I am back in California. After weeks and weeks of running around and jumping through hoops and miles of red tape in Italy, I have returned to get another visa. It couldn’t be done from there and so I have taken time off of my new job during busy season, bought a plane ticket that cost my monthly salary and landed in sunny SFO yesterday afternoon. I really, really didn’t want to have to do this, but maybe it is a blessing in disguise since I need to take time to recover from my broken heart.

After getting back together and breaking apart a few times, Cazz and I have called it quits. We are clearly in different places in relationship to one another and the loss of my best friend feels like a severed hand. I am mostly still in shock. I allowed myself one day to sob uncontrollably and break down. And then I promised that I would move on. So that is what I am trying to do here in the States: distract myself for long enough that I don’t notice the stinging sensation from where pieces of my heart have torn away.

I will be happy again. I vow to myself that I will do whatever is necessary to find the happiness that life has to offer. Although I feel like a ghost of my former self, I know that someday I will notice that my translucent skin will become more solid again and that I will be able to look back and be grateful for the great times we had together and the lesson I received. I will be grateful that for once I put myself out there, not holding anything back, and although it didn’t work the way I hoped, that I loved fearlessly for awhile. I don’t know if I will be able to do that again for a long, long time, but I hope someday I can. Until then I am taking a sabbatical from men. I need to focus on me right now, and reclaiming parts of me that will allow me to fully live.

On Monday I will find out how long I stay in California. I am happy to be with my friends and glad that I could take a little break from the country that reminds me of him, but am also anxious to get back and resume the life that I have carefully constructed. This place is not my home any longer and I can’t settle the intense longing to go back where I belong. Soon enough. Soon enough.