Sophie

“For one so small, you seem so strong.”

~ You’ll Be in My Heart by Phil Collins

My family growing up were unashamedly dog lovers. There was a stint or two when I was too young to care much where my mother conned my father into getting a cat. I don’t remember a lot besides the day we tried bringing her home, which was a catastrophe inside the car.

It may not be honest that I tell people I didn’t grow up with cats, but fundamentally it is true in my mind – cats were never in my house long enough to leave an impact. I’d love on my relatives’ cats, but at the end of the day always went home to my dog. It didn’t bother me not to have a cat growing up; I had an assortment of odd animals pass through my life as pets, including a ferret, chinchillas, dwarf frogs, and a hermit crab, to say the least; I was not neglected by my parents in the realm of family critters. For the last 11 years or so, our dog Maxx has been the solitary family pet. All this is to say if I ever did decide to welcome a cat into my life that I could call “mine”, it would be special.

And it was.

On September 12^th of last year, a mere ten days after marrying the love of my life and moving to Baltimore, Joseph and I rescued two kittens. They were cousins – the girl, an orangey-brown tabby, we named Sophie; the boy, my silver prince, we named Emmerich.

They were 8 weeks old at the time. Little did I know how hard I would fall for them. I never could have prepared myself for the love and joy that these two babies brought me; and, by extension, the tremendous, breathless sorrow of loss that permeated our house just this week.

We celebrated their first birthday’s in mid-July and were approaching our first rescue anniversary. Unfortunately, our babygirl Sophie would not be able to celebrate with us.

Last Thursday I received some lilies for my birthday – lovely flowers with a lovely scent, and creamy orange petals. I immediately put them in a vase of water on the dining room table for all to see. Sophie, the one notorious for eating things she shouldn’t, took this as an opportunity to nibble on the new addition to the house. She swallowed a petal and regurgitated it shortly thereafter.

For those of you who are already shaking your heads in horror, I know it seems such a simple and obvious piece of knowledge. For those of you who are like us and have no idea, please pass this message along to anyone you know who owns a cat or is thinking about getting a cat: lilies are one of the most toxic things a cat can ingest. Even the water in the vase or the pollen or the stalks of the flowers are highly poisonous – all it takes it one little bite, one little sniff, and kidneys begin to fail.

We didn’t find this out until it was too late. 

A couple of days passed without much incident since she vomited the petal. On Monday morning, Joseph noticed she was moving stiffly and acting incredibly lethargic; I raced home from my errands and beat my way through traffic to take her to a local animal hospital. At this point we still didn’t know what was going on. If I read back through my texts from that day, I am still heavily under the impression that this is something she will recover from and we’ll be back home in no time. Still, the doctors checked her in and kept her overnight for some analyses. Nothing was certain yet, although I’m sure the doctors had their suspicions.

By the next day at 2pm, the doctors informed us that her kidneys had failed beyond recovery, and that it would be the best course of action to put her to sleep as soon as possible. Fluid had built up in her bladder, unable to succeed through the natural urination process, and if this was prolonged it would end up flooding her lungs. Joseph got the call while he was at work, and he called me during a break at the library. We rushed to Sophie’s side, spending her last few moments on earth petting her silky fur and calling her sweet names. She was a little uncomfortable, though thankfully not in pain. I think we bore all the pain she could have possibly felt, and much, much more.

The suddenness is what cuts the deepest. It’s one thing to see the death of a pet gradually coming when they’re approaching 10, 15, 20 years of age, but when you go from one day imagining those long years with the precious animal growing up with your kids to the next day where they no longer exist in your arms, where you will never again call them by name and have them trot toward you with sounds of pleasure and recognition…the brutal suddenness changes everything about the grief that rushes in.

We were not prepared for this. She was only a year old. She, and Emmerich, were our babies, the first additions to our newly bonded family. To lose her only a year later and so rapidly all-at-once is utterly devastating. The last time I lost a loved one (person or animal) was my grandfather 10 years ago, and I have never lost a pet in my adult years. This grief, as one so conscious and feeling, tears me apart, sends tremors deep into my bones. I loved Sophie so freely, so thoroughly, and she loved us unconditionally – I suppose it’s only fair that the gaping hole she left behind would ache so acutely.

