My second trip to Italy this year and I had been back in Perth less than a week.
Maybe you should move there, commented a friend on my return after I commented that great coffee in Fremantle still doesn’t taste like Italy feels. And I probably will for three months of each year – after all, we live in a free lance economy where my work can be done from anywhere that there is wifi (although after a week in an airbnb in Milan – that could actually be a challenge for Italy!)
The truth is that I had felt uninspired to write since I had left. Always the network queen – [your network is your net worth – insert link to my previous article] the Transatlantic Intellectual Property Summer Academy at Milan’s Bocconi had been a success and I was now one subject closer to finishing the MBA that had lingered almost two years longer than initially planned.
Since my return, I felt that my obligation to stay in Perth until at least the end of the year was like hiding myself away from the world. And maybe I hadn’t been prepared to admit why I felt this way until I sat in my car this evening to go out. As though a sign from the universe – yes, sometimes you just have to listen, an old Laura Pausini CD I had cleared out before I left [because lets face it, who even listens to CDs, let alone has a CD player in their car anymore] was blaring when I turned my key in the ignition.
“I raise my hands and I surrender!!”
“Because your love is so strong and I can’t go on, without your tender arms around me.”
In that moment I realised that I had been holding back and perhaps a little more about what it felt to be blocked.
Maybe it was simply about surrendering my own feelings that I had kept guarded. I had to write and this is the article that transpired.
I thought back to my week since my return.
“So how did it go?!” my cousin had chimed at my welcome home and regular mid week dinner around the table at nonno’s on Wednesday night.
“Did you see the D?” she teased referring to some flirtatious banter that had evolved with a guy – who was almost the whole package, over the past few months.
Unlike the article I previously shared with my dining companions on the D’s willingness to disclose an image of his package of another kind by text message – I had no words other than to say that we had shared an idyllic weekend in Milan.
“Idyllic?”
“Really Belinda? That is the same as you using the word dear in any way other than writing a card or to be sarcastic. Are you 70? Great way to make a guy’s cock go soft.” Added my brother known for his directness.
Thanks guys.
Yet I did not reveal the details of the weekend that, despite unanswered questions and a hastened goodbye, I want to keep sacred.
Because either way, it will not change a thing.