The past few months have thrown me into so many new and wonderful and scary experiences. One day I am in Rome, sipping wine on the courtyard with my roommate Martha. The next day, I am back at home in Jersey working as a full-time intern reporter. I cannot tie these two experiences together with a bow. I cannot sum them up as prettily as I hope to. But, I am here. And I am writing again. I have been struggling to find my groove again, to feel that passion ignite and think to myself I need to write this down before I forget.
I took a travel writing class while abroad in Rome. My professor constantly preached about honesty and vulnerability in writing. She emphasized how necessary it is to be profoundly candid and intentional with our words. I sat in my chair, computer taking over the tiny attached desk, astonished about yet familiar with the concept. I wondered about my own honesty. I characterize myself as someone who is uncomfortably honest and vulnerable, but in actuality, is that true?
So, in the spirit of honesty, I do not feel meaningful right now. I am floating from one change to another, just trying to make sense of it all.
As the title suggests, I decided to dedicate a post to this strange in-between period of my 20s. I am on the precipice of adulthood while latching onto scraps of adolescence. Here are some unfinished pieces I wrote in my notes app during the last six months, some are autobiographical and some are meant to be prose.
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Rome is timeless; a fusion of its beginnings and its present reality. An old landscape carelessly mixed with a new one; I could walk through a local Italian neighborhood, just outside of the city center, and see cottage-like homes with grassy yards and farm animals. I could casually stroll by the Trevi Fountain, or the Colosseum, then pass a McDonalds a quarter of a mile away. I suppose this isn’t exclusive to the Eternal City, even so, I am struck by Rome’s sincerity and its fantasy.
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I drink and I talk too much, prying open spaces you’d all rather ignore
I dance knowing I don’t have rhythm
I promised to be unapologetically loud in my passions
unwilling to be diminished again, refusing to be painted plainly while I’m full of blues and purples and reds.
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I monotonously go about my day;
Attempting a balance of work and play.
Wondering if I am anything at all
Begging myself not to slip and fall
Into the hands of greed and mundanity.
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I haven’t written much this summer. I feel like a lighter running on empty, barely able to ignite. Maybe being a journalist is as much writing as I can consistently handle. I wish on every penny that isn’t true, but I cannot say that I have an answer yet.
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I refuse to bury the little girl in me
who splattered her imagination on all that she touched. I cannot stand to see myself become who I inherently am not, burnt out and uninspired.
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a persistent migraine plagues me —
tugging at my shirt like a little child
I’m never sitting still
my mom says I am always on the move
Nomadically hopping from place to place
I do not know what to make of it;
my own push and pull
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You have that way about you. Inviting me too close, all those sweet nothings that tickle my ears. I vomit my secrets onto you. Toss my trust into your hands as if it burns too much to carry. Your anger is boring, a child’s tantrum roaring.
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I catch a glimpse of me in you. Or maybe it’s fair to say I catch a glimpse of you in me. Your hair falls on your shoulders with ease, and your sweet demeanor prompts me to tell you my secrets. You never fail to remind me that you cannot be my best friend and all the hopes I project onto you fall at my feet. I revert to asking you what we are having for dinner.
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Park Guell was filled with geometric, colorful shapes and rich mosaics. I was in a dreamland, and maybe I was delusional and out of it, but I felt one of those moments of contentment that come and go in a flash. Melting in the sun, a cool breeze shuffling through my long denim skirt, I let it hit me that I am in Spain! It becomes hard to embrace experiences when you’re always on the move. Park Guell was one of the only times I conjured this feeling in Spain.
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Washington is dancing in the dorm halls on the way to the dining hall, laughing my ass off in the comfort of my green comforter alongside Meaghan, Livia and Olivia, it is failures and screw ups, and most importantly growth. I see the person I have grown to be since that freshman year living in the Letts hall basement and wallowing at rock bottom.
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Random and vulnerable, this is what I can give right now. And I think I am okay with that. There is a bittersweet tang to being twenty one. And I am still figuring out how to put this age into words.
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