This past Wednesday was the first full day without her in our lives. I couldn’t stand coming home from work without her fluffiness greeting me at the door that I collapsed onto the couch in hysterics. Joseph held me tightly to him, our bitter tears mingling. It hurts. My God, oh it hurts like hell. Her absence even after such a short bright time is absolutely unbearable. Every little thing reminds us of her, and the grief that follows floods my stomach and my lungs, rendering my appetite entirely absent and making it hard to breathe.

She was the most brilliant little light of my life. As John Smith says in the Disney movie Pocahontas: “I’d rather die tomorrow than live a hundred years without knowing you.” If I could travel back in time and warn myself on September 12^th of 2017 that this tragedy would inevitably happen, that it was a fixed point that I couldn’t change, I would still have bundled her in my arms and taken her home. As much as this pain is all-consuming, I am thankful for the year I was able to spend with her. She taught me that cats can be more than grouchy balls of fur. We passed many hours with her napping on me while I wrote or read or slept. She nuzzled her way into my heart and before I even knew it, I was wholeheartedly in love.

Something that makes me feel more at peace is imagining this visual: God sits at his desk, checking prayer emails, and Sophie jumps up onto his lap like she did to us on a regular basis when we were at our computers. She snuggles into him and dreams of chasing flies while he pets her softly with one hand, typing with the other.

She went without pain to the giant windowsill in the sky, where there is eternal sunshine and an infinite supply of birds to chatter at. We did the right thing with the knowledge we had. Still, this wave of grief will lap at our heels for a while, and we will never forget our first kitty – our first baby.

Rest in peace, Sophie. You were the best little kitten anyone could ask for. Your heart was too pure for this world.

Friends, I now ask two things of you: first, pass along the knowledge that lilies are lethal to cats – don’t assume longtime cat lovers know. As soon as cats come up, lay that fact down. Be aggressive about it if you have to. Sharing that little tid-bit of knowledge now might save a life later. Second, we would appreciate it if you could share photos or memories of Sophie in the comments section. Her legacy is one of love and softness, and we know that we aren’t the only ones who will remember her with fondness.

In Memory of Sophie

7/15/17 – 8/28/18

Alma Led Me Here

“The soul may be trusted to the end.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

First Essays: Love

She didn’t tell me when I’d fall in love.

Alma, my soul’s asomatous guide, didn’t tell me that when I did, I’d feel as if struck by lightning, and that every romantic experience I had thus far encountered would be put to shame. She didn’t tell me anything.

I understood that she possessed a transcendental discernment that I would never know, but I resisted her pleads for my trust all the same. I didn’t believe in soul mates, and she all but gave up convincing me otherwise. Soul mates existed, she countered; beneath all the collected, clichéd goop there existed a bedrock of truth.

And so throughout my younger years I longed for a man I could love and tolerate, while Alma impatiently awaited her male counterpart. That’s how it worked, she said – each individual soul was not a fraction of another, but rather the male or female complement. I received many scoldings from her for even thinking about settling before she reunited with her mate. Saying things like that practically forced me into skepticism. What did she really expect?

I should have relied on her more. Wiser than I gave her credit for, she was guided by something I could neither see nor understand, and she tugged me away from the wreckages of relationships before they became unmitigated catastrophes through ill-formed foundations of commitment. I thought I knew what I was doing, but she knew better.

I was stubborn; if my affections were a ship, I was white-knuckling the handles of the wheel on one side, and she the other. Eventually I was taxed beyond my means, and when I fell to the deck in exhaustion, Alma took command of the vessel with unfettered gusto. Finally serving as captain for the first time, she steered us right into the heart of New York City. She didn’t tell me we were close to her counterpart there, but she accepted my apologies without judgement as I genuflected before her, relinquishing any and all authority over my affections. The consequences of my poor relational decisions previous rendered me weary; she could call the shots from then on. All I needed was for her to tell me where to be and when.

Eastern Psychological Association Conference, New York City - March 4^th, 2016

No memos appeared in my dreams, no ethereal hints prodded me on. Alma didn’t tell me that with one look I would know. With one look, I would recognize a man whom I had never met. With one look, I would feel the heart of the universe beating inside me.

