The Last Two Days...

     Sincerest apologies for my absence...I was sick on Friday and then on Saturday we were traveling all day and I didn't have wifi yet...but I am connected again! 

     Here is the post I wrote on the plane Saturday morning around 7AM:

     Yesterday sucked. I would love to pretend like I had a great day but I didn't and I'm all about being real. 

     In the middle of the night, I got freezing cold and feverish and when I was woken up at 7AM for our Eiffel Tower tour I felt like I'd been run over by a bus. I had a terrible headache and my body ached all over. I thought I was just really tired but the longer I was up, the worse it got. There was no shaking it off. The Eiffel Tower kind of sucked. I realized while going up in a little rickety elevator with windows on all sides that I didn't like heights all that much. The view was pretty good but it was freezing cold and windy and completely cloudy. I started shaking at the top of the tower and didn't stop until we got lunch. All I could stomach was three pieces of bread and some water for lunch. By then my aunt realized that I wasn't fine so we went home and stopped at a pharmacy on the way to get some medicine and then I went home while she and JP went toy shopping. I spent the rest of the day lying in bed sleeping, feeling like crap, while my aunt packed up her stuff and took JP to see the sundial at Saint Sulpice. 

     Our three AM wake up time this morning helped nothing. I did feel better but not perfect. I got dressed and packed the rest of my suitcase up and then my aunt sent me down to put some of the bags in the taxi and she told me to just wait in the car so I was just sitting there with this taxi driver for literally twenty minutes before JP came down with another bag. It was the most awkward thing ever. But I felt so sub-par that I didn't even care that much. 

The taxi to the airport took about forty minutes and JP talked straight through at least half of that time. I don't know how that kid is never tired. 

     Then we got to the airport and I was able to eat some applesauce and fruit and not puke it up. 

     We got on the plane and I was secretly so excited when I was sitting by myself. I needed an hour to not talk to anyone; to not have JP being a brat and my aunt asking every five minutes if I was okay and if I felt like I was going to puke. 

Sitting on the plane while it was taxiing, all I could think was how much I wished it was taking me home and not for another two weeks of vacation. I wanted the dude beside me to be my mom and I wanted her to hug me and I wanted to put my head on her shoulder and fall asleep. I wanted to laugh with my friends and sleep in my own bed. I wanted peace and quiet and I wanted to stop feeling like I was being run over by a bull dozer repeatedly. 

     And that's the end of the plane blog...

     But I continued it in my journal later that night once we'd arrived. JP was all "how much longer are you going to be up texting?" from his bed beside me and I was all "does it look like I'm texting?" holding up my journal for him to see and he was all "oh I thought I saw a phone" and I was like "if it bothers you I can go in the bathroom". I mean I didn't even have a light turned on. I was writing by the glow of the hallway light. 

     I'll admit it: I thought that I would be able to learn to love this kid. But the longer I spend with him the more I stop trying. I mean, he blatantly and repeatedly picks his nose and eats it and when I tell him "That's gross" he says "Mind your own business". I thought that once his dad met us in Rome, he'd shape up...but he's only gotten worse. I've pretty much fallen into this "silent observer state" where I just follow this "happy family" around and ignore it when they fall apart. 

     Okay here's my Saturday night diary entry minus the parts where I detail my sickness:

     "When you have no wifi doing things the old fashioned way seems much more appealing. 

     We are in Italy! We got up at 3AM"---

Okay turns out I already said most of the stuff in my diary so I'll just excerpt the parts that I didn't already mention in some way.

     "I'll skip all the boring details because I have to go to bed but basically I got this surge of unhappy homesickness once we arrived and got settled in but it was completely turned around by aunt M's friends. They're my kind of people. I bonded with Fanny, this no-nonsense English teacher who grew up in the UK but lives in Australia now. We're basically soul mates. 

     Sitting at that tiny Italian cafe, talking to Fanny or Bridget's mom or just watching the sun set...I was happy."

     So there you go. One minute I'm sitting on a plane crying slow, silent, hot tears by myself (only out of my right, window-facing eye so that the dudes sitting beside me wouldn't notice) because I wanted to hug my mom so badly (this was partially induced by the song "Grows Old" by Thirdstory. Don't listen to sad music when you're already sad) and the next minute I'm watching the sun set over Italia thinking that maybe I actually did make a half-decent decision. 

     There have been many moments of soul-crushing loneliness these last few weeks. Moments when, if I was a less stubborn person, I would've emailed my mom and asked her to put me on the next plane home. Moments when I think about seeing my dad when he picks me up at the airport on the 15th and how I'm going to totally lose it and start bawling because I missed him so much and I never show him or tell him how much I love him. Moments when I think about my friends going about their lives at home and how texting is wonderful but it feels so empty sometimes. Moments when I wake up and realize it's my brother's birthday...and I hadn't even thought about it until right then (that was today) and realize that we've missed a lot of each other's lives, for one reason or another. And then there have been moments when I am so grateful and so struck by the beauty of a place that for a moment, everything else falls away. 

Day 951 Song Recommendation: "How I Leapt from the Stratosphere" by Mountains of the Moon.

Day 952 Song Recommendation: "Home" by Novah. 

     I'll post about today's happenings with today's song recommendation tomorrow...hopefully then I'll be back on track. I feel so off-kilter after my two-day absence. 

-SE Wagner