown eyes.
He smiles. “A good vibe.” He leans in, and I immediately forget about my choice of words.
The surrender.
-
A few weeks ago, I ask him for the bill.
“It’s easy with me. Always the same thing.”
“I know, Emmy. Always two dirty martinis.”
“What’s with the nickname? You’ve never called me that before.”
“Emmy.” He repeats. His brown eyes don’t look at me, but rather, they focus on a spot on the wall straight ahead. “It’s who you are to me.”
Remember us? Remember what we were?
I feel my back stiffen and change the subject. “So. When are you going to open up your own place?”
“I don’t think it’s going to happen. There’s a lot of things you need…”
He trails off.
“Well, I believe in you.”
And remember what we could have been.
-
“Listen. To no one’s fault of their own. This was a situation without any closure. So feelings have been floating around in the ether. And he’s scared.” My spiritual friend tells me.
“Scared of what I’ll write?”
“That. But more so scared of his own reaction towards you. Scared of his own feelings. All of it. But you know what, Emily? That loss of control that you saw. That reaction towards you. Was actually him being vulnerable. He’s bound. He’s just so…bound.”
-
This weekend, we drove. Drove through those small, rural, southern Italian towns. Sleepy and quiet. The windows and shops that were boarded at noon to keep out the heat.
There’s a contrast between the two. To have been raised in a city, and to have been raised with choices. Freedom. Rose has drilled in to me.
Freedom, freedom, freedom. A boundless freedom.
-
Do you remember the night that we first met? You told me something once that never left me. You told me you went to this bar alone in a big city.
And it was just me. In an old white t-shirt. Sitting beside these men in suits. But for a night, it didn’t matter who I was. I was just this guy from a small town in Naples. But the bar…the bar is this place where it doesn’t matter who you are. We are all connected.
I remember that moment so well. A moment engrained into my mind. It was in that moment where I realized that you were different, and that you and I were both the same.
I spent years escaping the men in suits. The conformity. The bounds. The egos, the belittlement. Trying to fit into a mould that never fit, no matter how hard I tried. I didn’t think my art would ever be taken seriously from a man, “no one goes into writing to make money”, and my vulnerability was seen as a weakness.
But then there was you.
You took this moment, Emily, that me and you shared. You turned it into something that … I don’t think a lot of people would be able to do. And you understood what it is was that I was trying to say, without me having to say it.
You believed in me. And I believed in you.
Connected. We are all connected.
-
Why do I write? Because I feel. I feel so much. I feel before I think, which is something you once said to me, too. I lead with my feelings.
It might have gotten us into trouble, more than it might have already did. Which is why it was always easier for us to exist in our imaginations. Our imaginations, they protect us, don’t they? They make us feel safe. In the stories we tell ourselves.
But the problem with us, is that it was never imagined. You felt it, I felt it. Everyone around us felt it.
I used to tell myself that I was another body to you. That you wouldn’t care if I left Rome, that you wouldn’t care who I bring to the bar, that you wouldn’t care who I’d get involved with.
But these stories, they weren’t the truth. They were stories I made up to protect myself.
I never wanted you to choose me instead. To leave your life for a completely new one. But I just wanted you to acknowledge that it was real. That it all was real.
Feelings.
They demand to be felt.