Marbled eyes of orange-flecked green met mine and Alma wept in the long-awaited embrace of her mate. Burrowed deep in the plush hallways of a hotel conference room, lightning struck me in the form of a man named Joseph.

Alma prepared me for none of it. She didn’t tell me I’d fall in love with the way he said psychology. She didn’t tell me he was a man of deep faith, words, and intellect. She forgot to mention the profound attraction I would feel toward him in every conceivable realm of life. I trusted Alma with my soul, and what did she give me in return?

A man beyond dreams, ideals, and expectations – a man crafted by divine hands to be my match. A man suited for me beyond perfection itself. The male permutation of my own soul.

Alma led me here. 

---

I'm posting this here to commemorate my engagement to the subject of this piece. I wrote this on May 2, 2016 - almost six months ago. Like I said in Addressing Skepticism, when you know, you just know. 

Have a drink for us. We are blessed beyond belief to begin this new, exciting chapter of our lives together!

V

The Plague of Pragmatism

     On this side of the new year I have been making the attempt of being better about gifts. In the past, my keenness in simply remembering birthdays and sending a nice, personal message is as far as my gift-giving abilities have gone. Pathetic, I know - believe me, it renders me distraught thinking about it now. Thus it comes as a surprise to no one that I possess very little talent in selecting and gifting the much sought after "perfect present." I wish it was an inherent characteristic of mine to somehow glean that what you desperately want most is an ornate birdhouse for your lawn; for those of you who have no trouble with this, I envy you.
     It has been difficult and stressful thus far planning ahead, calculating shipping speeds, and penny pinching, all before I even order a blasted gift, but it has also produced within me good feelings once it's all said and done and the gift is in the hands of the intended recipient. I can't deny that giving gifts feels awesome. However, I have found out very quickly that the talent was not lying dormant and it is not something I can cultivate. Still, I will sally forth.
     The main problem is I never know where to start. My relationship with the individual in question could boast several years of inseparability and enough wacky stories to fill countless journals, and I would still know diddly-squat what to gift them. That is, unless they told me.
     Pragmatism is basically my middle name; in every possible realm of my life I try to be practical. If it's useless, it's not worth keeping around (this principle counts for people, too). Therefore I have come to the conclusion that marrying pragmatism and gift-giving might very well save me armfuls of stress down the road. The only hesitation is that it's a little bizarre in certain cases and it's going to take some getting used to. But this is what it comes down to: when your birthday is approaching and I ask you what you want or need, I do not care if the first thought that jumps to mind is your nearly empty bottle of body wash in the shower or the fact that your printer is almost out of ink. If that is what will help you most, then so be it. I would much rather buy you your favorite body wash or an ink cartridge than a gift that might look pretty but has absolutely no real function, like a pillow with Jensen Ackles's face on it (sorry, Kylie - it was funnier more than anything, and I didn't know what else to do!). BUT I can't achieve this pragmatic-gift marriage if you don't tell me what you need. I'll buy you laundry detergent, brake fluid for your car, notebooks, a new case for your phone, air fresheners, a better welcome mat, a set of screwdrivers - I don't care! 
     SO the next time I ask you what you want or need for your birthday, and I promise I will ask you - rarely will a gift ever just show up on your doorstep out of nowhere - please please please don't hesitate to tell me that it's about time for you to buy your hamster some new food anyway. If there isn't something you want, I almost guarantee there is something you need or could at least use. Dish soap? Alcohol? Fertilizer? As long as it's within a reasonable price range, consider it done. Let me help you in a more fulfilling way and simultaneously satisfy this plague of pragmatism that has infiltrated my life. Help me transform this plague into a cheerful practice. Giving better gifts begins with you.

