Wishing and Worrying - ESSAY

Note: This was written last summer. It was submitted to a magazine but never accepted. I still like it.

About a month ago, I booked a trip to Tuscany with one of my best friends. Since then, I’ve read about one thousand Lonely Planet articles, tracked down my copy of E.M. Forster’s A Room with A View, learned about Italy’s democratic history and made a ‘Tuscany mood board’ in my bedroom. I’ve dreamed of going back to Italy since I was eleven and visited Rome with my family: until we set off next week, I will exist entirely in the anticipation. My mind is full of the future, flooded with plans and excitement and apprehension, and all the things I need do before we leave.

Having fixated on the places I’ve read about for so long, it’s surreal that soon I will be seeing the real versions and walking down the streets of my annotated maps. Right now, my imagination is racing through everything irrational that might happen - good and bad. My nerves are a reminder that I’m not adept at spending time constantly surrounded by people, as much as I would like to be. I can’t help but think that planning for this trip means living entirely in possibilities - at least until we set off and I have to actually live it.

While I was packing, I found a photo of me from a school trip two years ago. In it, I’m ankle deep in waves, against the back drop of a dream-like sky. Every time I look at it, I’m stunned by how perfect the picture is; outside of that photo, it was one the most confusing weeks of my life. Before I set off I can remember being nervous and hopeful, but for all the wrong reasons. In the end, my only close friend on the trip was horrible to me, my anxiety was worse than anything I could have imagined, and the new friendships I made (with people I had been scared would hate me) were the best thing about the entire week.

Real life is always different, both far better and far worse than what’s in my head. That photo from my school trip was a reminder that often the things I struggle with most (or fall in love with the most) are unexpected. I can’t plan for the moments that will matter to me. Just the other day, my Dad told me he’d been offered a job in another country. I kept thinking about the line in the Wear Sunscreen song: ‘the real troubles in life are apt to be things that blindside you at 4pm on some idle Tuesday’, and how annoying it was that it was a Wednesday afternoon. Not even the things that I don’t think will happen happen when I would want them to.

Sometimes, I feel helpless about the time I waste worrying and wishing for things – and finding that none of it happens anyway. Trying to hold back my spiralling daydreams can be exhausting; it feels like my imagination will always be slightly beyond my control.

For now, I’ve put the old photo from the past summer at the top of my Italy mood board. I think I need to be reminded that whatever happens on this trip, my dreams will be wrong – my experiences will be nothing like I’ve imagined them to be, after I’ve left the confines of my own head. For the next few days, I can let myself live inside my imagination, knowing that soon I get to live my life outside.