...so I packed up all my things, or at least everything I really needed, everything that would fit in a case and a backpack, and then I sat down and thought for a bit and looked at the rest of my stuff and put a load of it in bin bags for Oxfam. It'd have gone to waste otherwise and at least this way I could help Darfur or wherever. I left a few bits in the room, stuff I didn't know what to do with.
I got down to Dover by train. I sent an email from an internet café to my dad, just saying I wasn't dead and that I'd be back in touch eventually but I had all these things I had to think through and I just needed to get away from everything. I threw my phone over the side of the ferry during the crossing.
I didn't really know where to go when I got to Calais, so I took trains to places with nice names - Amiens, Reims, Tours, Nevers - then got bored and shot down through France and drifted around in Italy, mainly city-seeing. I'm in Palermo now - I've got about as far as I can go without a long sea trip or doubling back. It all sounds pretty romantic in retrospect, til I remember I've blown all my savings. Well, some of it was romantic in any case. The creepy guy in Florence I could have done without. And trains get a bit much after a month or so. Still, some of it - most of it - has been beautiful. Morning coffee in cafés, endless museums, trees, bright sun, slowly browning, old buildings, feeling slightly dislocated because of the language barrier, eating decent bread, variety, laziness, oscillations. Travelling's been good for me. Broadened my mind and shrunk my waist.
Maybe it was an overreaction, leaving. But I've loved Italy, I really have, so even if I've left a load of loose ends behind me, I can't really bring myself to care. I'll pick up my life eventually. It's not going to be easy. I could stay here, or go on, eke out a life teaching English or something. Holiday forever, though - I'm not sure I'm built for that. Maybe I could face a job now, and all the people I left. I get nightmares sometimes, accusing faces, gut-wrenching guilt. I hope, I really hope, that they don't all hate me for running.