Addressing Skepticism

     My most recent relationship status has caused quite a buzz. Mostly excited and supportive responses thankfully, but I know there are skeptics among you. I do not blame you for this as a reaction. From the outside looking in, I believe it is warranted. Therefore I decided to give a brief window into what it’s like from the inside looking out. Allow me to jump right in.
     Let me make something clear from the outset: we don’t “complete” each other; it’s insulting to the other person to claim that until now, me without him or him without me we were incomplete, unfinished and the only way to be complete is to invite each other into our lives in an intimate way. That’s silly. The idea of “soul mates” is far from a biblical concept – it’s a romantically pressured one perpetuated by society. To all you single guys and gals, I’m sorry – it’s an impossible standard to achieve, and one many believe in.
     While we don’t endorse the soul mate concept, we do have our ways of describing the rapid depth of our connection. So far the best (and still unworthy) explanation I’ve conjured up is that he and I have recognized pieces of our own souls in each other; we have discovered a divine similarity between us. Personally I think Joseph portrayed it best when he said, “We are almost analogous to male and female permutations of the same soul.”
     These claims have provided the vehicle for us to transcend time itself. This experience has been incomparably ethereal. Between meeting Joseph on the 4th of March and my day trip to Baltimore to see him about a week later felt like a lifetime. It has been three weeks since we met, and from then till now has also felt a lifetime long. We have compacted a larger span of time into a smaller temporal container. Time is, like many things, relative. Our three weeks are nowhere near the same as yours. We understand each other on a level that has never existed before due to its impossibility.
     We transcended time, and continue to. I have never thought so clear or felt my mind so broad and challenged by anything, let alone a single individual. It may seem as if we’ve hurried into things, but there has been absolutely no rush. From the outside looking in, the pace is breakneck, but that’s the nature of our organic timeline. It’s like in algebra – when you know all the rules of the equation you solve it quickly, almost automatically, especially compared to when you were first getting acquainted with how every variable fit together. We’ve learned the rules, and this is the product of our combined equations.
     When I was younger and beginning to grasp the gravity of finding God's best for me, I often asked my parents to describe how it felt for them to get to know each other, and when they decided that they wanted to be together forever. This is a common question with an indescribable answer, and the common clichéd and useless-at-the-time response is typically, “you just know. When you find the right person, you just know it,” or “you feel as if on top of the world!” Being the way that I am, this always frustrated me; I wanted a checklist, or a litmus test or something. Rules to rely on. This feeling of “just knowing” seemed improbable and impossible. What if I didn't realize it? What if I somehow missed it? It all became complicated and worrisome. I was incredibly skeptical of it.
     Until now.
     Now I understand completely what they meant. Because I feel it. The indescribable feeling is in me. I “just know.”
     And I am so achingly certain of it that I would stake my life on it.
     It’s insane, I know. But having previous romantic pursuits to compare to throws this in stark contrast when placed next to all the others. It has far surpassed even the wildest expectations I could imagine.
     Neither of us went to EPA intending to meet anyone in this way, and yet here we are. We were not searching, and yet we found. We are swaddled in God’s divinity, cradled in His palms, and I have never been so certain of something in my life. (Yes, it even rivals my certainty concerning my passions for creative writing.)
     I wrote in my post from 2013 “Infernal Love Triangle Devices” that I was confident when God brought my future husband into the picture, the man He had hand-selected for me, I would know it. To quote the post exactly, “…I’m very particular about the qualities and lifestyle choices of the man I will marry in the future. … I, someone who always tries to have the lowest of expectations, am expecting a lot of the man for me. This makes it very easy for me to believe that once I find him, it won’t be long before I know he’s the one. God knows what I’m looking for and what I need, so once I’ve recognized all that, it will be obvious.” Such confidence!
     I know my expectations, standards, and requirements were tricky for any one mortal to score high on altogether. But I had finally seriously entrusted the worry about my future husband to God, surrendering the last thread I was white-knuckling. It did not need to be my responsibility to hunt for this man. If I truly believed all things were possible, God would have me covered. Obedience and trust were the only things expected of me. So I relinquished my human need to control, folded my hands in my lap, and made peace about waiting patiently for God to move. I had done my part, and He would certainly do His.
     The fruits were almost instant. God is faithful, y’all. His promises are far from empty.
     Earlier in the week leading up to EPA I did a lot of praying and ultimately let go of this obsession with stepping in front of God and arranging my future as if I knew better than him. (I don’t deserve his unflinching forgiveness.) Then, mere days later, enter Lightning Boy (aka Joseph). Unbelievable.
     I’ve always been skeptical of “just knowing.” Now I truly understand. It’s the closest thing to enlightenment, to Heaven, on this side of death.

There's a Crack in My Crystal Ball

The entirety of last week, I was deeply unhappy; my soul possessed a supreme discontentment – even the bits of soul down in my pinky toes felt it! And the worst part? I couldn’t even put to words why. Thoughts could not embody this disturbance in my being. It drove me crazy.

