Imperfect Mortal Beings

An ode to who I once was. Or who I actually am right now. And two trips to Italy.

I got up early this morning, by choice, this time, to go to the shops. I found a recipe last night that I wanted to make for today’s lunch and decided within minutes of sprawling out of bed that I would get the things I needed -  tofu, peppers, cornflour- in addition to the things I’ve been putting off getting - cheap olive oil, harissa, a promise to fully trust myself. I walked to Aldi and walked back and felt a patch of sun glow at the exact point where my eyes crinkle when I smile. I put everything away and boiled the kettle and ground the last of my coffee beans from the bottom of the 1kg Lavazza bag my brother got me for Christmas. I listened to a podcast and tiptoed around the kitchen not to wake anyone up, filled my mug ever so carefully to the brim and went to read on my wrinkly couch in the living room.

As much as I hate the TikTok trending songs I can’t seem to get out of my mind, the quotes bursting at my seams, I do, in fact, like this (little) life. I love my morning coffee just as much as I love reading just as much as I love buying new notebooks to write in just as much as I love running an ensemble or cooking for my friends or making the decision to go to the cinema tonight. I love saving recipes on my phone to my shared folder with my boyfriend and I love calling my mom just when she wakes up. I love that oranges became one of my favourite fruits last summer and I love trying to peel them in one fell swoop. I love the sound of the joints of my clarinets coming together and I love sitting in the pub with my friends, cold pint in my hands, watching the game. I love these small things that make up who I am just as much as the big. Is this what life is truly about?I ask myself, between sips. I let out a big sigh and continued to read.

Sunny Milan, April 2024

I went to Milan for 3 days last week. I thought of calling this “Italy, in two parts” to reflect on my last trip to Rome with my Mom in 2017. The two differed in obviously massive ways, with 6 years between them and what feels like an entire life lived in between them - 2 degrees, moving to a new continent, lest we mention varying platonic and romantic relationships. Rome and Milan feel like distant cousins in my eyes but my Italian, having not been touched since 2018 or so, was somewhat stronger this time round. Words flew off my tongue in a slightly cooler, faster fashion than before.

When I was 18 in Rome for the first time. Italy for the second, I was coping with my first heartbreak. But still, I remember many things clearly: my first glass of blood orange juice I poured for myself at the hotel breakfast and the way I revelled in its tartness, the immense joy when I found it sold at M&S when I moved here in 2021. The trio of dogs that sat out on their terrace along our street, watching the people bask in the 35C/95F heat, the mild breeze in the evenings complimenting my floral jumpsuits and flowy pants, the way my mom and I quickly sipped Aperol Spritzes with glee along the cobbled streets. This trip gave me the sense that something new was happening, that these small moments were the very fruit of a life, despite feeling so deliriously (and hormonally) confused. Six years later I find myself in similar standings, if because of the region of the world, I don’t know. My mind likes pairings such as these, associations to calm myself down and make sense of the world around me, whether that be good or bad. Rather than a personal heartbreak, I feel a familial disappointment, I guess a heartbreak in some senses, having become a clichéd and confused daughter of divorced parents, finding myself circulating around what was said and done and not said and not done and unable to see the reality of my own life, to let myself enjoy these small and wonderful things in the wake of such harrowing negativity. 

During my trip to Rome I remember asking myself every day if I was a good person, letting my irrational thoughts think I was undeserving of love, as every 18 year old feels in some form. I vaguely remember the question appearing while putting on eyeshadow in the tiny, steamy bathroom or while consulting our map and planning out our day. Am I a good person? I would ask. All I want to be is a good person. Please, I hope everyone thinks I am a good person.

I remember coming home and asking myself the same thing. Am I a good person? I asking myself daily, finding myself to be the perfect victim of productivity videos and wellness content, with these questions intensifying with every mistake I made, every poor choice or misjudgement along the way, but never easing to remind myself that I was a good person, that I was allowed to feel good. I wrote so continuously about worrying in points of my life I most certainly didn’t need to worry, for what, 6 or 7 years? A crisp feeling of validation would come my way when life had its inevitable troughs and I would worry - I would feel all normal feelings associated with moving house, moving on, moving away from relationships that don’t fuel us that bring about an understandable level of confusion, exhaustion, grief but still hold onto them as if each instance was a meal at a restaurant, my arm weighed down from the plates of my mistakes, my downfalls, my failures to be a perfect human. But you don’t work in a restaurant, Michelle, I say to myself as I break for a sip of coffee. Back to reading.

During the walks around the small perimeter of Milan’s city centre, I had, as I’ve had, flashes of a recent phone conversation I had with my dad, where he told me in passing that I would never be the kind of person to enjoy the small things, given my drive, that my life, in its chaos, was not about such things, coming from someone that uprooted our lives for reasons I will never understand. In my struggle to understand this portrayal of me, the position of being a long-distance daughter and sister while being the manic pixie dream girl of my own life (but the one that attempts to listen to the wellness advice of “focusing on myself”)  I revert back being a child, wondering if the horoscope apps I’ve deleted have my fate spelled out for me (fear of abandonment, anyone?), wondering if everyone is still thinking about the embarrassing thing I said all those years ago (rumination station), questioning if my frustration will make my fate angry and twisted and unfavourable (overthinking, overthinking). The reality is I have lived a life of wishing for self-improvement and more care toward myself and more trust in myself and have circled in loops around the exact thing, until now. Be gone, irrational thoughts and therapy speak.

In The Year of Magical Thinking, Joan Didion says, “We are imperfect mortal beings, aware of that mortality even as we push it away, failed by our very complication, so wired that when we mourn our losses we also mourn, for better or for worse, ourselves. As we were. as we are no longer. As we will one day not be at all.” I thought about this in Milan with my Mom as we drank wine and I tricked a waiter into thinking i was Italian, if only briefly, as we sat in the sun. We talked very openly about where things are in our lives, and where things will go, future trips and future encounters as a family, both broken and together. At times we read our books or scrolled on our phones, but really we healed in those few days, working towards something new, something more whole in both of ourselves, in what we mean to each other.

Some days I forget I have divorced parents or that I forgot to respond to a message I said I would answer earlier or the exact dates and times and outfits when I made mistakes, or cheated on tests, or took quarters from my dad’s jar to help my brother finish his map of the 50 States in Quarters. At others it seems to be the only thing on my mind, with the promises wellness content give me fail before my eyes, and I punish myself for not adhering to the same levels of productivity or repentance or perfectionism each day.

But maybe I’m looking at it all wrong, or all right, in some senses. I am a being who likes the small things, an imperfect immortal one, at that, small things like these if I must quote Claire Keegan herself. I don’t want to live a life afraid of mistakes. And maybe I will grieve the part of me that grapples with such fear, but the sun is shining, and there is a coffee waiting for me downstairs, and I think I will be okay if I put the plates down and keep reading.