new endings to old stories

I never really look like I belong in Rome. I know this. I donated my oversized blazers back in January, because I didn’t feel like they were entirely me anymore. I mean, I still love a good one as a shoulder drape, but not so much that they take up closet space. So I dress in what I know.

It’s late October. 20 degrees at night, which calls for a vintage bomber jacket, a silk dress, and cowboy boots. The tortoiseshell bag pulls in the black and the brown together. Long, loose waves. I feel like me, I think. And I love her. I’m trying to tell myself that, every day. And it’s starting to become easier to believe now.

I’ve thought of this moment many times. I knew it would happen, in some way, shape, or form. I knew that, as humans - we try to control our lives with logic. But destiny, that higher power. It has something else planned out. It always does.

“I feel…like I was lost this year. Like I had one thing planned, and then another thing happened. So I tried to control what I could. I didn’t know what I wanted, I’d have something that was promising and it was just…not meant to be mine. So I just let the universe take over.”

Genuine concern crosses over his face. He nods.

“Well. I learned when you don’t know what to do, the best thing is to do nothing. But how are you now?”

I don’t like when people worry about me. I realized that’s a trauma response from being a caregiver. It makes me uncomfortable, it makes me feel weak. “I can do this all myself” I want to tell them. But I can’t, I’ve realized. I really, really, can’t.

“Better because I let myself be taken care of for a month. I stayed with my sister. Cooked meals with someone else at a table. My dad drove us everywhere. I liked the company. I wasn’t always in my head. I hugged my friends. For the first time in a while, I could just breathe.”

He doesn’t say anything for a while. Until -

“Receiving.”

I nod. I remember having this conversation in my kitchen with him, a few years back.

“Neither of us were very good at that.”

I shake my head. “Nope. But I’m learning how to be, now.”

Three springs and three summers have gone and past. And I am more hopeful now, than I ever was. Hopeful for me, and hopeful for my future.

This new bar is quiet. It’s a different atmosphere.

Time. He tells me it’s the most important thing in the world.

“You know - you say you felt lost. And I get that. That feeling of…where do I belong? But you’re sitting in front of me. And you’re telling me - you were in Milan, London, Bordeaux. To me, lost is doing the same routine, the same thing, over and over - expecting something around us to change. But you’re not lost, Emily. It’s you…living.”

I smile.

And I know this, but I won’t let him know that he is right.

“Can I tell you something?”

He puts his hands on the bar, looks directly into my eyes, and nods. I have to remind myself that there are people watching. And I have to remind myself to breathe.

“One of the most important things that I’ve realized through…all of…this…” I twirl my finger in the air. “Is that no matter where you are in the world, no matter who you’re with. If you have the relationship, the career, the house, the money…at the end of the day. When it’s 2 AM and the lights come on and it’s time to go home…and the person lying next to you isn’t the same person you’re thinking about…it’s you that you go home to. You’re not going home to that person anymore. It’s you that you’re now answering to. And you really, really, really have to like that person. Or at least try to. And I think a lot of the times - people define their worth by who or what they have around them. But when you’re alone and you’ve sobered up and you’re starring at the ceiling. It starts to become very clear who’s free and who’s not.”

He opens his mouth and closes it. A bartender looks at us quizzically, and in the same moment, looks away.

“You know what it felt like to me? Like someone had left a window open. And the curtains are moving and you wonder why you feel this breeze - and you forgot that you had left that window open the whole time.”

He isn’t very good at pretending. He thinks he is, but only because people have let him think that he is.

You fell in love with an idea. Those words from the Man at the Front float on and around me.

He lowers his voice. “So you met someone.”

“What?”

“In France. You met someone. That’s why you’re leaving.”

“No, I didn’t. And even if I did - what are you talking about?”

“I can’t do this.”

“Do what? What are we doing?”

“What do you want me to do? And what exactly did you expect me to do?”

“Be happy, Emily. I want you to be happy. That’s the whole - “

He stops. He presses his forehead into the palm of his hands. Time has stopped. Rome has stopped. The words, the letters, the love with nowhere to go. The conversations with my therapist, my friends. The public fights, the back, the forth. The plane rides. The trains. The new places. And the tears for him that each place brought.

It doesn’t matter where you are, or where you go. He’ll carry those feelings for you - whether he wants to, or not.

I place my hand on his wrist and his hand away from his face. He drops the other. His eyes are sunken. The frown lines have become more prominent.

“Why did you never come back? Why didn’t you try again? I know it was never going to go anywhere - but just…”

And all of the sudden. I am talking to her. The little girl with brown hair and glasses.

“One more time, one more time.” He repeats and shakes his head. “It would have never been enough.”

It would have never been enough. And that’s when it hit me. The words that everyone spoke. The words from my therapist, my psychic, my best friends. That elevator ride.

“I really think it was his heart fighting.” My best friend tells me. “The last part of his good heart.”

“Ok. You’re right.”

“It’s not about me being right. But I know you, and you live up here.” He taps his forehead. “And it’s not a bad thing, it’s beautiful actually. The way you connect each experience to each other.”

There’s something about Rome. Time, structure, the “I should”. Rules created by who? They don’t exist. Maybe I do fit in here. More than I ever thought.

“What do you think all of this taught you?”

I open my mouth to answer and stop. The way we look at each other - it’s all I ever wanted. Friends. People who care. Friends who have seen each other at their worst. My lowest was that first summer, and his lowest was that last winter.

And look at us now. I’ve let my hair become it’s natural colour again. My skin - barefaced. I’m proud of my glow.

There’s really nothing else to hide, nothing else to prove anymore.