For days, I woke up with a frown that barely shifted with each passing hour. A reason to pin this crappiness on would have been marvelous, but it took a while for me to properly interpret it.

As most of you know, I am in college finishing up my junior year with a double major in Psychology and Creative Writing. The double major had been something I was 100% certain of even before I set foot on campus in the fall of 2012, as well as plans to go on and get a Master’s in Psych. Freshly 18 years old, I had the next 6 to 8 years of my life planned out as far as academics, and at least 4 years of that I was undoubtedly sure of.

Now that I am on the cusp of finishing my 3^rd year out of 4 in undergraduate studies, the post-graduation future is looming and the pressure of that unfortunately has pushed me to be the most stressed out I have ever been in my life, and I do not say that lightly. I do not get stressed because I don’t allow myself to, but over that week I had to admit that I was discontent with something and stressed out about it. But what the heck was it? I needed more variables to fill in this equation – thus far it was all question marks.

I had been doing what every decent Christian does – pray. Most of my prayers that week consisted of me asking for clarity about my future, about where I was supposed to go and what to do. A couple weeks before that ultimate-stress-week, I had been telling God to make it obvious when He lets me in on my future plans, because I know I’m not the best at interpreting between my feelings and God’s intentions. I distinctly recall saying during family prayer time for God to sledgehammer the obviousness into my head if need be.

Careful what you pray for, kids.

Stress-week was emotionally and spiritually painful (sledgehammer to the soul?). Wednesday night I finally found a faint glimmer of clarity: I didn’t want to go to grad school in Psychology anymore.

It was a feeling before it was a verbalized concept, one that presented itself in tears before words.

There was an acute internal trigger, and through the sniffles I verbalized to myself why I was so discontent. I had realized I didn’t want to go to grad school in Psychology and I had to tell myself it was okay. It’s okay when plans change – now is much better than later, too; for instance, in the middle of a Master’s program for Psych I sure as heck would not have wanted this realization. And anyway, it didn’t currently change much, although initially I thought it changed everything (more stress).

I wanted to write. As soon as I admitted that to myself, I was rushed with alleviation. I wanted to get an MFA, go to a graduate school program that would better my skills. Writing is my passion and has been solidly since 2010, but the seed was planted years before that. Writing is something I cannot live without, while psychology can remain dormant without much fuss – there are so many indicators of this that I feel a fool for not seeing them. Last semester I didn’t have any creative writing classes whatsoever and didn’t have any time to write creatively, so academic papers took over. By the end of the semester, I was crazy with the need to write something, anything creative.

Over spring break (February 28^th to March 8^th) I was home with my parents, and the very first day I was there, my dad and I had a lengthy conversation about the future. At that point I had still been sure about my Master’s-in-Psych decision, and I told this to him. He squinted his eyes a little and gave a small smile, saying he thought years ago that my idea was that creative writing is the capstone and psychology was going to be a helper in that realm. Writing was the Pacific Ocean and psychology was just one of the many rivers that eventually leads into it. Instead, psychology had taken over, in retrospect I think because I had career-minded thinking and had already written off using a creative writing major as a potential future career.

Funny how people on the outside have more insight into my own mind.

Later in the realization week I got Chinese take out for dinner. I happened to walk out with two fortune cookies and for some reason only cracked open one. The fortunes was unsurprisingly inconsequential and irrelevant.

On Sunday I got the urge to crack open the other one, just because. I hadn’t even planned to eat it. The message inside made me roll my eyes and smile.

God finds himself hilarious.

And I blessedly find myself in the arms of pure contentment. 

Il Fine: My Return from Italy

Heyo~

(by the way, the title is pronounced "ill feen-ay" - it's Italian, obviously ;) )

Well I feel like quite a dunce. How did I think it was okay to write all these blogposts about my adventures in Italy and then not write one last post about my journey home, to wrap things up? Silly, that’s what it is – extremely silly.

I figure it’s better than nothing to write about it now, because there was quite a lot that went on that I think would make a good story (in the way that my traipsing through Italy, totally lost, with wet and cold shoes for hours is a “good story”) however, there will probably be some details that I’ll leave out simply because it’s been months. I must say, though, that I do remember very much about the 24 hours revolving around and during my trip, I suppose because I was hyper vigilant and super excited to be getting home.

