Drugged-up wandering suicidal search of the self fuck-ups don’t have families.

 

For the past six weeks, I had a date and a note that said thisistheday.

I’m leaving tomorrow.

For the next five weeks, I’ll be staying in Ibiza.

Ibiza (noun): Mediterranean island, home for the past 40-odd years to an assortment of burnouts, hippies, acid casualties, club fiends, weekend scenesters, aimless people, directionless people. And supposedly James Blunt.

I’m looking forward to all that.

Reasons to try it on: out-of-season vacation spots always had a powerful hold on me; obvious semi-historic appeal, check; the only people living there in Nov./Dec. must be truly committed to the island, capable of dealing with a semi-regular job aside from summery delights, very keen on the peace-and-quiet element, or insane.

Prep work: Italian HMO card should work fine for emergencies (thanks to the T.E.A.M – Tessera Europea Assicurazione Malattia); medical checkups confirmed I’m good to go; Euro-valid ATM card was obtained in five minutes, tops.

Morale-boosting pre-move move: finally got around to replacing broken eyeglasses; the haircut is down to what it was supposed to be in the first place; this morning I caught a look in the mirror and went all “goodness, I’m a passable hot boy. Only my gender gives me away”.

Oh, and my landlord is a trumpet player. Figure that out, you lucky so-and-so.

 

Rules of engagement.

Well well well.

It’s been a while, and I’m really sorry – got caught up in that big ol’ pile of Things You Should Do Before A Trip (which in my case included getting your eyesight checked and getting an Unintentional Shauna O’Brien haircut – draw your own conclusions).

I think it’d be wise of me to start explaining a few guidelines for what I’m about to do.

So, join me in the FAQ Master List.

——–

Why are you leaving?

See here. (And here, if you’re up for some nation/gender moping.)

How long will you be traveling around?

At the very least, I’ll be on the move until late 2010. By then, I hope, I’ll have landed on a better planet. Some place I feel ok living in for a couple years, if not until the day I die. Also – I’m not planning on meeting my uber-fabulous maker soon.

How long will you stay in a single place?

Depends. One-two months’ stays are probably the best fit for me: just enough to get a feel of different cities and neighborhoods, without beating yourself up too much if things turn out to be less than ideal.

How many countries will you visit?

I’m curious about it myself.

…Huh?

I’ve made a list of places and cities to spin, but I’m trying to be a c’mon-will-it-kill-you-to-broaden-your-horizons-just-a-little gal here – so, while I’ll watch out for anything that might pop up, say, in Barcelona, Portland or Brighton, I’ll also let fate decide for me. When it can be bothered to intervene.

Fate.

Dude, I know.

How are you going to support yourself?

Glad you asked. Money’s an obvious issue here – international travel is way cheaper than it used to be, but that doesn’t mean I won’t take budget into consideration. (And no, I am not living off a trust fund.)

That said, I’ve saved up enough for an ok year – this means subletting an apartment when/where I can, a single room when/where I can’t, keeping up with the freelance work (the past couple of years I’ve been hired by Rolling Stone, Wired and a number of local magazines) and at least taking into consideration any steady gig that won’t force me to get back in Italy.

I also swore to my agent I’ll be done with Novel Number Two by the end of May. So.

And I do work from home, so I’ll tend to avoid what we like to call “the Erasmus kiss of death”. (As far as I understand, ageism is serious business in several metropolitan areas, so it’s not like I’ll be breaking any hearts here.)

Will you be able to come and go as you please? Seriously?

The subtle beauty of being a UE citizen lies in not having to fill out a gazillion forms. Most of the time. Any visit to the US falls under the Visa Waiver program: should I opt for a 3-month-plus stay, I’ll have to apply for a tourist visa. (Also: Latin American countries follow different rules, but right now the chances of me successfully negotiating a Buenos Aires sublet online are pretty slim.)

Hey, I live in an interesting city/town/village/’hood/hole in the wall, I think you should give it a try.

