Recently, I’ve been thinking a lot about stories. How important stories are. How we each have a collection of stories - stories we tell ourselves, stories we trot out at dinner parties, stories that become a part of who we are. 

I have stories. Stories I love that I tell over and over again. I decided it was probably time to record those stories. 

This story is probably my first story. I’d had traumas and upheavals and just general drama in my life at this point. I’d had fun and fallen in love and had a couple crazy adventures. And yet, I knew this was different. This was the first thing that happened to me that I remember thinking - now THIS is a story. It’s a story I love to tell and as a result, a story some in my life are tired of hearing. 

But too bad for them… because here it goes.

In the summer of 2000, I went to Italy. I had just finished my first year of college and had begged my parents to send me on a study abroad for the summer. A group from my school was going for five weeks to Rome, Florence, and Venice and I convinced my parents I had to go despite the fact I had just returned from a month in Europe the summer before. 

The brutal truth was I had spent all winter and spring trying desperately to extricate myself from a terrible relationship and I needed to get away.