I guess let’s begin, shall we?

The week of May 25^th was finals week, and I was determined to blast through all of them no sweat (and I did). Two were on Monday, and the other two were back-to-back Wednesday morning, so I was completely and officially done with the academic realm of my semester abroad at 11:30AM, two and a half entire days before my flight. Honestly, and I told some of my classmates this when they asked me if I was staying longer, if I had known my last final was Wednesday before noon, I would have had my plane ticket booked for the earliest flight after that on Wednesday. However, I didn’t know the exam schedule, and neither did I know when I bought the plane tickets that I’d be wanting to get home so bad to see a certain someone and my family. I played it safe and scheduled the flight well after finals would be over.

Well, that left me two and a half days to pack and sleep and essentially just wait for the blasted time for me to leave for the airport.

I ended up packing the afternoon of Wednesday, because I was just that excited by the prospect, even though I was exhausted from my morning of exams. My big bag, carry on, and back pack were preliminarily packed before I even ate lunch!

What in the heck was I supposed to do all day Thursday AND most of the day Friday?!

It was maddening, truly.

Wednesday evening I went out to get pizza with my two closest friends I had made while abroad (the Argentinian, Sophia, and the Australian, Elizabeth) as a sort of farewell after exams, since everything was wrapping up. I ate so much.

I regret nothing.

Thursday morning I got up at noon. What? Sleep made the time go faster, and also, I like sleep, though it doesn’t seem to like me as much.

That day I wrote up a to-do list and it consisted of very basic things, but it kept me a little busy, at least. Using the remaining food tickets I had, I wandered to the grocery store only a four-minute walk from my apartment and bought a bunch of Italian goodies to bring home and bestow upon my family. I’d bought some fun trinkets in Venice, like magnets and such, but these were consumables. Tasty, tasty consumables.

I mainly bought a ton of Lindt chocolate bars (dark chocolate, the 85% stuff for my parents and brother, because they go through it like crazy), these chocolate and hazelnut bars called “bueno bars” (they really like the flavor hazelnut in Italy, I found), and two 750ml bottles of the best, most delicious olive oil I had cooked with, for my mom, because she started being an olive oil snob so I figured some 100% Italian, made-in-Italy oil would make her happy (these bottles were thick glass and also very heavy). I wish I could have safely brought back some Italian Coca-Cola, because that stuff was heavenly, somehow even better than the stuff in Peru (sorry! Inca Cola still holds my heart though <3 o:p="">

After bringing all that home, I rearranged my bags a little to fit everything in, so I was already at the point of only needing to pack my toiletries and other last-minute items that I still needed to use before I set off on Friday evening.

Using the remaining olive oil I had bought for the kitchen, I decided to do a homemade olive oil hair treatment that supposedly helps keep it healthy and makes it feel nice (confirmed: it does). So I sat for a while at my computer with a towel around my shoulders like a cape and a plastic bag wrapping up my hair.

I made lunch (pasta – surprise!) and played Pokémon Yellow on an emulator while watching old episodes of the original Pokémon series online before showering for a nice long while and rinsing out the olive oil.

I basically bided my time by Pokémoning for hours and hours until I got tired enough to fall asleep. Friday morning I awoke with nervous and excited energy vibrating in my limbs. The hours until lift off were counting down, and that’s when I realized that time is actually pretty reliable – it will always move forward. Sometimes it will feel slower or faster, but it will never go backward, it will always continue, and I clutched to this idea. Steadfastly.

I had to force myself to eat lunch before I finalized packing and making sure everything was weighed decently. This is when things started to get…interesting.

Using the scales I had dragged out of the bathroom, I hefted up my bags one at a time to see around what they weighed in at, and both my carry on (which would actually serve as my second checked bag) and my massive bag were each either right at 50lbs or a little over, and this made me nervous. I didn’t want to leave anything behind (there wasn’t really anything I could without feeling bad) so I prayed the lady at the check in counter in the airport wouldn’t be so focused on the exactness of the weight. When I checked in to go to Italy back in February, seeing how much my bags weighed seemed to be the least of their worries, so I desperately hoped this remained the case.

