Italy

 My favorite part about this summer is going to Italy. Whenever I go there, I feel a sense of peace that I don’t feel anywhere else. I stay at my Italian stepmom’s family house in Puglia and her family is so nice to be around and always makes my trip so enjoyable. One of my favorite things about going there is that I can eat an insane amount of food, and gain no weight. The food there is processed and filled with chemicals like most food in America and whenever I overeat in Italy, I never feel sick. Whenever I come back home, food makes me feel sick for a week because I become used to the food in Italy. I start my mornings in Italy by eating lots of fruit, cake, and cookies for breakfast. I eat an insane amount when I’m there. I probably eat ten meals a day. Typically during the day, we will either go to the beach, swim in the pool or go out to town. The only issue is that it gets so hot over the summer so if I’m not at the beach or pool, I need to stay inside. At night, we occasionally go out to town or go to my stepmoms friends hotel for dinner. I have been to Rome, Puglia, and Bari but this summer will be the first time I’m going to Venice and the Dolomites. My stepmom doesn’t like Venice because it’s just filled with water and there really isn’t much to do, but we are only going there for one night and I’m just happy to see it. The Dolomites will be fun but I know that my dad will make me hike all day in the heat which will be intense.

Positano coast Italy“/ CC0 1.0

Finals

Finals begin this Friday and I’m terrified. I can’t believe that the school year is coming to an end and I’m not prepared for any of my exams. This semester has felt so intense and finals aren’t necessary. I’m happy where my grades are and don’t want my finals to mess it up. Knowing myself, I probaly won’t spend a long time studying just because I’m already so fed up with school work. My first final is chemistry which is terrifying because I’m horrible at it. Luckily, I have one side of paper to use as a cheat sheet on the test, which will help a lot. I feel confident about my english final because half of it is vocab that I already know and the other half is two essays about a book which we can have during the test. I am terrified for my math final because I have been struggling all year. Once again, I am allowed a full page cheat sheet for math so it will be a lot easier. I’m hoping that my finals go well and don’t make a huge change on my grade.

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What Is on my poor mind?

I only realized last night that I’m truly graduating from school. All this time, it seemed like some kind of joke, and that next year would be just the same as the last. However, at one in the morning on Thursday, I suddenly understood that it wasn’t true and that I would never be a schoolgirl again. This realization shocked me deeply, and I cried until 3 a.m. How did it happen that 12 years of my life flew by so unnoticed? And if these 12 years flew by like one day, does that mean my whole life will pass just as quickly?

In the last two weeks, everything more or less stable in my life over the past few years has ended. The video game I’ve been playing since I was 12 ended. This silly game served as a marker of stability in my chaotic life, and it ended right after my 18th birthday, how ironic, isn’t it? What seemed to be a childish amusement that gave me a sense of comfort for years ended the moment I turned 18. By the way, yes, I’m now 18 years old, and that has also been a factor in my moral decay these last few weeks. I CAN’T ACCEPT THE FACT THAT I AM NOW AN ADULT WHO NO LONGER HAS A FAVORITE TOY AND WHO IS NO LONGER IN SCHOOL. It’s a terrible feeling to know that all the comfort and the circle of acquaintances I’ve created for myself in another country, day by day for years trying to keep everything stable, will soon collapse like a house of cards and I will have to create it all over again. In short, I am frustrated and don’t know what to do about it.

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was it worth it?

I used the same words as before, relied on the same silly excuses, and stuck to the same topics of conversation that I used a couple of years ago when I was younger and reckless. As usual, I blushed in our dialogue, and felt embarrassed; for some reason, I always feel shy about using the harsh words I normally use in everyday speech with you. Why, I don’t know, just as I don’t know why this hasn’t changed over the years.

We have long been living separate lives far apart, but a thread of something pure and untainted has remained between us over time. I don’t feel grown-up and tired when I talk to you; it’s as if I’m slipping back into the summer of ’22, and as if my worries and cares are gone again. But now, reflecting on our conversation, my head is filled with different questions. Why do I act like a kid when we talk? What do you think of me now? If/when we meet, will we connect the same way as before? Was our connection so easy for me because I simply didn’t know myself or the world? Will I look at you with different eyes after all I’ve gone through? Or maybe everything has stayed the same, and we can easily chat about our past and future again? How will you react to my changes and worldview? How have you changed, what’s going on in your thoughts, what do you feel as you enter a new stage in your life, and what do you think about the life path I’ve chosen?

What I fear most is that we will meet and you will see me as an adult, beautiful and healthy, a successful young woman who has achieved her goals and set new ones, and you will realize that all this cost me a broken heart. Broken not just from your absence, but also from the absence of family, from total and consuming loneliness in a foreign country, from strange people who have spit on my soul, from endless burnouts. I’m afraid that if you see this, then it will become an undeniable fact that I will have to come to terms with. And then the real question arises: was it all worth it?

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What?


This might be the most serious blog post I’ve ever written. There are a few things in my life that I always pay attention to. I notice a person’s hair when I’m talking to them, I observe the nature/architecture around me, but what has always caught my attention the most are the circular patterns of life.

Minute by minute, hour by hour, day turns into night and night into day, months follow one another, spring always becomes summer, and so on. Just as in the natural cycles, our lives are filled with them. New life will inevitably find death, setting the wheel of Samsara in motion again, just as dawn always turns to dusk. Even in the behavior of my body, I see these patterns. As a woman, I cannot overlook the circular patterns of my body. I find circles in my mental behavior as well. I carefully track my tendencies and have come to the conclusion that I constantly go through cycles of healing and self-destruction. These patterns are ridiculously obvious. I tear myself down, dropping to the lowest point, then find salvation in this darkness, and then I start again, licking my wounds and healing. I’m currently in a phase of recovery; it took me a long time to get out of a depressive phase, but I’ve clearly traced this pattern. Similarly, in terms of movement and travel, I see these patterns. Periods of stagnation are replaced by times of frantic movement when I’m too busy to wash up before bed and fall asleep from exhaustion.

All these coincidences are funny and seemingly insignificant on their own, but when they come together and form a circular picture, repeating previous patterns, it becomes interesting. Finding circular patterns in anything is one of my biggest life fascinations, and every time I discover a new one, I become more convinced of my theory that everything in this life is cyclical.

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