Chapter 60
Greta
The thing I feared has come to pass: I’m running out of money and time, and I have to cut part of the trip short.
I decide to go to Rome because that’s the place I read most about in the tour guides I got from the library.
When I sit there in front of the Colosseum after walking so long the soles of my feet are numb, I think about how small my world is, how small I am, how small my dreams are.
Ink Lake, that tiny piece of land my entire existence was confined to, is such an insignificant part of the planet Earth that just the thought of home makes me feel an irrational kind of pity.
That’s another thing traveling gives you: a longing for what you’ve left behind, a different way of appreciating what you have.
I think about different scents, about how I never realized there was such a thing as the scent of home.
But probably there is. Probably we just don’t know how to notice the things that are close to us.
And I’m certain now that when I return, I’ll pick up on it as soon as I walk through the door.
I get lost in Rome’s streets, museums, and buildings.
With so much beauty, you’d think a person wouldn’t have room for any more, but for me, it’s completely different.
I find beauty in bucatini with tomato, in the decaying alleys, in some rebel’s graffiti on a wall, in a couple eating gelato around the Trevi Fountain.
I guess life just is beautiful, and that’s all you can say.
This is the place I’ve felt most secure because I no longer fear getting lost or struggling in a language I can’t speak well. But at the same time, I’m starting to feel tired after two months away, and solitude isn’t always pleasant. Sometimes, it has a sting.
And so I think a lot of home. And I think of Will.
All the time, I ask myself what he’s doing, and I wish I could share everything with him. This meal, that landscape, a story, a reflection, a doubt, a glance, a joke, a smile, something stupid, a feeling. And if that isn’t love, then I don’t know what is.
I struggle to ignore his absence.
I talk often with my parents and with Grandpa.
I send pictures to Olivia sometimes, and she sends more back.
My diary is now one of my most precious possessions, and it’s full, not just of my thoughts and feelings, but of restaurant receipts, museum tickets, empty sugar packets, dried leaves from all the cities I’ve been to.
I wonder what I’ll think of myself, of this girl I am now, when I read it in ten years, or twenty, or forty.
I like the idea of leaving my traces on these pages so I can go back to being this Greta when I’m another one.
I realize that maturity doesn’t mean knowing all of a sudden what you want to do with the rest of your life or getting a mortgage so you can buy a house.
Maturity is no longer living for the outside and starting to live for what’s inside you.
When you realize you’re an absolutely unique human being and you become deeply aware of your own existence.
When I say goodbye to Rome’s streets and that light that I’ve only ever seen in Italy, I feel at peace. And in peace, I go to my final destination. This is how I want to place the final point on my personal Map of Longing.