Drop me a line: violettabellocchio at gmail dot com

Anything else?

I’ll be applying for a couple artists’ residencies here and there: getting in is a whole other matter, so I won’t be placing all my eggs of ZOMG stability in that basket, thank you.

I’m questioning your badassness.

Don’t.

Ladies and gentlemen, it’s ON.

Found on choiresicha.com - do not sue.

Hey y’all,

just a quick update for today – I finally found a place to stay for my first foray into self-exile.

Destination: Spain.

Exact location: will be revealed only after my friends stop laughing at me.

Will be posting the Master List of Rules and Regulations on Friday - that should help explaining just how I’m doing it, with “it” being “travelling around for 14 months in search of a new country to live”.

Until then – I am so happy. I am.

Pet and/or cattle (I should not be blogging right now)

So.

I should not be blogging right now because I spent the whole morning trying to get paid for work I’ve done in the past three months.

I should not be blogging because when your head hits a ceiling made of anger, frustration and sheer loneliness, you should turn to useful things like taking a walk or making a sandwich for your blind neighbour. Nice, mature, gender-approved and age-appropriate things.

What I am doing is blogging. Bear with me.

If you’re a girl, and you’re born in Italy, there’s two career paths you can take.

Pet.

Find rich guy

Date rich guy

Live with / Marry rich guy

Aaaand you’re set.

(Pet /2: land influential boyfriend/lover that will take care of your professional future. No. Different. At all.)

Cattle

Hope you won’t die today.

And that is all.

(And this, apparently, is how an entire nation becomes a plotline from “Sin Tetas No Hay Paraiso“. Can’t vouch for that, but I’m afraid the reference’s spot on.)

A jilted boyfriend can – and probably will – kill you out of spite. Any male relative can beat you up until he damn well pleases. And now, you might want to check out some stats – Italian text only, ’cause we sure don’t want other people to find out how bad things are going around here.

Despite that, the public debate on women seems to have narrowed down to a parade of talk show hosts asking, “Scantily clad babes on our TV screens: Yes or No?”. (Think about “Even Stevphen“. Then take it down a few notches.)

So you protect yourself any way you can.

Money. Doors. Marriage. Lack of eye contact. Earplugs. More money.

I’m tired of making myself invisible so that pretty please maybe I get to come home safe.  I’m tired of hiding.

And I can hide behind anything – long hair, oversized clothing, displacement, old tricks, cigarettes, bouts of laziness, workaholism, not leaving the house, claiming I’m short on cash or hope, saying I’m too old for it anyway.

My parents tried to make an convincing argument out of the whole “oh noes, if you move away we’ll never get to see you anymore” (true), but they also said, “with an itty bitty bit of luck you can find someone here, too”.

Not true.

Guys, I can’t fall in love with you when I hate this country so much.

Provided there is someone ok out there, I won’t even see him.

I can’t get over the fact that, to me, Italian men and Italy are one and the same. That I resent you for never noticing bruises on a co-worker, always leaving things alone, always hiding behind your own alibis for not stepping up. Always pretending you weren’t there when atrocious, uber-anti-woman laws were being debated. So fuck you, nice, ineffectual boys who never say (let alone do) a thing about sexual harassment in the workplace. Witty, cultured boys who make “oh, you slimmed down” jokes to girls and *know* they’ll totally get away with that. Boys who still think they’re too young to vote. Boys who never take a stand. Boys that still think being boys will let them get away with anything.

But fuck me for thinking there was no rush when everyone else was pairing up, and fuck me for being deluded enough to think being a girl would let me get away with anything, and fuck me for getting sober when chances I’d ever be able to touch someone without getting smashed first looked slim to none, and fuck me for not doing it sooner, because, really, did I have to bat my eyes and hide behind my oh, I’d be lost without my native language fan until it was too late to change a single thing?

Yeah, you might see where I’m coming from.

