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enfinblue's Bluey (credit to Fifi for the nickname!) Diaryland Diary

"I am seeking, I am striving, I am in it with all my heart." -Vinc3nt V@n Gogh

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LONG post-Venice

Hi guys!

Exhausted me is back from Venice.

I don't know what to say. Well, first, thanks for your kind notes. I need all of the hope that I can get. :)

I guess I'm still processing things. I was feeling pretty good until I got back here and checked my email for the first time in three days and found out that M. hadn't replied to my only email to him whilst here. I just find it so ODD that someone would send a very personal Christmas gift, email that he thinks I will love Venice and that he wishes he could be with me there, and then not even write a single note or call me when I'm in his country!

It's OK though. I KNOW and understand that I need to NOT ANALYSE this and just move on. Whatever the reason for his not calling, it's not a rejection of me because he doesn't like me or because there is something wrong with me. It's for him to know and him to be and me to forget about.

So Venice was interesting. I wanted to love the city but I kind of hated it. It is beautiful, but at the same time it is kind of dark and creepy and a bit of a dead city. Everything is tourist-driven. The food is bad and uber-expensive. Everywhere practically you are jostled around by tourists taking photos. It is also FREEZING cold there at the moment. I mean, I was wearing a shirt and three sweaters and the coat I bought here and I was still cold. My feet were cold, my body was cold...everything was COLD!

I should have brought my warm Canadian coat and definitely a pair of warm, winter boots!

I did have a good time in Venice, however, as the guy running the hostel was a real character. I had a couple of nice dinners and I did quite a bit of walking by myself in the quietest parts of the island, away from the main attractions. I had moments of real joy there. And of course, I love being with my friends. I left them alone a fair bit and I left them there for a final day today.

We were supposed to fly together tomorrow morning, but when I found out that the Ry@n Air flight that they had bought for 9 Euro entailed us catching a bus to Treviso airport at 4.40 a.m. tomorrow morning...I decided that I had better things to do with my last three days in Italy! :)

So, I took a leisurely train back to Florence today. I'll enjoy the evening here and then tomorrow morning I will take a train to Rome. I've splurged on a decent hotel there tomorrow night and I am going to go to see the Sist3n3 chapel and will have a wonderful dinner with my friends, a leisurely breakfast and walk the next morning, and then I'll be back to Florence for my final 20 hours here or so. I have looked again at my flights and they are QUITE hellish, but I am going to not think about that (Florence to Frankfurt, Frankfurt to Washington, Washington to Ottawa).

So, all is good. I've had quite a few special moments on this trip. More importantly, I think I've received a few good messages.

For one, the French Canadian guy whom I met on New Year's Eve left some wonderful things with me to think about. It sounds strange to say this, but it's almost as though someone wanted me to meet him at exactly that time. I mean, at exactly the time that I needed it someone sized me up, diagnosed me, and also - without any prompting or wanting anything in return - told me how beautiful he found me to be. He said that these women and girls here look good, but that I have something about me that makes me seem beautiful in a way that he doesn't find all of these pretty and flashy women to be. I HAD seem him staring at me in the days before, but I really had not thought he found me attractive. It was a surprising and well-timed gesture on his part, because my confidence needs all of the reminders it can get that what I see of myself is not always the same thing that everyone else sees. If only I could cross the gap from my view to his...

So what else? I'm just awake from a quick nap so I am not sure that this is making much sense.

I just love my friend K. I am so glad that we have gotten to know each other better here. She wants to do some styling up of me, not because she thinks I am ugly the way that I am - although she really wants me to get a sexier haircut and lose some of the conservative clothes - but because she thinks that I've been hiding. She thinks that I need to start behaving like a younger person, and also that I need to get some more young friends. It does strike me as funny that the person I have spent the most time with in Ottawa apart from C. is an 80 year-old man... I love having older friends, but I do take her point that part of my problem is that I THINK of myself as being older than my years (and thereby write of different options for myself as no longer possible). Kind of a waste.

Anyhow. Lots of food for thought. A couple of things that the French Canadian said to me that resonated were in particular that he finds that when he has a fear he has to walk right into it. When it gets too easy you have a problem. I think that that's a good way to sum up what I've been trying to do for myself. At home I live protected, sheltered, inside my apartment. I don't take any risks. I'm settled in a job that I could stay with until I retire with my indexed pension in 25 years. But none of it is what I want to be in 20 years, 10 years, 5 years, the next 5 minutes...

It will be interesting to see if I get that diplomat job when I interview in February. I won't get my hopes up. But what I'm going to remember is that when one door closes another one opens. There will be opportunity after opportunity in my life and I have the tools to take advantage of them. I just need to spot them.

I was on the train today using my meagre but still progressing Italian with a woman next to me. I have seen some more interesting sides to this country than I have on past trips this time. I will probably still come back in April, with M. off the radar. I've decided that if and when I come back I am going to tell him that I think it's best that we not see each other.

It's a funny thing to say, because K and P. on New Year's Eve thought that I should say the opposite just to get closure. They thnk I've been too patient and subtle with him, and that what I need to do is tell him flat out how I feel and what I would be willing to do about it. Then it would be for him to say yes or no and the reasons why. They think that otherwise I'm slinking off with my tail between my legs. And they definitely thought that I should not say to him that I don't understand all of the back and forth and mixed messages that he is giving me. I totally would otherwise have gone into all of that. I can see their point, however.

It's sort of a George Costanz@ thing, isn't it? Maybe it's time that I start DOING exactly the opposite of whatever comes into my head that I should do. :)

Ah well. What do I know? But maybe the point of this trip to Italy is in part to kick my ass that little bit further into thinking of really shaking up my behaviour when I get back home.

It has also definitely been a reminder that I am SO rich in so many ways. I am so lucky. Oh! One other thing that the French Canadian guy said to me - a real prophet, that guy - is that maybe it's time that I stop thinking about all of the things that I think everyone else thinks that I SHOULD be. It's time for me to be myself, however different that is, and feel not ONE OUNCE OF ANYTHING BUT gratitude that I am free to be me.

HE's got something there. What a cool guy. If you can believe it...he was twenty six. He's doing his second Master's of Law, this one at Cambridge, I think, and my GOD was this guy ever thoughtful and beautiful. He's a musician, too. I initially thought he was Austrian or German. He was totally cute and sexy that grunge punk Berl!n sort of a way. I honestly thought that I was in Before Sunr!se. Well, without the sex. I wonder if I should have gone for it... ;)

Just kidding.

I should get out and enjoy a bit more of Firenze. Be well and thanks a bunch for everything. I will get there. Grudgingly and with so much mud on my back and having chased my tail for the better part of a decade, I suspect. But when I get there it is simply going to be marvelous. I can feel it.

XOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXO

Are your holidays going well??

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4:18 p.m. - 2009-01-03

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