Tuesday I got a text from D. saying “So what are you doing this weekend?” and I responded back all sleepy (since it was five a.m. my time) “Why, do you want to go to Samoa?” and he responded “Seattle!” and so I had a day of thinking that if everything worked out (his new passport, his new job that is going to send him to yet another scary part of the world, the tickets, the timing) that I’d be seeing him this weekend, i.e. right now. It’s been about seven weeks since we met, which is nothing compared to how long it will be when he’s away on work, but still. It’s new. I miss him. I want to know him more.

“Are you sure you want to come here,” I said, rueing the day I’d told him about REI. “I mean, I can come to Italy! IT’S NOT A PROBLEM FOR ME TO COME TO ITALY NO IT IS NOT.”

“No, stella,” he said, smiling through the headset, I could tell. “Italy is boring. I want to come to you.” Well, no arguments here, REI be damned to hell.

“It’s ninety percent certain that I’ll be able to come,” he said that morning on the phone, “and as soon as they tell me when I need to give them the passport for the visa we’ll get the tickets, so ci parliamo domani, okay?” So I spent that day imagining going to Cupcake Royale (where, uh, I have gone every day for a week) with him, and started thinking about putting together a little happy hour so he could meet everyone at once, and considered where we might go for an American-style road trip while he was here (Eugene or Vancouver?). Friday Friday Friday, I thought. Friday!

Wednesday I was all ready and waiting for the call. “Ciao amore!” I screeched when he called. “How are you?” “Well, I am outraged,” he said–because no, work wants him to start earlier, and so he needs a visa, and so they need his passport, and so he can’t travel. “So…you want to come? To me? Here?”

“Yes,” I said, “yes, of course, yes, soon, yes, yes!” But when we got off the phone a huge wave of exhaustion hit me–just thinking about checking in for another flight made me need to lie down. I thought about the furniture and books I need to get rid of, the paperwork I need to do, the plans I have to make. I thought about all the friends I haven’t had lunch with yet and who have welcomed me back in so graciously and seamlessly, driving me around and inviting me to Fourth of July Rock Band parties at a moment’s notice. I thought about just stopping for a while.

(And the worst part was that I know that my problems are pretty awesome: like, oh, wah, Chiara, you have to go to Italy? To see your hot young international boyfriend whom you adore? World’s tiniest violin, etc etc. But still, I am still just so tired. Normal life as I know it seems so far away–the idea of having a job and a schedule and a regular bellydance class seems so far away. I think of my little routine in Wellington–walk to work, go to New World on the way home, bus to Cuba Mall, dinner on the couch with A., coffees with Sylvia and Alice and Ken and David and Stormy and Danica and everyone else–and it seems utterly foreign now. I am actually terrified of what’s going to happen to me when I actually have to go to work again).

But I looked up plane fares. I did the math. I thought about seeing him in one of his contexts, about meeting his friends and family, about having those conversations about nothing actually in the same room. I thought about speaking my rudimentary Italian every day (to his parents) and about walking around his home town together. I thought about his face at the airport when I get into Malpensa. I can do it, I thought. Everyone should have such problems.

And so yesterday after a little more confusion (”I don’t want you to think I don’t want you to come.” “Wait, now you don’t want me to come?”) and a lot of dithering around online we got me a ticket. I leave Thursday and will be there for two weeks, just two weeks. We’ll spend a week in northern Italy with his family and then a week in Rome while he does some training for his new job; he was all “Will you be okay on your own while I’m at work?” and I was like, “Yeah, I’ve heard there are one or two tourism opportunities there…” The last couple of days I’ve been reading At Home In Rome and practicing with Italian-language podcasts and refining my to-do list to a keen honed edge. I’m getting more excited about this trip with every hour; weirdly, the fact that I’m going but coming back soon here has been really calming. It was such a relief, tonight at the party, to just go “Okay, see you when I get back in a couple weeks!” instead of, basically “See you NEVER.”

But I can tell that New Zealand has really changed me because girl, seriously, if you’d told me I’d be doing this a couple of months ago, when I was all in the South Island alone and miserable…well, of course I wouldn’t have believed you. Of course I wouldn’t, who would? The difference is that now I can just do stuff like this, whether I believe in it or not. I don’t have to be as afraid anymore, even though it’s crazy and ridiculous and expensive. I’m getting more powerful, stronger, braver, closer to the bone, closer to my heart. I can’t be anything other than grateful.

What I don’t understand, though, is why I had to leave to become more that way, why it seems to require leaving so much and so many behind.

Posted on July 4th, 2008 by Chiara
Filed under: Everything, Seattle, Traveling