Adding Value

Well that was fast

I began this post allllll ready to enumerate the fabulosities I've observed and experienced in the last week or so. I was prepared to inform you that I have increased my cured pork product consumption by approximately 500%, attended an Italianate cinema, -- I will always wonder EXACTLY what in the fuck "Lion" starring Dev Patel and Nicole Kidman was really about -- made eight motherfucking batches of cheese in the span of two days, met some literally sheepish quadripeds (they were not keen on my offers of friendship), attempted my first driving lesson in a 20 year old Fiat Panda with a manual transmission and a not entirely functioning battery that required a running start before the engine turned over, spoke my first fully formed and understood Italian sentence, had dinner with the excellent Silvio Messana of Montesecondo, lost an earring, got told I look like a film star (BRING ON THE COMPLIMENTS, RAGAZZI), was appraised of some local gossip and the reputations of Florentines as being amongst the snootiest of Italians, and learned yet another bizarre turn of phrase involving a witch (Italians evidently LOVE their witches.)

But I got stopped up every time I so much as considered sitting down to gleefully document all of the new and wondrous things I've seen and eaten and smelled.  Because the truth is that I've been struggling -- really struggling -- to dwell in all the good that currently surrounds me. I feel supremely guilty for not being totally and completely blissed out/enthralled by the novelty and the gorgeousness around every rustically hewn corner, and more than a little lame that a goddamned quote from Sex and the City keeps echoing inside my dome; the one in which Samantha, in a flu-induced haze, weeps to Carrie that "it doesn't matter how much you have ... if you don't have [someone] who cares about you, it don't mean shit." 

I am not proud to admit that I am finding so much in common with an outdated show about overprivileged white women, nor am I stoked to discover that all of the strength and resilience that I'd convinced myself my time in Vermont afforded me has seemingly blown away on the Tramontane, leaving me feeling softer, sadder, scared-er and more alone than ever before. I'd had a nagging, sneaking suspicion, invoked in these very pixels, that moving even further from my friends and family to a remote place with a language barrier might not do much for the depression I've been dragging around with me for the last three years or so. But I did everything in my power to convince myself I could outrun it, like I did for the first few months in Vermont, or that the newness and busy-ness of a different job and environment would distract me, or the sheer joy of living out what has long been a dream for me would fill up this yawning cavern in my chest cavity. But alas, for the first time in a long while, I have seemingly endless amounts of free time but no one to share it with, nor, currently, any way of exploring more than the (lovely) acreage around my flat, as I am car-less and bike-less and therefore more or less stranded on a beautiful mountaintop. 

I realize that the desolate wildery circumstance I find myself in is the stuff of fantasy for a large swath of the population. Certainly it was mine back when I lived in a city and my daily life was oversaturated with stimuli and I fetishized living like a hermit in a quiet beautiful place where my mind could blossom and all the pent up artistic impulses I felt sure I harbored would unfurl and slowly I'd become the whole person I always wanted to be instead of this fractured pastiche of aspirations and impressions and mimicked confidence.

Now, suddenly, I find myself without an anchor, or a purpose. I have begun to make peace with my ever fading physical appeal, but my remaining dual qualities of humor and nurturing now suddenly have no objects or audience without friends to amuse or animals to feed and cuddle. There is part of me that knows I need to give this thing a chance, that believes once I've gotten a few key obstacles sorted and am better able to move around with my own agency and make connections, things will improve. And there is another part that is simply tired -- tired of forcing myself to endure something that should be giving me joy, tired of waiting to feel better or happier or more alive. These knots I've tied myself in over the last few years have, perhaps, made me more interesting or impressive or credible to others, and so the prospect of calling it off and retreating to some less challenging, less outwardly glamorous way of life is daunting in its own way. I have no way of knowing whether I will feel better or worse if I manage to soldier on over this little bump in the road, or if this is even a bump at all, or a goddamned meteor blocking my path.

I always hoped that I would discover I was one of those people who really and truly didn't need anyone, who could be entirely secure and fulfilled in her solitude (cough cough Laini Fondiller). I might've managed to fool myself into believing I'd become that for a little while. But the ugly goddamned truth is that I am not alone by choice but by default. I am difficult and volatile and fickle and intractable.  I am so very flawed. And all of the positive traits that might otherwise mitigate these flaws seem to be fading into the ether with each passing day. My own sense of self is tragically tethered to others' perceptions and expectations of me. In a vacuum, I have come to assume the worst.

Worst of all, in the fog of this melancholy, my senses are dulled and my ability to perceive and transmit anthropological observations compromised to the point that I seem unable to lean on the one outlet that has gotten me through the last two and a half years. Which is why you have (if you've made it this far) unwittingly ambled into a quagmire of self-pity and self-flagellation. My bad. Bear with me dear readers. I hope to snap out of this soon and return to you soon with fresh eyes, fresh wonder, and fresh jokes. 

A domani.