The disconcerting reality.

It's funny how when you're young, life just seems so simple & you truly live on a day-to-day basis.  There's no worrying about the future, or living up to your potential.  It's just eating cereal & looking forward to bike rides.  At what point did all the other bullshit start to creep in & take over & dilute the happiness?

I can blame my misery & uncertainty in life on many different factors.  I can rake over the past, until, there is nothing there.  But I know my own mistakes.  The issue is, I don't seem to be learning from them.

If your one ambition in life is to be happy, how do you work out exactly how to achieve this.  Because, as basic a need as it sounds, it is seemingly harder to obtain.  I mean, I finally left a job I despised, I'm living in glorious Sicily, I have endless supplies of gelato, I should be happy, right?  But I'm not.

How can you truly be happy, if in fact, you don't know what it is that makes you happy.  As to whether I have spent too much time over-thinking my emotions & questioning over & over again, what I should be doing with my life, I feel I may have reached a point where all my thoughts have lost meaning.  Like when you repeat a word thirty times & suddenly the word seems alien to you.

My life has, in itself, lost all meaning.  I have no direction.  I have coasted through the best part of six years & now, I am merely coasting my way around Italy.  Aimlessly adrift.

To further prove my point; I met a very handsomely rugged Italian man, here on my carob farm.  I was instantly attracted to him & thankful that he spoke English.  (Sicilians do not do English.  French, oui.  Spanish, sí.  English, no!)  We spent a week working together, just the two of us.  He was funny & intelligent enough to bring out my insecurities about not attending school.

Finally, things came to a head on the eve of his birthday.  As it happened to fall on the same day as the Ferragosto, the farm held a party, complete with this ridiculous ten course feast & a huge bonfire.  The two of us stayed in each others company all night, got drunk on red wine & then he kissed me under the stars.  Yes, it was clichéd & romantic.

The next day, he made it clear that we should keep our dalliance to ourselves, as he didn't want D, the farm's owner, to deem it inappropriate or question our motives, working together.  In essence, I understood his perspective, in reality, I felt used.  Things were probably not made simpler by our consummating the 'relationship' in his tent that evening.

For the following few days I was thrown into an emotional chasm, only I know how to get myself into.  Here I had a man, a fully grown, intelligent, bearded, potential to wear skinny jeans, although does not, man, who I liked, I really really liked, who I could not publicly display my affection for.  Out in the carob field, or alone in the kitchen, it was all hugs & kisses, but then over the dinner table it was awkwardly trying to avoid eye contact, so no one would suspect.  This was not healthy for me.

It reached breaking point when his friend came to visit & it was so unclear who knew what & how I should act.  Was I just a secret?  I broke.  I threw down my tools, stormed off to another field & broke down & cried.  I felt lost.  Not just with this ridiculously complex affair I had found myself entangled in, but with life in general.

When it came to him leaving to continue his travels, I was further embarrassed by my inability to keep a dry eye.  He looked me in the eye & told me, with all sincerity, that it had meant something.  But had it, really?  When I told him I would miss him, he did not reciprocate the sentiment.  Off he rode on his vespa & never looked back.

I'm twenty six years old & I don't know how to have fun.  How to embrace something & let it go.  I read into everything.  I get too emotionally attached.  I always want more than what's on offer, but then should more become available, I don't want it! 

Perhaps Italy will purge me of my insecurities & force me to embrace life, with all the shittiness included.  Like therapy, but with a tan thrown in.

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