A mess, if anyone asked me to define my life up to a few months ago that would be how I would describe my existence. I was born in a rural town called Cremona, North Italy, on March 21 1992.

Life felt very slow yet very messy for the first 20 years, got drunk out of boredom, tried a few drugs, got my heart broken. I then did what I was “supposed” to do, people pleasing, went to business college like my parents wanted, worked a few jobs, I even got a permanent job. From the outside I kind of had it all a part from a boyfriend who, according to my family, would have completed the picture. I was 20, pretty unhappy and apparently waiting for someone to come into my life and fix everything, possibly with a house and a kid. I then turned 21, still a mess, everyone around me just seemed to know what to do and which direction to take in their life.

Were they happy? Was I happy?

Probably not but that’s not a question I asked myself until later on in life. Up to that point, life felt like a pre-cooked meal and everyone seemed busy buying the best microwave on the market, pre-cooked meal, best microwave, life is good. My life started to get interesting when I realised that I didn’t like “microwaves” and I hated “pre-cooked meals”. That pushed me to challenge and question myself, everything I believed in and everything I did up to that point. As you can imagine the mess I experienced up to that point got more and more intense until I decided to make my own choices and start my own journey. So if everyone was after pre-cooked meals I was determined to grow my own food, and yeah fuck microwaves I was off to find my own wood cos I like my food cooked on fire. At this point you would expect a beautiful happy ending where Anna becomes a famous chef, growing her own food in Italy and cook it on fire. The story didn’t really go that way because I hate cooking and because my soul turned out to be slightly more complicated and unapologetic than I and people around me expected. This is to say, I chose to set my life on fire by leaving everything and everyone behind.

The story goes that Anna packs her shit and moves across the world. Australia first, Kenya second, landed nearly by chance to England, stayed there for 7 years, randomly ended up in LA in between my degree, then Ukraine, Amsterdam, Berlin, Morocco, hiked Nepal and got sunburned in Jamaica. 10 years out of Italy taught me that really, my issues had nothing to do with “microwaves and ready meals” but they were more about trauma and bad romance. Yes, growing up in an abusive household really slowed me down, especially on an emotional level but that’s a story for another day. Another pretty cool story (for another day) is how travelling and being out of Italy for so long changed me, yeah you guessed right, the travel bug is real and yes I never wanted to be back in Italy but we both know where this story is going. After a number of years packing and unpacking boxes, sleeping on people’s couches, road tripping and counting pennies to book my next flight, I felt the need to slow down and to take a break from all the things I couldn't control. Yes, England was great, yes, 7 years in England and a toxic (?) relationship did really harden my soul. In real Anna’s style, the decision of moving back to Italy was taken over night, I quit my job on the phone and after flying home to attend my grandad’s funeral I decided to stay. The Universe (together with my grandad) blessed me with a number of unforeseen events which turned out to be just what I needed, a job in a bilingual school in a pretty town called Modena not too far from Cremona, yet far enough to save me from any family drama. The story goes that Anna moves to Modena and starts a new life, a new life where Anna is finally a grown up woman who has done a lot (not all) of hard work on herself, who has made peace with a few demons from the past and most importantly a woman who has learnt self-respect. Yeah, I didn’t want to fall into any dating games or silly situationships, despite REALLY enjoying sex and enjoying the use/abuse game with men, I wasn’t down for becoming someone’s doll again. This being said, I’m only human and also an hypocrite and I decided to download Tinder because despite the self-respect, the self-love, the spiritual work which was only possible by staying away from men, I was also bored and in the mood to meet someone. This means that despite loving myself so fucking much I was ready to go on shitty dates, being unimpressed and play my slut game again. I made my body a battleground in past and I was sure I could do that again, because I learnt my lessons and found a way not to leave my heart in bed with a man, I was ready…ready to have it all and lose it all, of course all in one night. Being independent can be great and ugly at the same time, you don’t need anyone but deep inside you want THAT person to connect with, you want to meet the love of your life and you spend a lot of your alone time thinking about what the fuck being the “love of my life” even means, meeting the man of their dreams doesn’t happen to women like me (I thought), “don’t date a girl who travels” they say and that’s who I was. Women like me are made to keep thriving and glowing on their own. In line with Cher’s philosophy, I used to think that a man is a luxury, like a dessert, but a man is not a necessity cos no matter what my family wanted for me, I wanted to be the rich man and on many levels I became my own rich man.

Fuck society.

Love, 

Anna 

Here there is some food for thought for you to watch, enjoy!

Flush it down, baby!

I don’t care about your life as in what you do everyday. What you do every day is what needs to be done to survive, you know taking a shower, eating, drinking water. That’s surviving. I want to know what’s your vision, what’s your life about? 

Bitch, I wanna know what you would die for, what’s your energy about, you know...once you remove your make up, what’s left? What’s your persona about, once the glitters are flushed down the toilet, once the social validation is forgotten, once everyone has left the party, what’s the sign you wanna leave behind? How deep can you feel the pain? How do you deal with it? How important are your cracks? Can you really survive yourself?

Did you remember to flush it down?

Anna