About Me — inthewaves

My story as it unfolds.

Childhood and teenage years.

At four years old I learned to read and write because I couldn’t stand seeing my brother and cousins doing their homework every afternoon and not being able to participate in the magic of the letters they were crafting with. Since then, I have always wanted to be a writer.

In times so remote that I don’t even have any memory of, I am told that I was constantly cutting and gluing white pages together, announcing that that was gonna be my book. I also remember writing poetry since I started being in school. I remember many summers spent at the public library, with its comforting silence, or in the dim light of my little bedroom, reading books over books over books. Mainly fiction. However, I also loved to learn about animals, planets, and stars, and, a bit later on, about how our mind works (how can thoughts come out of a bunch of cells?).

I was a tireless ant watcher. I was on a mission to discover the habits of a colony of feral cats that were living close to my block. I was a also planet follower, with my little orange telescope on my parents’ balcony. I knew about the history of astronomy — don’t ask me anything now, it would be embarrassing. I was looking into the universe and its mysteries and was both unsettled and completely captivated by the concept of infinity and of all those galaxies floating around. This was making me feel very small and very emotional, the same as when I was in a church and I was thinking about God. I had a very good relationship with God, back then.

I went through school easily, always pulling off the best grades in my class. Life wasn’t trouble-free, though. The other kids were different, I felt (and feared). Their families and houses looked different than mine — less clean and structured, maybe, but often much warmer and more spontaneous too. I decided that they shouldn’t get to know too much about my family, my habits and interests, and how soft I felt on the inside. I was afraid they would find me too weird. I developed a lot of shyness as a result.

I never totally fitted anywhere, but I wasn’t not-fitting at all either. Sometimes the boys would accept me for playing soccer (another big passion of mine), and sometimes the girls would accept me as a full member of the Spice Girl dance group which was taking place during the school break. Sometimes I was even the one inventing the choreography. Then, I could feel normal for a little bit.

Later on, I came to realize that other souls also loved reading like me, and I started to exchange books and thoughts with a friend, and then another. However, the teenage years approached fast, and we all were taken by far more earthly thoughts. I could finally go out by myself, and that was so thrilling that it made me forget about ants and planets for quite some time. In high school, I finally found some people I truly liked and who liked me, a clan of sorts. Through their alliance, I was even part of the popular bunch —the only problem, it was yet another masking.

In any case, the freedom of existing in a world where parents were not allowed (mine were particularly strict) was exhilarating. The time was dilating, and dense in experiences. Everything happening was being transformed and becoming part of our secret code and language.

Boys, at least some boys, had significant power over me, but they remained a puzzle for very, very long. It’s not that they didn’t like me (superficially), more that I had no clue what to talk about with them. The childhood shyness was always ready to jump back on me, suddenly spoiling my façade of popular girl and confusing them so that in one or two weeks — maximum three — , they would run away. I started to be convinced that there was something deeply wrong with me and that no boy would ever truly like me.

Young adult.

However, nothing more wrong. At eighteen, I started my career as a serial monogamist — thanks to a somewhat older, very talkative, very loud, and very expressive dude, which decided he didn’t believe my silence and my shyness amounted to the whole story. From there on, I had a couple of quite long relationships and several flirts and affairs in the intervals in between them. Some of these relationships were not without drama, and with sudden changes of heart and impulsive decisions on my side. In those years, I was restless. My vaguely rebel (or anxious) side was sabotaging whatever I had — just a moment before — thought I really wanted.

In the while, I had started university. There, the not-fitting sensation had come back even stronger and clearer, not eased by any school breaks in which to dance or play any soccer, unluckily. I simply didn’t know what to talk about, with those people. It looked like my interests weren’t their interests, their passion wasn’t my passion, and they weren’t anguished by any of the questions that were anguishing me.

Of course, it didn’t help that I had again pushed myself into what seemed a more acceptable (but not fully true) box, by choosing to study a scientific subject, instead of literature, like my heart was asking me to do. Once more, I didn’t want to look too soft in front of the world, nor too irresponsible in the eyes of my very down-to-earth and concrete parents. I was learning something that would give me a proper job.

“I could always read books on the side” — I was telling myself.

In any case, studying suddenly became very boring and hard for me. Differently than in school, being smart and intuitive didn’t help so much anymore — in most cases, things had to simply be memorized by heart. All the fun was gone, and I wasn’t feeling any talented or special anymore.

