Saturday Night, My New Year’s Eve

New Year’s Eve, Saturday evening, Italy

In the midst of Rome, one of the most historically enriched cities in the world, containing beautiful buildings filled with scandal, carb-filled plates of happiness, extra virgin olive oils and extra non-virgin olive-skinned men, I see myself surrounded by so much that many in the world wish to be in. Yet, I feel happiness in everything but my heart. My mind has been fed with knowledge of history and art, and it is ever so grateful, always wanting more. But my heart. My heart. It hurts while I am here. It hurts because I left it back home. It hurts because it’s falling apart in pieces inside the box I kept safe in my drawer. It screams at me from across the world words of anger and betrayal. It yells at me in fear. I hear it all the way in my room, shouting how it is not safe, how it is breaking apart yet again like it did a year ago, how I broke my promise to keep it protected while I left it behind. I thought leaving it behind would help me heal it. I thought I was doing it a favor. I thought the distance would achieve what I wanted. I thought that the placement of myself in a foreign land would bring it back to normal.

I could have never been more wrong.

So, I get ready to ring in the new year, pacing slowly as ever so that I feel every second left of 2016 be engraved in my head. I take moments to sit still and look out the window to the world I am unfamiliar with. I watch my friend merrily skip across the room, longing to be kissed tonight in hopes of gaining back a lover who never deserved her by means of jealousy. I sit. I look out the window again, silently calling out to my heart to be patient and wait for me. I pray it hears me and waits just a little bit longer for me to come put it back together. I look at the hole in my chest where my heart used to rest, and I cover it up for one more day this year, telling it that it won’t be long before it is occupied once more. I hear my chest telling me that it won’t be the same heart I left behind. I answer back that it’s nothing we haven’t worked on fixing before, that we are not alone, that though love may not come in the form we long for since we fear it now, it is there in another form. It is there in the ones we keep close to us because they treat it well. It is in my father’s words of pride he sent to me in a message earlier. It is in my mother’s voice over the phone telling me I am loved. It is in the support of friends all the way back home who make me feel like a million dollars on days I feel worthless like today. So, to both my heart and chest, I say be patient. To both, I say don’t be angry at me for failing you once more. For if there is one thing I know of surely, it is that so long as my mind and soul thrive, there is no heartbreak I will never be able to fix. All I ask for, is time.