Eat, Pray, Love - Dead Dad Edition
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The months after my dad died, I couldn't stop thinking about the book Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia. It was written by American author Elizabeth Gilbert and came out on February 16, 2006. According to the Wikipedia page about the book, it remained on the bestseller list for 187 weeks.
The book found its way into the hands of women deeply unhappy with their mundane lives and spotlighted their strained relationships. I also fell into that category. I was a tattered 22-year-old trying to make sense of the abusive relationship I had just left. The one that I quit school for and moved provinces to get away from—the one that shattered my sense of self.
I didn't have names like depression or trauma in my vocabulary yet. I didn’t understand the aftershock of leaving an abusive relationship—so it got buried. I tried to move on quickly, which meant drinking in excess and getting caught in a whirlwind romance that lasted six years longer than it should have.
Let me break it down if you haven't read the book or watched the movie that starred Julia Roberts. It chronicles Liz divorcing her husband, throwing her stuff in a New York City storage unit to head off on a grief-filled but whimsical "white woman finding herself" year-long trip. It begins in Italy, where she pines over her hot actor rebound boyfriend. A relationship that crashes and burns, or so it seemed when you watched the movie.
You are transported to cafes and restaurants where she eats pasta, learns to speak the language from a hot Italian man, eats pizza, meets some locals that become good friends, and eats pastries alongside her super chic Swedish gal pal that she meets at a cafe in Rome. After that, she was off to an ashram in India to sit at the feet of her guru, who was not in India at the time she went. The last leg of her trip was in Bali, where she finds a medicine man with no teeth to learn ancient teachings from and falls head over heels for a sultry Brazilian man and marries his ass.
That is why her book resonated with me at that time. I, too, wanted out. I was lost and trying to find myself. I wanted a guru to teach me how to be and live. It seemed easier than raw doggin' life the way I was.
Do you see why the book was a bestseller?
Escaping your life is a privilege. Travel is too. Some women will never know the liberation of leaving their relationship or travelling to a different country to "find" or reclaim themselves. Some women are geographically stuck, institutionally constrained or financially bound to a man they will never escape. They are caged in suppressive conditions that don't have luxury vacay on the options list.
Escaping for a time has always been my first choice when life gets overwhelming. That is also part of my impulsiveness, which I am attempting to quash or tame in the name of not being broke and reckless for the rest of my life.
Self-help books were having a moment then and still are because people always try to fix themselves or make sense of their lives. That will always be having a moment. Some self-help books are useless, but I loved this one (then) because going to Italy, India, and Bali instead of therapy sounded way more fun. So I went to South East Asia in 2007, pretending that trauma didn't exist in my body— drinking buckets of alcohol while adventuring into caves, flirting with cute boys, taking buses and planes to and around Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, and Cambodia to numb the pain—a temporary fix that worked for a time.
When my dad died—he got colon cancer and died four months after his diagnosis. I wanted to run like hell. I wanted to Eat, Pray, Ghost my life. I longed to bolt or, at minimum, cry beside a palm tree while sticking my feet into some white sand by the ocean for months. Not that it would cure anything, but grieving at the beach seemed superior to my couch. Covid ruined that. Having no money did too. Being a self-employed Massage Therapist who took five months off to be a caregiver to my dying dad meant all our financial responsibilities got put on my partner. The not-so-glamorous reality of caregiving—death and grieving, sometimes you financially fuck yourself (and your partner too).
When caring for my dad abruptly ended. I went back to work right away because I had to. On my way to work, I would have crying sessions in the car to get myself together enough to massage my clients before turning into a grief pumpkin. During those moments, Eat, Pray, Love popped into my head. I felt envy and anger, followed by laughter at the absurdity of it all. Grieving people return to work two days or a week after the death of a loved one. Ludicrous. Grieving people have to figure out how not to implode their entire life and deserve a medal. I'm not proud, but I felt big fuck you energy for people with disposable income and alive dad's. I let out audible laughs when I think of it now. Eat, Pray, Love - Dead Dad Edition.
Bone tired—worn the fuck out—barely holding it together.
How did I ride this out you might be asking?
I don't recommend being a grieving Massage Therapist. It required me to do emotional aerobatics. Compartmentalize. My school did not offer a unit in their curriculum on how to do your job without dripping tears on your patients while you're grieving. My way? Jam some tissue up your nose, then act cool as a cucumber once you turn them over. I know what some of you may think: "that is unprofessional," but time off was a luxury I couldn't afford. I didn't have the option to stop working as my left, and right heart ventricles did.
Between mustering enough energy to work, you would find me on the Isle of Couch (Yes, someone made sad art of me on that couch pictured above). I shamelessly watched movies like Eat, Pray, Love, and other Netflix shows I am too embarrassed to share now. I did as Liz would do but in my mind. I envisioned pizza in my mouth hole from Naples. I imagined renting a house in Bali in the middle of the jungle where no one could hear my sobs. I pretended to have a group of friends through the TV screen, the ones she met in Italy because in real life, I got so depressed I didn’t see anyone but my partner and clients for at least six months.
And you all know what happened next— a global pandemic. A collective uncertainty and grief engulfed us, the toilet paper saga, people dying in droves and banging pots and pans, making loaves, turning to unhinged conspiracy theories, and protesting in front of hospitals.
I also had just moved to a new city where I only knew a handful of people, most of whom I didn’t want to subject to my grieving energy. We weren’t that tight. I did manage 67 straight days of Italian lessons on Duolingo. I found something to hyper-focus on for a while—researching my Italian ancestors on my mother’s side and creating an elaborate family tree. I was obsessed with exploring ways to retrieve my Italian citizenship. That was a dead end. Grazie mille.
Thanks, Liz, for keeping me company on the worst days of my life. You are a real one.
Eat, Pray, Love dead dad edition field notes
I didn't get to hang out with a medicine man with no teeth, so I found a cheap therapist a month after my dad died instead. Her house smelt of smoke, and she was close to death herself. She sometimes wore an oxygen tank in our sessions.
Financial stability sounds fantastic because spending all your savings on keeping your body alive while grieving is a full-time job, so that you can work your actual job. That’s soul-sucking.
A grief salve to slap all over my body would have been nice. Instead, I turned into a scared armadillo.
A colon hydrotherapist or someone that does IV hydration and a vitamin cocktail drip that ordinary people can't afford from all the tears I cried could have made all the difference. Instead, I ended up with bacterial overgrowth in my small intestine.
Daydreaming of someone taking pity on my tired, frail sad ass and gifting me a year-long vacation, all expenses paid, so I could cry around different parts of the world. Is that so much to ask? Still open to that one.
Like Liz’s friends in Italy, a language barrier that’s what I needed, so we could eat in silence because that would be better than hearing another platitude that made me want to hurl myself against a wall.
Beautifully written. Your grief is palpable and sharing this most difficult time must feel so vulnerable but also healing. No one teaches us how to be with grief. How to get through the pain. And yes, many cannot just escape to some desired destination but instead are swimming through the muck of life while trying to process grief. Thank you for your vulnerability.