There are a few hours left until the plane will take me overseas, a few minutes left until the episode of my favorite TV series, which I'll watch tonight for the last time. This was a goodbyes and last times' period, sometimes aware and more often unaware that they were the last. Clearly, just as every time I'm about to turn my mental scrapbook's page, I weigh the things I'm leaving behind and the things I'm taking with me.
I'm leaving my hometown, and its memories. Good memories and bad memories, of a nearby town that's unique, and therefore so hard to accept: 'cause when you're a child, you think all kids in the world live next to a pile-dwellings town. Then you see other towns and you realize they look much more like the place where you live, across the bridge, on the mainland. So you cherish Venice with all its lacks and hate Mestre with all your heart. But today I can say I made peace. Peace with the streetcar, the mice, the stinking Marzenego, the crazy limited traffic zones and the smell of smog. But I also made peace with the smell of sunset, of wet grass and grilled chicken... with the dawns at S.Giuliano, the parks, the Riviere. I take some digital pictures with me, and many, many more mental pictures stored behind my eyelids: when I close my eyes, they start sliding.
I leave my home, where I laughed, cried, loved, studied, fought. But I always say goodbye to its walls, everytime I leave.
I leave my many stuffed animals. Swettie the white sitting bear, Klappar the hyppo, Quack the duck, Placidia the hen. When I was a child, I used to wish goodnight to all my "1792" stuffed animals (I never counted them, it was an approximation by defect). Now, as a grown-up-like, I always wished goodnight to two of them, Black-Snout-Clergygirl, the monk seal, and Grey-Snout-Rabbie, the hare. Because I bought them at Hamleys', and they were there on the bedside table to constantly remind me that away from all the things that didn't fit me, away from the job I couldn't stand, there were more challenges, more opportunities, more different worlds.
I leave the challenges I lost and the ones I won, the satisfactions and the disappointments, but I take with me what I learned from those. I leave some people who were worth it, and some whom I wasted my time with. I take with me the awareness of giving everything I could, and somebody will never realize how much they lost.
I leave the ones I love, but I take with me the smiles, the hugs, the love they'll give me no matter where we are, the strength I gain from the fact that I mean so much to them as they mean to me.
I take with me the will to tell, to live, to observe, to feel life running through my veins. And the fear too, 'cause as Gogo says "it's part of the game, it's fair to shit yourself."
I know I'll be a different person when I'll come back, I hope I'll be much better, and I hope to pack -on the way back- at least half more mental baggage than what I'm packing now.
The suitcase is ready, it's time to shut the laptop down. And to turn the Italian TV on... at least one thing I won't miss.
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