By around 4pm I was as happy as I would ever be with packing, and started the final preparations before leaving, which meant taking out the garbage and recycling as well as cleaning out the fridge of things that would go bad. I grabbed up my bags, and by quarter to 5, I was outta there.

And so, with a 50lb bag handle grasped in each hand and a 20lb backpack slung over my shoulders, I was rolling down the street on my way to the metro.

Here’s where things get a little complicated.

As I have mentioned in previous posts, the public transportation system in Italy is known for strikes, and one just so happened to pop up on Friday. The day I needed the metro to be functioning fine to get to the train station to get to the airport.

It turns out that the metro was only going to be operating between about 3 and 6pm all day. That was it. My flight would leave after midnight, so I only needed to be at the airport by 9. This provided a frustratingly tiny, and early, window for me.

So I built up my courage, and lugged those bags like it was nothing down the sidewalk and down the stairs into the metro. I stuffed myself like the Ricotta cheese inside of Manicotti in the train car with my massive bulk, which earned me many a frown, but I seriously could not care less, because I was in the process of getting home, and no one would scare me out of doing that successfully.

When it was my stop, I shoved my way through everyone before the doors locked me in. There was no elevator at this stop, so I bolstered all my 110lb strength (yes the combined weight of all my bags outweighed me) and dragged them up the steps. There was a man behind me on the train, probably only a few years older than me, who was walking up the stairs and he gave me a look, shook his head as he muttered a soft Italian word, and grabbed the handle of my biggest bag to help me get it up the steps.

I was sweating profusely already, and was very appreciative of his help. My arms were already screaming at me, and while the hardest part of the journey was over, there was still much to come. I was managing okay, and yes, I could have been smarter about this whole thing. Oh well.

I waited in line at the train station, and of course as I’m rolling along I am getting all these strange looks because the sight really must have been amusing and yet terrifying. Got my ticket, and off toward the turnstiles I went.

I had to time sliding the ticket into the slot with ramming my bags between the automatic swinging doors because the window was small (obviously they assume there only needs to be enough time for one body to get through), so I hurriedly jammed myself through without much fault.

Except for the fact that I left my ticket on the other side.

I had learned from my experience on this train coming into Italy from the airport that you needed it to verify to the guys that came around checking tickets that you had legitimately bought one and weren’t just taking a free ride, so of course I started panicking. What would they do if they realized I didn’t have a ticket? I had the receipt of the purchase, but would that be enough to explain my cause? Could they toss me off the train at the nearest stop? Could they send me back? What would they do?

It must have been rush hour for the train, because there were absolutely no seats left in any of the cars, and it was standing room only (barely). I ended up cramming my bags into the designated area for luggage, and actually sat on top of them underneath the rack, so that I was under the window and all I could see was knees and feet. I hoped that the fact I was in with the luggage would deter anyone from looking for me there, so I wouldn’t have to show a ticket. It was a weak argument, I know, but I was desperate. Aside from that, I prayed the entire way that no one would come around verifying tickets. Honestly it was way too packed for them to have gotten to everyone, anyway. I grasped to this.

I had been trembling more or less since the threshold of my apartment, with excitement and also blatant nervousness. There were so many variables at play in getting from my apartment to the airport that many things could easily go wrong, and I was deathly afraid of this. All I wanted was to get home, but it wasn’t so easy as clicking some high heels together and hoping with all my heart.

Thankfully I made it to the airport stop without having to cry and explain myself to the train guys, so in my relief, I rolled off the train with tired arms and banged up knees and up the elevator, following signs for Aeroflot and where the check in desk would be for my flight.

It was maybe 6-7pm when I got there and found a place to settle in, sit down, and take a breather. I had several hours to kill before my plane would take off, so I turned on my iPod and watched a movie I had loaded onto it (Eat, Pray, Love – how fitting, right?). After a couple hours of rest, I wandered upstairs to the check in desks and found some chairs right by where Aeroflot would be once the time came, found some wifi, and excitedly logged on to report to my parents how things were going.

(^^ Casually-taken "selfie" at the airport.)

It was quarter to 11pm when the desk finally opened and I got checked in. This didn’t leave me enough time to comfortably get through security, but I couldn’t do much about it.

