Two years and two lifetimes ago I was in Italy for a month. It was very much the Call me by your name dream of Tuscany, sort of rustic terracotta next to quite nice poolside furnishings actually. I was staying on a hotel complex for a month, but in the staff quarters, not the hotel quarters. But I ate all my meals in the restaurant prepared exquisitely by a chef chef, and we had access to the fancy pool, most of the time, and the staff pool with horse flies, the rest of the time. My room was shabby, haunted and beautiful. At the top of all the stairs, a door that didn’t lock, a glass vase with dried leaves by the window, high ceilings, peeling wallpaper, freaky attic that a storm revealed one fretful afternoon by blowing the door wide.
I was part of September’s artist residency cohort, but I was the yoga teacher. I liked hearing them all talk about their art and not having to explain myself. But quietly under my breath I thought, I’m more one of you you know. I didn’t want to talk about yoga or spines or flexibility either though. For that month, I actually didn’t want to talk about much at all. I was removed. And sometimes I think that I missed so much of it - because I actually did. I remember literally running barefoot up the stone stairs one night away from the dinner as soon as I’d eaten, and hearing them all literally singing and dancing. Instead, I watched something on my laptop and slept fitfully as people ran up and down my stairwell to smoke on the balcony outside my room.
At dinner, I made conversation but not in the way I usually would. I zoned out and didn’t let my cheeks flush with the enthusiasm that other people give them. I ate breakfast alone most days because I was late by the time yoga finished. The yoga classes were quiet, calm and small. One or two people and this decking that overlooked beauty itself. Whenever the slightly predatory chef came to chat to me on my sunbed I shut it down coldly. By the pool I chose loungers away from other people and listened to their deepening connections form over the water. I swam lengths with my goggles on and head down whilst everyone else just had a nice time. I judged often, squirrelled boiled eggs and bread into napkins to eat at my dusty desk.
I took selfies of my face, pictures of my naked - on the thinner side for me body - in the mirrors, I listened to the C word endlessly on long walks up and down a fairly uneventful but quite hard on the thighs road. I sent voice notes sometimes, talked about my flatness, my antisocial energy, the way I simply wasn’t being a vibe. I wrote and wrote and wrote. Quietly without any interruptions or input I climbed so far inside my own story. At one point I laid pages out on my floor in small piles, I attached post - it notes and timelines and moved things around and rebuilt my book like people in movies do. I was a film.
I didn’t hear a word from the man I was trying to let go of and I didn’t let go of him either. In fact I jumped into his bed the night I returned to London. My eyes fell to my screen at the party I was at and I found a way to leave and return to him. But then the events that followed, the small months that followed really were the final nails until I said silently and loudly enough enough enough and my life changed forever as a reward.
Anyway, back in Italy, back at Villa Lena I was struggling to join in. I made friends, sort of, and only half measured compared to the way I usually make friends. I didn’t get drunk, I had some kind of crazy virus the night they all got high and stayed in my room instead, guilty, bored and lonely. I took a trip ouf of the compound one weekend. Found myself by the coast the most alone I’ve been. I thought about C as I retraced our steps. I was here now and she didn’t even know and she wouldn’t even want to know. Holly met me there and we had some of those days of our lives and she had to stop herself from throwing wine in my face when I confessed, I’ve been sleeping with him secretly all summer. And maybe it’s a tiny reminder that all friends have to endure more than is fair.
When we got back to the hotel together we stayed in our bubble that reminded me of home. I wanted to be there because I hadn’t let myself step into this space. I was too sad or something. I spent a whole month there and I didn’t even get to know Katie. In the last year she has become one of the richest editions to my life even though she lives in Michigan. And then, we were both in Italy for a whole month eating together every night but my eyes were metaphorically glazed over. So.
So this was the month. I have the most visceral feeling in my body of that month, in the way we do of anything that marked us in someway. On the second to last night we had a dinner in our house instead of at the restaurant. So the chefs, this gorgeous and delightful couple, brought it all down to us and there was this kind of feral energy in the air. Earlier in the evening I had read the group a chapter of my book. All the artists took it in turns to share their work and for us to visit their studios. I had no studio so we put chairs in a circle and I read. Someone stopped me after 30 seconds and told me to slow down and I took a breath out and tried.
After reading my words out loud something changed. Mostly it changed in me. I should say it went well, something landed, perhaps people were surprised because I’d barely said anything about myself for four weeks and now here I was. My cheeks flushed. For fucksake they flushed, I was waking up. After the reading, high on sharing, I didn’t even need the feedback, it was just the moment when I finished my last sentence and there was a tiny pause because we were feeling it. So that. And then, wine, and then, feral. We danced around the table in this glorious way. Kind of manic scurrying around the table, we took it in turns to sing a song into a spoon. I sang Torn and it was cool and fun. At the end of the night I felt a bit like god I love these people.
Why did it take me till the end to feel something? To join in?
I guess there is something about leaving, there is something about endings, there is something that we can access only when we know it is ending, we are going.
The aforementioned man I was trying to get over. Well I did get over him. I made a decision which is very strange and unlike me, who likes to let it linger, who was holding out hope, waiting for the change, dropped penny, potential. So, I waited a long time. And then one day in December I realised and I picked up my phone in a focused fury, and there for the first time I saw Tom. I saw Tom and I felt something. And so, eyes forward, a few looks over my shoulder and two weeks later we met on a date just before Christmas. And as soon as we’d met I dropped the piece of string I had been holding. Just like that, cut.
When we realised I’d really gone this time, not just a month of silence, but really really gone, moved on. He opened up his floodgates. Everything I could have ever hoped to hear too late. Every moment I had felt, he had too but he stayed frozen. And, he could only say it as I was leaving. That Adrienne Lenker lyric, never more in love than when I’m leaving.
Anyway this happens in tiny ways all the time. When we drop something, when we drop the thing, when we drop the guard, the plan, the thing, life can happen.
Obviously adore this one — not just because I’m so lovingly mentioned — but because you precisely capture what those wildly confusing / isolating / erratically inconvenient and unavoidably all consuming times feel like. And for whatever it’s worth, your month of appearing nonchalant but extending so much kindness through yoga, topped off with reading your story that actually made our jaws drop, AND THEN rolling on the floor singing Natalie Imbruglia very much had me asking “why the hell aren’t we better friends?!” So glad to be there today. <3
Funnily, I also spent a month at that gorgeous, haunted Tuscan house, being the yogi in residence, while trying to write.