I’ve been pretty sick for a week now, trying to just get through it, but this is exactly how I felt when I had pneumonia a couple years ago, so I’m going to medical tomorrow. I rarely get sick, but when I do I feel like it just all hits me at once. Being in Italy has messed my stomach up a bit, not really sure what it is someone said “you might be allergic to garbage” which made me laugh because there is a LOT of garbage here in Italy, unfortunately.

I’m feeling better today, mentally. Obviously relationships have been heavy on my heart and mind, but I remembered something today that makes me want to try something different. I’ve been so quick to jump into relationships and give everything I have from day one, but I’m not letting things happen slowly and naturally. I’m not giving people time to know me for me, before jumping from A to Z. I want to be with someone who falls in love with ME, my personality, my intellect, my humor, just me. I don’t want another relationship based off of sex. My Mom has told me forever “be friends with someone first, that’s how it’s going to last”.. and I’m like yea yea Ma, I’m best friends with the people I’m with.. but am I? Or do we somehow just end up growing into that? Whatever it is, I haven’t been doing it right for a long time.

There’s this cringy term I’ve been hearing latley: “hook up culture” (why is EVERYTHING a ‘culture’ these days???). I can kind of see it, with all the dating apps and stuff.. I really hope that is not what I’m up against here because I don’t want that shit AT ALL. Honestly, my only real concern at this point is the fact that the older I get, the less likely I think I’m going to find a man who doesn’t already have children. I’ve dated someone who had 2 children, and I loved that person very deeply, even to the point where I wanted children with him.. but it didn’t work out, and I’m glad now. It’s not that I absolutely would NOT be with someone who had a child already, but I guess I just want to share that experience with someone who also doesn’t have any children. But I really shouldn’t be thinking about any of that right now, I need to keep focusing on myself and working on being a better person for myself. I do find my mind wandering outside of myself a lot, thinking about other people and what they’re doing, but I’m practicing refocusing on myself after noticing my thoughts drifting.

I’m moving out of this hotel room soon and I’m super grateful for that, maybe once I’m settled in I will be able to shop for stuff for the house without feeling overwhelmed.

The sun was out today, and a friend of mine said “I think the raining season is over”.. LET’S PRAY FOR THAT!!!

Something kind of embarrassing happened today, not directly to me, but I think I had a little out of body experience and saw this happening from an outside perspective. Out CMC took us outside and gathered us around to talk about our purpose here in Italy (which was really nice because I’ve been trying to figure out what we are actually doing, the big picture) and in the group of people of about 25, 5 were straight out of A school and the rest were relatively young. The CMC kept asking a bunch of questions regarding ‘players in the theater right now’, which is how the military describes who is at war and positions of allies and stuff, and nobody really knew. Nobody could really finish his sentences for him.. and I felt REALLY fucking stupid. It was embarrassing because he has this huge group of men and women surrounding him who are ‘serving and protecting’ and we don’t know about war details, allies, current events, politics in other countries, etc. It really made me want to start looking into all of that, just so I can at least have something to offer in conversation. I used to get this gouge called chinfo news where it would describe kind of what’s been going on in the military all across the world, I’d like to have that again.

❤