Hi friends,
It’s been a while. I realized that two weeks is the longest I’ll go without writing to you.
It’s May 16, 2024. “The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived” is on repeat this morning. I wrote this on my IG stories - but, I have a confession to make. Last night was the first night that I ever sat and listened to the song in its entirety. And now I understand why it’s going viral on TikTok, and now I understand why it’s on the list of everyone’s favourites from TTPD.
Actually, one of my Internet friends messaged me a few weeks back, and asked me if I thought about PN while listening. And I had to confess to her that I hadn’t listened to it, just yet.
The songs she writes with Aaron Dessner are always her best. They are forms of poetry. They’re a story in each line - but this part has to be my favourite:
In fifty years, will all this be declassified?
And you'll confess why you did it
And I'll say, "Good riddance"
'Cause it wasn't sexy once it wasn't forbidden
I would've died for your sins
Instead, I just died inside.
Yesterday, one of my Roman friends mentioned to me that I’ve been in an “insular phase” lately.
I corrected her and said, “I’m in my healing era”.
I’ve turned off my story replies (lol), taken a step back from my writing groups, and writing in general.
I’ve upped my supplement intake. Supplements for anxiety. Supplements for sleeping. Supplements for hair, skin, and nails. I’ve invested in a good shampoo and conditioner (Kérastase Genesis).
And I make an effort to eat more protein. One of my favourite meal fixations is this: an egg wrap with 3 eggs, avocado, cheddar cheese, spinach, caramelized onions, and mushrooms. I’ll buy salmon burgers because they’re easy to make, too.
I try to sit and walk in the sun as much as possible. I also try to meditate for 10 minutes daily, but that’s always easier said than done.
I take my laptop, and I’ll work at my favourite café on the days when I need a switch up from a leisurely morning spent on the couch. I give the owner a hug every time I see him now. I love when he tells one of the girls, “clear a table for Emily”, even though he knows that I will just stand at the bar counter and gossip with them the entire time.
And when I have no plans on any given evening, I decide to pop into the bar.
“I thought you were going back to Toronto after London.” The Man at the Front pulls me in for a side hug. We stay with our arms wrapped around each other for a few minutes.
“No. I told you that I was coming back here for a few weeks.”
“Ah. I misunderstood. So we have a few more weeks of you.”
He takes out a pack of cigarettes and offers me one.
“Yup. A few more weeks of me bothering you.”
The manager comes around the corner. “Ah! Look who it is. How was London?” He kisses me on the cheek.
“Amazing. I loved it.”
And I did. The food, the people. The energy. It reminded me of what I loved the most about being in a cosmopolitan city. Window shopping, an iced latte in hand. The hustle, the bustle, the forward movement of it all.
He goes inside, and leaves me and the Man at the Front to ourselves. It’s 8 PM, and the sun hasn’t set yet.
I’m wearing an old pair of jeans, a white t-shirt, and sneakers. I realize that this is one of the first instances he’s seen me in the daylight.
“So. How are you doing? Now that he’s gone.” By he, he is referring to PN.
“Healing.” I tell him. “And I realized something. Remember when you asked me why I liked him, and I couldn’t really name a reason?”
He nods.
“It was what he made me see, what he made me meet within myself. There’s always been this…I don’t want to say “sad” part of me. But I’ve always had this curiosity about the depth of my own emotions. I think I was scared to meet that part. And he…not only through our conversations, forced me to meet that part. He accepted that part. All of the pain and all of the heartache. And I think really loved me for it.”
Understanding is I see you. But acceptance is I see you, and I love you for it.
He smiles. “Sometimes we meet those people. And it’s like they’re meant to teach us something, they’re meant to make us aware of something. But that doesn’t mean…”
I roll my eyes. “There’s always a but with you.”
“But that doesn’t mean we have to hold on to them.”
I sigh. He’s right.
“Remember what I told you, what you taught me? That it was okay to be more emotional. That it was okay to let myself feel things.”
I lean my head up against his arm. “What are you going to do without me when I leave?”
We both look up at that tower in the centre of the parking lot.
“Be bored, Emily. Be very, very bored.”
In my past newsletters, I have alluded to a very public argument that me and PN had gotten into last summer. My best friend and her husband were visiting, and we were at the bar, having the time of our lives.
I was wearing one of my favourite backless white dresses with a messy pony. My best friend had borrowed my favourite little black dress. Strapless, mini, linen. It was 42 degrees. But we had spent this Monday afternoon in the sun, spritz drunk, and enjoying each and every moment of this mid-July heat wave.
A few weeks prior to this visit, the Man at the Front had kissed me outside the bar. It was the first time we had met. And honestly, it was more of a make out than anything. `
I didn’t realize PN had witnessed this. I thought we were hidden, behind that white brick wall, out of plain sight. I didn’t realize we were on display until I walked in to pay, and the look in PN’s eyes sent minor chills down my spine.
So, needless to say, he was not very welcoming to me that evening with my best friend. There was an iciness to him. An annoyance in his eyes.
“Do you mind helping me with a dinner reservation?” I ask him, trying to break the ice. “I need someone who speaks Italian.” I add with a little smile and a plead in my eyes.
I guess asking him for a favour was probably the last thing he wanted to hear from me, but, I didn’t know how else to act with him.
