Often, we think that ambitious people have it all together, and their drive for excellence propels them forward. And by “we,” I mean western culture and, more specifically, American culture, but I happen to know that it’s not true at all. The driving force behind ambition is chaos or a black hole, or chaos happening inside of a black hole (listen, I’m not a goddamn scientist, so please don’t comment about how this isn’t how chaos works. Just go with it). Excruciating anxiety. Dread. Monumental change. Divorce. Nagging insecurity. Or, in my case, death.
My little brother struggled with addiction. In 2008, he died on the floor of a heroin dealer’s house.
I’ve always been ambitious in a very messy unbalanced way, but grief supplied the chaos that fueled my need to abandon not just the city where he died but the entire goddamn continent. I had hopes and dreams, sure, I was artsy and dreamed of being a full-time artist and writer, yeah, but I’d never had the biting anxiety that whispered hauntingly at all hours of the night, “Time is short! You’ve accomplished nothing! Tick Tock. Tick Tock” until after he died. He was barely twenty-three.
If you’ve read my book, Naked in Italy: A Memoir About the Pitfalls of La Dolce Vita, you know how I ended up on a plane to Italy. But the story you probably haven’t heard is about the unbelieve experiences that I had once I arrived. Some sound too crazy to be true. And no, it has nothing to do with my mother-in-law being elbow deep in my panties (if you’re new here, yeah, that actually happened). It has everything to do with one of the best years of my entire life.
I’m back, motherfuckers. And this is the prequel.
Emily in Paris doesn’t have shit on M. Elizabeth Evans and her international posse in Florence.
