I want to go.
I don’t want to go.
I want to squeeze as much as I can out of this awkward time.
I don’t want to do anything, especially.
I want to rest indefinitely.
I want to be able to focus on one thing at a time.
I want to get that chattering, screeching monkey off my back.
There’s more to do, more to pack, more to sort, more to mull over throwing away, more.
I want to go.
I don’t want to go.
I want to know what I meant to the people who touched my life while I was here, but to know is to confront.
I do not want to confront those people with the announcement: I’m leaving this neighborhood, this version of my life.
I do not want to find out that some of it will not ever taste as magical as it did the first time.
I want to tell you the fictional narrative of why we’re leaving – that far greater ambitions await us around the corner and we had to go after them, that something dramatic and cool has happened.
I don’t want to bore you with the real story, which is that six years is all we were ever allowed to be here in this way. This move is an ordinary unfolding of events.
I want to tell you that having packers and movers handle your stuff is way less stressful than doing it all on your own.
I don’t want to admit that it is still highly, highly stressful, even when you have remarkably professional Italians doing that work.
I want to become an aesthete, living like St. Francis with only a garment or two, perhaps a pair of shoes, and a rock for a pillow.
I don’t want to ever let go of this feeling that making art gives me (even if I had lost it for several years because w-o-r-k), and that means I’m going to make stuff. So, I can’t become an aesthete.
I want to clarify that this place is now written into my cells.
I don’t want to have to listen to a constant stream of day trippers and tourists walking below my windows, barely restraining their barking dogs, not-listening to their children, talking on speakerphone with a friend or momma, failing to quell or soothe their babies’ cries, and singing at the tops of their lungs…anymore. How will I unlearn that cacophony?
I want to revisit pandemicized Rome, with its quietude, kindness, earnestness, spookily empty streets and excellent takeout.
I don’t want to watch another visitor heedlessly step out onto the street in front of a moving vehicle.
Horns blaring.
I don’t want to give up the space of this apartment.
I do want a place where I can sit outside, see trees and hear birds.
I want to live in a place where I can be more confident that my neighbor will not shoot me.
I don’t want to face the brutality of capitalism again.
I want to find America unchanged.
I don’t want to face how unrecognizable she is.
I don’t want to take Jasper and Evander on a plane.
I do want them to be happy with new versions of cat TV.
I want to be ready to go.
I don't want to have to go.
But our apartment is empty.
Hollow, loud noise bouncing off of every hard surface and making Jasper jittery.
I want to go.
I don’t want to go.
I want to like this state of limbo.
I want to just be settled (because we all do).
I want to eulogize the 6 years (minus 2.5 taken by Covid) as a time of extreme learning curves, relationships, and gains and losses.
I don’t want to do that yet.
I want to be as direct as possible about this:
I do not want to have regrets.
I want Rome to want me to stay.
I don’t want Rome to jerk me around. But she’s inclined to do that to everyone, really.
I don’t want to run out of room in my suitcase.
I want my heart to be easier to carry. Light. Weightless, even.
I want my mind to be the best repository of all that happened.
I want to replay this movie, starring as a smarter, kinder, happier ex-patriot.
All those coins in the fountain paid off, exponentially.
I got what I asked for.
I got what I asked for.
I (still can't quite believe) I got what I asked for.
So
I want to go.
And
I don’t want to go.