And I don’t love myself for turning my back to this desperate, sick country, but fuck if it isn’t my last chance to save myself. To find out if I can even function in any environment that resembles normalcy.

If I don’t feel ok with who I am, I can’t fall in love.

If I don’t fall in love, I can’t really stick around in a relationship

(ed: I might still start one, but chances are I’ll bolt in two months’ time and/or start feigning panic attacks -  btw, if you’re reading this and I dated you in my twenties – er. sorry about that.)

If I don’t stick around in a relationship, I’ll forget  the reason I’m doing this.

And if it all sounds a little too Saving Private Ryan-ish for your tastes – there’s nothing I can do about it. Sorry.

—–

So, before I turn into a female dude from Gogol Bordello and start spouting ancient wisdom that doesn’t make a lick of sense, I’ll leave me with two words of advice:

This is where you came from.

Don’t let it fuck you up more than it already did.

—–

(coming up next: Let’s get down to details: travel itineraries, savings, visas and short-term plans.)

And so it begins.

Basically, I want to get pregnant.

Such a task would be deemed “doable”, were the situation just a little bit different.

Not around here.

I was born in Italy. I’m still living here. I’m 32 years old.

I’m leaving in a month.

Reasons could be written off as “needing some personal time”. But there’s more to the story.

Current Italian laws make it impossible for an unmarried woman to get artificially inseminated, whatever her sexual orientation might be (wouldn’t have been my first choice, but it would have been nice for it to be a choice somehow). The same goes for adoption: you need to be straight and have been married for a few years [ed.: apparently, you can apply for adoption and pull the old "...no, Your Honor, but we do plan to get married soon" - bonne chance] before you can turn in the papers, and even then it’s a big “if” (which could explain why so many couples just get on the road, travel to former Soviet Republics and swipe babies for cash… but I digress).

So, if an Italian woman happens to be in lack of a husband and wanting to start a family, several appealing alternatives are laid down in front of her.

1. Pay massive amount of cash to get an in vitro abroad (unknown donor), then raise the kid as a single parent.

Pros: hey, it’s your baby.

Cons: baby gets crushed under the weight of Messianic expectations.

2. Pay massive amount of cash to get an in vitro abroad (you know the donor), then raise the kid as a semi-single parent.

Pros: you’re not on your own.

Cons: donor could fight you for custody, and win; donor could change his mind about sharing any sort of responsibility, effectively pinning you in .1 scenario; seems to work only for lesbian couples whose Spider-sense is really, really sharp.

3. Trick unsuspecting guy in getting you pregnant, then raise the kid as a single parent.

Pros: Unsuspecting Guy never finds out, therefore he can’t become Bad Influence on kid.

Cons: Also called pulling a Loverboy.

4. Trick unsuspecting guy in getting you pregnant, then go around screaming “it’s your child too, you bastard” and hope the DNA tests prove you right.

Pros: you might get some child support money – if and when the court rules in your favor.

Cons: do you really want to be that person?

5. Invest years, time and energy in landing an actual relationship with a man, then hope he might want to become a father one day.

Pros: it’s supposed to be natural.

Cons: personal/emotional life morphs into series of increasingly desperate manipulation attempts; relationship might de-evolve into a 2. scenario.

But.

Should any of these things work out for you, there’s no safety net when it comes to getting back on your feet and into the workforce.

You’re a woman, and you’re in Italy, therefore you’re expected to make everything turn out ok without any kind of support.

So much fuss is made about you (aka Future Wife/Mother Figure) as a future family cornerstone, but no political party is going to do anything to help you. You want a kid, you’re on your own. You want to work, you’re on your own. And never the twain shall meet.

I really don’t want to be that.

I don’t want to kill off everything I tried to do in the past 10+ years just so that I might, one day, get a husband and a baby. I know I won’t.

But I don’t want to keep on making myself invisible to men, so that I can do my thing and little else, banishing any thought of an actual relationship.

So, I’m leaving. Let’s see if things are really the same anywhere else.