Change?

Well, I said goodbye to the girl tonite. We kissed each other’s cheeks, as is customary in Italy, we looked at each other’s eyes for just a moment, as if each of us knew what the other was thinking…and I watched her walk away.

I had promised myself that I was gonna give her an excerpt from my first post about Rome. The part about her teaching the Italian children and about the night she told me that she fancied me.

I didn’t show her.

After our “graduation lunch”, Sara, Philippa and I went to Villa Borghese and laid out in the sun. It’s odd, really. When you know that the time is coming when you will have to say goodbye to someone who you don’t want to say goodbye to. There’s nothing you can do because, well…who can stop the wind from blowing? Who can stop time from passing?

No one can.

Her flight was already booked. Her boyfriend was already waiting for her back in England. Sure, I wanted to move my lips onto hers. But I didn’t. Maybe I’m growing disillusioned. Like I’ve said before, I haven’t had an honest-to-God relationship since Nicole. March of 2002 – that’s when I broke up with her. That’s when I broke her heart. I can still see her sobbing face, trying to push me out of the way to leave my room – me trying to hold her, trying to protect her from the pain that I was causing her.

I desperately wanted to show Sara what I am. I wanted to bring her flowers on her birthday. I wanted to show her what I wrote about her – how much I thought of the moments we shared. I wanted to show her how valuable she is.

But in the end, I just stopped myself. Maybe the complications that arose with Jaime had something to do with this, and maybe what happened with Amanda, too. Maybe if Sara emails me, I will email her back the excerpt from that post. Maybe I’ll tell her: “I honestly hope you and James live happily ever after. But if you don’t…then come back to Rome and let me show you how amazing you are.”

I just don’t know what to think anymore. I don’t know how much any of this matters to anyone but me. Maybe no one cares about this stuff anymore. Maybe love is merely convenience for most people. Maybe it’s shrugged off as nothing more than electric signals firing in our brains. Maybe it’s something akin to what chocolate does for most people.

I think it was the right thing to do…leaving it be with Sara. But my God, am I gonna miss that laugh. That ridiculous sense of humor. The way she sang before class in the mornings. In a musical sense…it was horrid. But somehow I just couldn’t get enough of it. The time she put her arm thru mine, as we were walking around downtown Rome. The possibility of what may never be. Some people reading this may think, “Well, that was the mature thing to do, Jonathan. You’re learning and you’re growing up.” I don’t know if I want to grow up and do the “mature” thing. That may sound naive and selfish. But what do you think about whenever you see a child playing in the sun, trying to catch a butterfly? You think innocence, purity, and unfiltered realism. They are unconcerned with how they look or what others think. They just want to catch the butterfly and feel the warmth of the sun on their faces. I don’t know what to call it, that thing which children have…but we lose it when we “grow up and mature”. We are worse for it.

And so it ends. The course that I literally just started is somehow now over. The people that I just introduced myself to are now going their separate ways. Possibilities are now Improbabilities. Another stage ends just as another one begins.

It was frightening leaving the States for Rome, starting this class. But it’s infinitely more frightening right now. No one is here to help. No one is here to pick me up at the airport, or to tell me exactly how to teach English, or what my daily schedule is going to be. Or when the next “Sara” is going to come my way. In truth, I am terrified as I sit here writing this.

I wish that Sara was staying in Rome to teach. We could take this step together. We could discuss lesson plans and students and pay rates and how beautiful Piazza Navona is and how crazy Campo de Fiori is at night.

But as it stands…I am alone. One girl is definitely staying here and another is wavering, likely to go back to Britain. It’s surprising how few of us are staying in Rome to look for employment.

And so this group that I thought would be nothing if not made of camaraderie, has broken apart. Leaving me…standing against the horizon…alone.

Should I have expected anything else?