Begrudgingly, he takes my phone and calls a restaurant. “They’re booked.” He tells me and hands my phone back to me. “But you’re more than welcome to eat here.”
I roll my eyes. “You’re ridiculous. Of course you want us to eat here.” I tell him. In the most casual, joking, friendly, and dare I say - cheeky - of ways.
Well. That was when Mount Vesuvius erupted.
“What did you just say to me?”
I, confused, repeat myself. And as soon as I was mid-sentence, I immediately regretted opening my mouth in the first place.
“I’M RIDICULOUS?” He raises his voice in front of everyone. His eyes pierce right into my soul.
My best friend’s mouth drops.
“Are you kidding me right now?” I, now equally heated, ask him. “You’ve known me for how long? You think I’m actually going to say something to offend you on purpose?”
“Emily.” His tone. His eyes. And I can’t help it, but flashbacks of a year ago start to appear, like a movie screen has fallen from the skies of the universe, and right into this moment. And I wonder if he is watching the same one, too.
I repeat his name back to him. Then he repeats mine. This goes back, and forth. Back, and forth.
The other bartenders, with their jaws on the floor, scurry to the other end of the bar.
I grab my bag and storm out.
“I know her. I know her. I know her. I’ve known her for a long time. Why is she DOING this to me? Why is she SPEAKING to me like this?” My best friend and her husband recall what he said to them after.
My best friend is in a state of disbelief, too.
“Well, Emily. If he didn’t want anyone to know…now everyone knows.”
“I mean. You could take it as a compliment, too. He obviously still cares…a lot” My best friend’s husband says to me.
Thus began Hard Feelings.
Now, the point of this recap, was to tell you this: I had never told the Man at the Front about this fight. But, last week, I decided to.
“And WHY didn’t you tell me any of this?” The Man at the Front, now also has his jaw on the floor.
“Honestly? I was kind of in a haze for the rest of the summer. For the rest of the year, actually. And I didn’t want you think that all of this was part of an elaborate scheme to get him jealous.”
“Emily. You don’t understand…how now this all makes sense.”
“What do you mean?”
“The way he started to treat me in the summer. The anger he had towards me. And how he couldn’t tell me to stop talking to you, he couldn’t tell me that he was interested in you. Because that would out him. It would out…everything.”
I nod.
The sun is setting, and more people are showing up.
“I understand now.”
“What do you mean?”
“Why you were so always so frustrated with him, too.”
I start to laugh. “And now you understand why I was always crying. Because if he had something that he wanted to say -”
“Then he should have said it.”
“Exactly.”
“I still wish you would have told me. I always felt like there was more to the story than what you were actually telling me.”
But I think it came down to this:
Maybe there was more to the story than we were both allowing to admit to ourselves.
I have learned something. I have learned many things actually, but here is a list of what I’ve written down so far.
I am no stranger to Rome. To the eternal city. To walk through Piazza del Popolo underneath the beating sun of May. I know where to go when I need to pick up my contact lenses. Which grocery store has the best built in bakery for a mortadella panino. I know my favourite piazza for sunny spritz. I know to follow the old ladies in linen dresses.
I know that being old gives you perspective, but I also know that being old doesn’t always equate to being wise.
I know that nothing opens until 10 am, so you can stay in bed until 11 and know you’re not really missing anything. Anything at all.
But I know that 8 am is always the best time, if you want to walk alone in silence. And if you blink, you might miss it.
I know that time is a construct. I know that some people are offered more, and that some people are offered less. I know that it’s really the luck of the draw.
I know that I bruise easily. But I know that I tan easily, too. In the fact, the Man at the Front will point this out. “It’s also a lot of bronzer” I’ll tell him this, too.
I know how to keep a secret. In fact, I’ve kept my fair share of them.
I know that I’ve never cried more. Never wondered what the point of all of it was for, more. Never smoked more. Never drank more. Never tried to escape something more. Never missed something that I couldn’t quite put my finger on exactly what it was, more.
I know that I had never felt her more. But a different version. A younger version. A hopeful version. A wishful version.
I know what it felt like to love someone and to be loved in a way that you thought: this is going to be it for the both of us.
Here is the life I’ve built, I’ll tell him. But we will destroy ourselves in the hopes of holding on to an idea. The idea alone is enough to kill us both.
I know that in this city, it is impossible to feel calm. It is impossible to feel bored, but it is possible to feel restless.
I know why I am here. But I also know why the ones before me left. And I don’t believe in coincidences.
I know that love stories are important to strangers. And how if you can make strangers on the Internet feel something - then you must be doing something right.
I know my way around the neighborhood. That winding, tree-lined road. I know the steps that I need to take to be wrapped up in the arms of his wool coat in December. The “look who it is”, the double kisses. My head leaned against his shoulder as we talk about the time that’s passed. My pinky wrapped around his as we promise to not fight anymore.
“We’ve been through a lot, haven’t we?” I tell the Man at the Front.
“I know. And I have no regrets.”
It’s risky, isn’t it? To start something with no finish.
But I know that to know oneself is to love oneself. And I know that I have created something.
There’s more to come, isn’t there?
There’s always more to come.
I love you,
Emily
just letting you know I was listening to smallest man during the argument part and I got chills. ALSO THE LIST. "I know that I bruise easily. But I know that I tan easily, too." beautiful words, my beautiful friend. your healing era!!!!!!!!!!