Italian Sabbatical

I leave next week to Italy. I will find shopping in Mulin, a view of the Swiss Alps in Torino, and fall hopelessly for Venetian art in Venice. I find I am avid about the whole trip. Except flying. Reading Irving left me in a spell to walk the ancient streets of Venice and talk to strangers.

Mostly it's London I want. After all, being a British lit. major will never feel complete without going to, as it were, the scene of the crime. I want to spend a day at Stratford upon Avon. I want the cosmopolitan atmosphere. I want to see a ghostly tower and learn British slang. Right now it feels too much like a dream. But I am not a dreamer. Or a wisher. If I want something, I make it happen, and London will happen.

Tiff Marie put me to work today, helping her finish scrapbooks for a boutique this weekend. She must have been desperate for help. I am, in no way, the crafty, scrapbooking, botique going sort. But as her best friend, I was more than willing to help. We sat at the kitchen table stamping, sticking, cutting, etc. Little Jayden sat playing with his toys, looking up at me every few moments with wide blue eyes and a smile. The kitchen light glinted off of Tiff Marie's wedding ring as she worked. Suddenly I felt strange and out of place.

Things are so different now. Friends are married with babies. They are rolling forward in a chapter of life I have not touched, let alone thought much about. I lay awake at night harassing my brain for creativity, wondering about the next step of education and where I'll be going, and if there's a job out their decent enough.

But then...I suppose it finds me. Thoughts about a relationship. I lay praying for sleep, hating to reflect the lonesome camp my life has been and is. Relationships (of any kind), after all, are not my forte. I am two and twenty, and though society may view that as young and lively, I sometimes cannot help feeling like curdled milk.

Oh Italy, come quick!