Kaitlin Chan manages to truly let go on a trip to Italy

I’m kind of a nervous person and I’m not like a risk kind of taking person. So for most of my life, I’ve tried to stay on, unfortunately, with a bit of a straight and narrow path. I never took a gap year, I never did any trips when I was in university. I just felt that, you know, eye on the prize. And then, I started seeing someone who is a bit more spontaneous and relaxed about two years after university when I was working. But I never thought that this person would ask me to go to Italy with him. And I remember thinking, “this is just not the kind of thing that I do because I don’t do fun things,” like [laughs] I just tried to stick within my like routine of like having a job and like being well-behaved and not doing anything frivolous or expensive. So, I thought, you know, I’ve never been to the Venice Biennale. And even though we were total outsiders, it felt very warm and tender and people were just very sweet to me, and his friends were really accommodating. And most trips I’ve been on, I’d always felt the need to obsessively plan out the times, which as you know, defeats the point of going on a holiday. And there was one afternoon where we decidedly, didn’t do anything or plan anything and we just had gelatos and we were sitting on this bench in Treviso after coming back from the Biennale and I just fell asleep in public with him, with my purse, just like with my tote bag, and I’d completely took a nap for two hours. And I think prior to that point, I had never let myself rest, like I always felt that time was running out. And I lost my dad when I was very young, so I’ve always felt that, you know, you never know what’s gonna happen in your life, so you have to seize every moment. But that kind of became a little, a little stressful for most of my twenties. So when I was on this bench, I was just 24, with this person I liked, in the sun, not caring and not worrying about, “Oh, someone’s gonna, like, steal my bag, or like take a photo of me sleeping,” like it was completely unguarded and we, I think we slept for a very long time having eaten so much pasta. And I think we woke up, and it was 4, and usually after I’ve napped, I feel, “oh, you know, I shouldn’t have napped, I should have done more.” But I was just in, for once in my life, a space of total rest and abandon, and then I, I think I sort of realized that the world doesn’t fall apart when you allow yourself to rest or you allow yourself to do nothing and just cherish being in a body and being alive, and I weirdly felt changed by that nap. And I took one photo of that park bench that sometimes I still look at, and sometimes I just think, that was the time where, like, I let myself kinda go, and, like, no one had stolen anything. I don’t think anyone even walked past us ’cause it was such a small, like, sparsely populated town, but I think that felt kinda magical.