the story of an almost

Ciao my friends,

It’s Wednesday, and I’m in the mood to publish a newsletter. I have to thank everyone for reading my sporadic posts, and I love how I tried really hard to stick to a posting schedule and then I just got too excited and, well, here we are. You never know when you’re going to get a little letter delivered to your inbox, so it’s like an Emily Mais surprise.

It’s 28 and sunny in Rome. I am desperately trying to start on my summer tan, but i have this fear of throwing up from heatstroke. So I’m always the palest one at the beach, the palest one out, the palest one out of all my friends in August, etc. But there’s also something about applying coconut sunscreen every day that is the biggest mood boost.

Anyways, I’ll try to keep this one short and sweet because I do want to walk to the cheese guy and get a mortadella sandwich before he closes - he too, has a sporadic schedule.

A few newsletters ago, I talked about our “almosts”. I couldn’t think of another word for them - besides “situationship” - but I hate that word so much, so I thought “almosts” was better. A little less juvenile. They’re the ones you’ve had some sort of thing with - a lot more than friends, but not a labelled relationship, it’s beautiful, it’s fun, it’s everything you could have ever wanted, but it doesn’t move past those three months for whatever reason. And, sometimes, our almosts never seem to go away. Some of them morph into good friends. Some of them morph into monthly DM slides when you’re bored, drunk, and feel nostalgic. And if you’re lucky, they morph into a good friend that make a point of not answering your drunk, monthly DM slides.

When I first started writing back in 2019, I made a promise to myself that I eventually broke. I wasn’t ever going to write about guys, because I didn’t want them to think they held some sort of power over me. And for those of you who don’t know, my poetry page (Failing Gracefully), actually started as a blog series on my first fashion blog (TBT Emily On the Ave!!). And in this series, I started to write chapters about my mom’s cancer journey and my own personal journey with grief and death.

So, as the universe would have it - each time I published a chapter, and thought to myself - okay, this is it. This is the final chapter in the series - I’d run into, or get a message from the above “almost”. It had been about a year and a half since Whatever We Had ended, and I took it as a sign that maybe the universe was telling me to write about him.

So I did. One of my first pieces to ever get published was on Thought Catalog - called “Our Story Never Had an Ending” (which TBH - they changed the title from what I wanted, but now looking back - it still fits.)

And what I loved most about that piece, and now writing about relationships - is that the elements of being right and wrong, who’s being fuck boy and who isn’t, who’s getting ghosted etc. etc. are completely taken away. The story is written from an objective point of view. No one is a villain. It’s about two people who, both ultimately had self-sabotaging tendencies (at the time) and their “relationship” never progressed further.

There have been times, the number of them dwindling down over the past few years - where I wondered. I wondered what would have happened if. Or when. Or if it was bad timing. Or if it was me or if it was him. And I’d write about it. I’d write it in letters and I’d write in poetry. And I gave myself that closure, and told myself it was part of a story, and a great story - because he always gave me such great content to work with. There were always these one liners where I wondered if he did it on purpose - but then I realized that he had it in him even before I started to write.

Anyways, the point of this newsletter was to question the power of our almosts. And it’s the same question I asked myself five years, three years, two years, and even 6 months ago - is the point of them to remind us of our own personal evolution? Or is there something more? Or maybe they’re just meant to be this moment in time.

I don’t think I would be who I am today if I had never published that first piece. There is something that is so terrifying but so thrilling about writing about people who are very much alive, and who will very much read your work. It taught me that vulnerability is power, and that our most heartbreaking moments will be our most creative. We can turn everything and everyone into art, and, in a weird sense - it’s a way for that moment in time to live on.

But at what point does it end? And at what point - do you say you’re happy for that one person and genuinely mean it?

Here’s the thing - I knew he wouldn’t be happy reading these newsletters. Letters that tell the different stories of different guys and different relationships and what they mean to me.

I knew what I was doing, and I turned blind eye to it because - we all move on. But it’s knowing that someone is bothered, and knowing that you care that someone is bothered. It would have been better if I didn’t know. Because now you’re holding on to that idea of them - the image of them spiralling in a fit of jealousy and regret. And knowing that, unfortunately, they’re sometimes not alone in those spirals.

So, last night, I went on a really long walk. A walk that ended up with me at a wine bar and then out for spaghetti pomodoro. A semi-expensive walk. And to be honest - the only way I know how to solve any of life’s problems is to walk for a really long time, hoping I’ll end up somewhere else eventually. Whether that’s mentally or emotionally or physically somewhere new.

And what I knew is that I had to write about it. I had to revisit the article I wrote years ago. And then I had to write a new one, knowing that he’ll probably read this one and every one after.

I wish I had a better ending for this newsletter. I wish I could say - and this is the point of it all. This is what I learned. This is how this story ended. But, I guess Thought Catalog sealed our fate with that title.

Anyways, time for mortadalla. I love you!

Emily