Slowly, and painfully, I am readjusting to my life in America. No longer do I wake up in the morning, expecting to be burned intensely by the Sicilian sun. I don't cry anymore, or long to get my ass back onto the plane and speed my way back to Sicily, back "home". Home is here now, and I've accepted it. Now I need only make it real for myself. But with the beautiful reality that my life is progressing, and that I am someone new, there is also the reality that something extraordinary has ended.
My time in Italy was the most trying and beautiful of my life. Hands down. It was not all sunshine and roses and puppies, but what is? I've loved more passionately, and hurt more intensely, than ever before in my life. And so to enter that life was the best decision I've ever made. To leave it, the most heart-shattering. Its embedded in my mind. I stood with my suitcase, munching on a little apricot cake thing. I stood leaning on the bright lime green of my suitcase, listening to my friends talk about something. I cannot remember exactly what at the moment. I had cried on the bus ride there, in the dark, at 3AM, with Daniela the Bolivian girl sprawled across my lap, sick and nauseous. She told me that she was going to miss me very much and then she sort of...crawled on top of me, and slept. She slept, and I cried, because I had grown so attached to her in the past year, and the leaving part of our friendship, the only part we could have foreseen, was approaching all too quickly. And so I stood, with my suitcase, waiting. And the moment that the Bolivian's flight was called, I began to weep. She hugged , told me not to cry, and was gone. I went to my other friend from Honduras for comfort, which she gave. Crying too. And then it was my time to go. And so I did, and here I am. Re-assimilation sucks. my year is done my year is done my year is done. time to move on move on move on move on move on. Grow up grow up grow up. Learn learn learn learn learn. ANDRO' AVANTI! I will always go forward, but it gives me still a feeling of great , powerful sadness to look back. But also , one of extraordinary satisfaction and joy. Which to feel in completion is something I'll have to wait for. My friend Erica's deaf cat named Ice wants to comfort me with his fuzziness. I owe it to my soul to allow him, in all his fuzzy glory, into its crevices. Home never felt so bittersweet.
