Taormina & Rome, Italy
Letter #82: Two more short journal entries for your Sunday morning reads. 🥰
5/25/24 - Taormina, Sicily
It’s rainy today in Taormina, so I’ve spent a lazy day in bed with the windows open so I can listen to the sounds of the city. I don’t have food in my room so eventually I’ll have to make my way down for something to eat, but for now I’m enjoying an espresso in bed, listening to João Gilberto crooning over the speaker.
Today is the first day I lounged around in bed but without it being the morning. Sicily is just way too sunny and warm, tempting me to spend my entire day outside.
I’d heard from a few people that Taormina is really touristy, but so far it hasn’t bothered me much. Most of the chatter I hear is from Italian tourists, and I love hearing the sing-song nature of their language when they’re speaking with one another. I can still get lost in my thoughts even in the midst of all the background noise—the same can’t be said when listening to English-speaking tourists. I’m too guilty of eavesdropping.
So far I love the little life here, a steep city built into the cliffs along the Ionian Sea. The buildings are old and brightly colored. Welcoming, open air restaurants line the cobble stone streets, beckon you inside, promising homemade pastas and daily fresh caught fish. The people are warm and expressive. I ate some amazing lemon and shrimp risotto the previous night, sitting at the sidewalk entrance of a little restaurant near my apart-hotel, and enjoyed the people-watching while I dined. It was a lovely way to end my first day in Taormina and my final weekend in Sicily.
The previous morning I woke up at 7:30am for a run, then took my time to pack and make a final breakfast at my seaside AirBnB in Augusta. I then drove an hour and 15 minutes to Taormina where I had to park outside the city, take a bus through winding streets into the city, the push my luggage uphill (on cobble stone streets in some cases), before finally hauling it up at least 5-6 flights of stairs. 😅 It was no small feat and I was grateful my body is fit enough to accomplish something like that.
When I arrived my room wasn’t ready, but the housekeeper allowed me to store my luggage in the room. So I grabbed my valuables and headed out to a cafe to begin my work day. I’d had 6 days off of work (including the weekend) so I was actually excited to reconnect with my team and catch up on whatever I’d missed. I knew I was craving having purpose guide my days—sometimes I can feel a bit directionless otherwise, or guilty about having too much free time to spend money.
6/1/24 - Janiculum Hill, Rome
In love. In love, in love, in love. I can count 5 of them. 6 of them. Couples experiencing the same sweeping views of Rome below that I’m experiencing, but together. I’m at the highest point of Rome in a park, in a beautiful park, having a solo picnic for one.
Over time I’ve learned to admire them, the couples, with a smile and go about my day, but it definitely chips away at me. I used to cry about love and break ups all the time. But those tears have been so far shoved down inside that I can’t summon them anymore.
Ah, but to be in love. I have a hard time remembering what it’s like. To be quiet together. To anticipate each others’ needs. To upset each other but know you won’t leave one another. Where their skin begins to feel like your skin. Familiarity. Ease. Comfort.
I hold out hope that my love story will be a grand one. My positivity keeps me afloat on the outside. But inside there’s a hollowness that’s developed that I stay away from. A place that hurts to acknowledge, of being out of love for so long.
I’m not even sure where to look anymore. I’ve gone halfway around the world. I’ve stayed put for ten years in New York City. But nothing sticks, nothing feels right. How can so many people find one another? Where do they look? Where do they go? Am I that different?
I went to get my first shiatsu massage on Sunday in Sicily. I felt an immediate comfort and friendship with the therapist, a man named Massimo. I encouraged myself to give into the calm, intimate energy that he projected, and relax into the environment. I was very sweaty from walking nearly straight uphill from the beach earlier that afternoon to his studio.
As I lay on his crisp, cotton sheets, I couldn’t help but feel guilty that I wasn’t freshly showered for such an intimate encounter. He reassured me it did not matter at all, as he rubbed lavender oil in his hands, instructing me to breathe deeply.
He pressed his hands into my abdomen, around my intestines, and into my diaphragm. He stretched my legs, my arms, and, using his hands, placed bouts of pressure across my face. It was blissful. It was unlike any other massage I’d experienced before. And I was grateful.
When we were finished, he told me my abdomen was too tight. I was closed off from the energy. I held too many emotions in my core. In his wise way, he told me to let go of what was no longer serving me. He told me to drink a ton of water, have a “pee-pee”, better yet a “poo-poo” and celebrate the body ridding itself of what does not serve us.
We laughed at the intimacy of the moment, me still splayed out on his tatami mat, my hair disheveled but my body thankfully less sweaty, and him sitting cross-legged next to me, demonstrating the ideal movement of inner workings of my intestines. But I teared up in that moment because I knew the emotions he was speaking of. These heartbroken feelings have been bottled up for so long, they’re nearly calcified in my inner organs.
The good news is I don’t often get jealous of others’ relationships anymore. The bad news is I can no longer picture myself with a great love. I don’t know that I believe it’ll be a part of my story. This resolve I’ve “come to terms with” has hardened a place in me that isn’t allow energy to pass through. If that hardened place inside me is also a form of protection against the lack of love in my life, how do I unlock myself from this blocked energy as he suggests? 💔
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