I waited in line anxiously, trying to get a reading on how closely the ladies were checking the weight of the bags of people in front of me. The lady I got didn’t give a crap, she told me to load both my checked bags on the scale at the same time, tagged them, and I watched them go. Another relieved breath, and some more tension unraveled from my shoulders.

It took me 14 minutes to breeze through all of security and get to my gate. The airport wasn’t busy whatsoever – I never had to wait in those bothersome lines where people were unlacing their shoes and accidentally walking through the metal detectors with keys and change still in their pockets so that the rest of us become impatient and irate.

Everything was suddenly so uncomplicated, ever since I had let my checked bags go, and I really distinctly felt that I was meant to be going home. Nothing was in my way, and everything that could have very effortlessly gone wrong, did not. A path was being cleared for me and I was sprinting headlong down it.

(Gate "selfie." See that joy? Yeah.)

I watched another movie while waiting at my gate, and thankfully found an outlet to perch by. Once this plane took off, I’d be headed to my long layover in Moscow, but the flight itself didn’t take long at all.

I managed to get some crappy shuteye on the flight, but since I was still so hyped with the nervous/excited energy, I knew sleeping was going to be a tough thing to wrangle up, and anyway, the brevity of the flight didn’t allow me enough time to get very deep.

I got into Moscow and at my next gate somewhere between 6:30-7:30AM Saturday, Moscow time (it was 10:30PM our time, Friday). For three hours, I read a book on my phone and listened to music alongside many others who had arrived for the long layover. It was at this point that I felt my shoulders really beginning to complain about the load of my backpack, as well as the fact that bruises were starting to appear on my shins and knees from kicking around my bags to get them rolling. My arms were limp noodles jammed into my shoulder sockets from dragging those hefty things around.

(Do I look tired?)

Needless to say, I was going to be exceedingly grateful once I finally was able to unpack and say bye bye to those bags for a while.

One of the most quirky and fun things about flying back from Moscow was the fact that my plane was leaving at 10:25AM, Saturday, and I landed in Virginia at noon:50, Saturday. The flight was 10-11 hours long, but I was landing what would seem like two and a half hours later.

Time zones, man.

As we hopped back across the time zones, I experienced 11 o’clock for several hours in a row. It felt like some Doctor Who stuff was going on.

Unsurprisingly, the flight took forever. I knew time would keep moving forward, as I said earlier, but man did it tease me so hard. It was like someone fat-fingered the slow-mo button or something. I tried reading, but that didn’t pass the time like I wanted it to. I tried sleeping, but that was difficult and also didn’t pass the time very well.

My eyes were incredibly dry from the recycled cabin air and the person next to me’s foot kept slipping under the armrest and pressing against my thigh (she was kind of curled up into a ball). The time was ticking by, but it could not come fast enough.

Praise the Lord I landed at 12:30, twenty whole minutes earlier than planned! My fingers were shaking so much as I texted my mom officially declaring that I was back on US soil. My heart thundered in my chest, threatening to pry open my ribs and spring free.

I was so ready to reconnect with them that I honestly had to restrain myself from shoving through people that were moving too slow, because I had waited over 100 days for that day, and I would not sacrifice one more minute if I could help it.

At 1:30, after taxiing, tram-riding, and passport-control-clearing, I got my luggage and wheeled down the hallway, stomach so full to the brim with butterflies it was becoming difficult to breathe properly. I could sense that they were all nearby, and I yearned so hard to round that final corner and see them.

I sped through two propped open double doors into a big room with bright lights, and when I turned, the tears came, and I ran.

My parents and brother were waiting in a little pod not too far away. I ignored my screaming arms, burning eyes, and somersaulting stomach, and booked it across the broad floor. I threw the handles from my hands and jumped into my dad’s arms, the bags falling to the floor with two loud cracks.

It was real. I was home.

I was home.

I hugged my brother and my mother, who held me much like my dad, with strong embraces and tearfully joyous words murmured into my ear.

Italy was great and wonderful, don’t get me wrong – I learned quite a bit about myself, among many other things – but my heart wasn’t completely happy while I was there. Now, standing in the airport, in the company of my family, my heart was dancing uncontrollably on my ribcage doubling as a dance floor. The bliss was so immense, I drowned in it, with pleasure.

Nothing could take that teary smile from my face.

Ciao, Italia, and hello home.