"We Were Meant To Be Here Together...

...And that's just the way it should be."
-Devra, tonight, after a long day of highs and lows for all of us.


(Me and Dev in our Israeli pants just after spring break)

So I have T-minus 10 days in this amazing Florentine apartment/lifestyle, and despite my attempts to distract myself and just live it up for the time remaining, goodbyes have never been that simple for me. These things I cannot rid from every beat of my heavy heart: the fact that the most soulful, fun, and interesting women serendipitously became my roommates and have forever changed my being. Buckets full of memories spinning inside my head and the weight from them all about to spill over into joyful tears. The scary anticipation of crashing into boredom, loneliness, and stress after being on an extreme Italian high for 4 months. An overwhelming sense of gratitude and awe, and the uplifting reality that the world is way too expansive to ever run out of adventures. (Thank God!)

These times come around the bend every so often when it seems like the remainder of my life can only be reached by jumping off a cliff into a scary but incredible unknown. The reality is that I know how to cliff jump, because I've done it many times before, and due to my extensive experience, I've gotten a bit smarter and begun using a parachute instead of just hoping for some wild and magical force in the universe to catch me. Point is--no matter how experienced a cliff jumper is, one never takes the leap without stomaching a pit of nerves and knots. But the feeling of being in the air, of letting yourself fly instead of fearing the fall, and then the happy surprise of landing on your own two feet... that's the feeling that we jump for.

I took that leap coming here to Italy--leaving everything I felt comfortable with to experience a complete unknown, and here I am, not just standing on my own two feet, but dancing in fullness and freedom. I know that new horizons await, beautiful ones at that, but I can't pretend it's easy to shake the reality that I'd love to let this flight coast on...


So in an attempt to fill in the gaps between my experiences and my recordings of them, I'm going to try to write a blog a day for my time remaining in Florence, prompted by a picture or two.

All my love, and thanks for still checking in..
Rachael



(Carolina and Devra tonight at Cuiro/Scuro -light/dark- for apartivi)