Roads from Rome (and the Birth of a Blog)

Some who wander might be lost. So here it is, the whole point of doing this blog (which seems both invigorating and trite at the same time.)

I was two blocks from the Pantheon, waiting in the rain with a cluster of strangers, watching for the break in the late Roma marathon runners so we could cross the street. It wasn’t pouring rain, not anymore, but enough that we all were using umbrellas, staggered at different heights so not we to smack into each other. A carefully choreographed airborne waltz. The Roman walkways in this center part of town are the most ancient alleys I have yet seen intact; their width leaves no possible way to pass two abreast. So my husband was consigned to his umbrella, and me to mine.

We were hungover. We didn’t yet realize that I left my wallet behind at the restaurant (that would come in about 5 minutes when we stopped to buy a Coke.) So I stood in a group of people, in a busy moment, but completely alone, lost in fuzzy thought.

At this moment it hit me. Viscerally, all the way down to the marrow. I didn’t want to go home. Not that last-day-whining voice in my head that says, “Why can’t we stay longer? We could go see [insert amazing thing]. And how can we come here and not do [insert amazing life experience]?” We still had four more days with Venice and Florence ahead. This wasn’t that voice at all.

This was a much calmer, more insidious part of myself. Telling me to forget the plane home. Telling me how easy it would be to just keep blending with that sea of people. assuring me of course I could navigate Italy “on a shoestring.” I could wander to Otranto, the “white city” with a castle worthy of Game of Thrones. Take the ferry I once saw a schedule for long ago, and go to Paxi, a cheaper Grecian entry than its neighbor, Corfu. So easy to go off the grid in Greece. Not really that far from Istanbul…

I shook my head and searched for a frantic second for my husband, putting his “what’s up with you?” face on my radar.  I wanted him to come with me and knew he would be rational instead. Yet if it wasn’t for him, his grounding presence, his existence in my world, I wouldn’t have caught that flight home. Would. Not. Without him, I would have cowardly texted my loved ones to say “don’t worry, change in plans, can’t explain right now but I’m ok, no worries! I’ll be back!” It was so tantalizingly real. It also freaked me out. I’ve never, ultimately, dreaded home. Never wanted to exit my life stage right in search of a new script. I knew something had to change.

It should be said now for those that don’t know me that I have a good life. I am quite grateful for it. I have loving and generous family and friends. I’m solidly employed and enjoy people I work with. We have a house and a much-loved dog. I am fully aware that things could be a lot harder.

And….there is the other part. You see, I’m a mental health therapist, mostly with kids and teens. I’ve been at it for 14 years; the field average is 4 years (something they don’t mention during two years of graduate school). I specialize in trauma, particularly child sexual trauma referrals. All this to say: intense work. I also think visually; if you tell me a story, I will play that story, even mundane ones, in my head like a movie as you talk. There are upsides to it, but the downside is that I have really unpleasant memories that are not mine. I contain them well, but the battery drains.  I get…itchy. As Alanis Morrisette once said during what sounded like her own existential crisis: I care but I’m restless. I’m here but I’m really gone.

So I travel. My family started it with long road trips, but it’s all mine now. Distraction is wildly underrated. I enjoy a good lie-on-the-beach vacation, but what really gets me cranked up are those trips that you plan. I like it almost as much as the going. Where I can study a map like one would read a book. Plot a public transportation route. Figure out local norms. Learn a bit of a new language. Hunt down deals. Try to hustle the points’ racket. Make a packing list. Ohhh, my favorite, deciphering train time tables. I like the challenge. I’m mindful and present but without the trauma narrative. No itch.

For a long time these trips have recharged the battery of my actual day-to-day life and it was a beautiful system. Until Rome. Oh, it’s not Rome’s fault, as beautiful as she is.  Yet, if “all roads lead to Rome”, how could I not consider the other roads less traveled in my own life?

So what to do? Quitting a worthy, often satisfying, and financially necessary job to do….something… didn’t seem reasonable. So I mulled about it. Pouted about it. As with most things, when I stopped wrestling with it so hard, the answer was really quite simple. I decided that planning travel and thinking about travel and writing about travel and traveling makes me happiest right now. Thus this blog.

Don’t worry, most posts won’t be such a leap into my thought process. Most will be about experiences during my wanderings, how I got there, and really, how you can too. I just figured it was fair to let you, dear reader, know where I am as we start this. Tired but working. Caring but restless. Here but gone. 

By the way, that lost wallet from our earlier moment together. I went back to that restaurant with long strides but only mildly frantic. I can best say it this way: I once “lost” my credit card, asking Hubs where it was while I chomped said credit card between my teeth, busy hands packing away. Yes, you read that right. So I knew myself too well to leave anything too important in there like, heaven forbid, the passports. After the nonno overseeing his business tried to give me his own wallet as a jest, there was mine, waiting patiently for me. Habana, between the Pantheon and Via del Corso. chicken. Tasty chicken. Classic cacio e pepe. Good people. Let the journey begin.  

( Travel- Europe or otherwise- has a price tag but never fear! Need some help getting a good deal on airfare, earning and using points, finding upgrades, finding the right hotel or scoring good hotel deals in expensive places/events? Stick with us. We got this.)  

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