Keeping cohabiting with my family was back then a reason for feeling even more suffocated. My parents and my brother had never fully gotten me before, and for sure they weren’t now. I jumped on an occasion to get a scholarship to do a thesis work abroad, and I left the country for several months. The experience wasn’t overall negative (traveling and meeting new people has always been a balm for my spirit), but the laboratory I ended up working in had a very toxic work culture — I both experienced and witnessed mobbing.

I came back, and the freedom of being far and independent was gone too. I had to finish university and I was stuck living with my parents. Anxiety started to hit me very, very hard. I was lost. I was paralyzed.

I somehow managed to pull myself out of the swampland I was fallen into and finish my exams. I graduated. Immediately after, I left my city once again to pursue a doctorate somewhere else. There was a certain curiosity about doing research, of course (possibly, the very word “research” seemed to fit with my restless nature), but my main motivation — if I must be honest — was that of fleeing, fleeing my family, my past, and my anxiety. That sense of something being extremely wrong. In doing so, I broke up another relationship.

My doctorate years were finally interesting, and I was feeling alive again. I wasn’t always sure to be on the right track, but experiencing full independence and a full clean slate in a new place was certainly refreshing. My newly discovered anxious side was accompanying me, as it would from there on, but I could fully appreciate my new environment. I was amazed by how genuinely curious and clever everyone around me seemed to be.

I had setbacks, and moments of being stuck, of feeling as if everything was wrong, yet again. But I also managed to discover new passions, like hiking and exploring mountains. Or climbing. I was often doing things alone, not afraid anymore to not fit in, to be seen as different. I also went back to writing, and this helped me feel a bit more like myself again. The people I was working with were leaving me enough independence so that I wouldn’t feel too trapped (although I discovered back then that nothing is quite as frustrating as your experiments not working, or wondering whether one has spent the last year in the lab on something useless).

In summary, I didn’t make any big discoveries, but I finished this experience with a vague and surprising sense of pride in the little bit I had accomplished and the life I had created. It was one of the very few times in my life that I felt anything of the sort.

Thirties.

While going through my doctorate, and for a couple of years after that, I was in what I would easily call the most important relationship of my life. We were together (but apart) for almost seven years, and for seven years I was very much in love with him, and very stubborn about wanting it to work. It didn’t, though. It was never symmetrical, and we clearly wanted different things in life. He was never fully committed to me, never fully honest, and would never agree to make a family with me. So, after seven years, I broke up with him, and with that, I broke my heart too.

By the time all of this happened, I was living for quite some time in yet another place (and country). After my doctorate, I had in fact decided to continue research, so I looked for other possibilities abroad. Restarting life with a clean slate once again was a bit scarier and more tiring this time around, but the city I landed myself in was so pleasant and fascinating that soon I was happy with my decision again, at least geographically speaking.

Work was extremely hard, though. I was now immersed in a highly competitive environment and I could feel all the pressure related to that. Nothing to do with the atmosphere in which I had worked for my doctorate. I could barely keep up with everything that was being asked of me, let alone think about writing or any other creative passions. For two years I buried myself in lab work and complicated analyses, and yet never felt good enough nor productive enough. When a big delusion came (another group publishing similar data to mine before me), followed in a quick turn by me breaking up with the “love of my life” — yes, the lying and uncommitting love of my life — , I fell into pieces.

Everything looked very, very dark.

But I kept going, I kept surviving, as I was used to doing for quite some time already, buried in work as I was. It was a period of great isolation and of not being sure of who I was anymore. For several months I felt dead inside. There was no pleasure in anything I was doing, and my choice of continuing with research started to feel like a big mistake. At some point, I tried to throw myself into sports to feel some life force again, to feel anything at all again. Then, COVID-19 suddenly hit.

The work-life continued to be devoid of passion and joy for the most part. On the relationship side, coinciding with the breaking out of the pandemic I found myself in a sexual situationship, which at some point turned into a not-very-convinced open relationship. But this was all part of a big phase of me patiently picking up the pieces of myself and trying to figure out once again who I was. I was exploring my sexuality and my desires, and I was finally defining my own personal concepts of sex, love, and exclusivity — what I was okay with and what not. In this sense, it was a healing experience, though it never stood a chance of lasting for long.

After a year, I broke up this relationship too, finally equipped with a clearer-than-ever awareness of my desires and wishes for the future. More than anything, I wanted a companion to build a solid and stable life with, and I wanted a family. I decided to embark on a new relationship with someone who looked more compatible, more romantic, and more willing to commit than any guy I have ever met before. And in truth, that was for some time the love story I had always dreamed of (even at times when I was not able to admit that to myself). The love story I probably deserved, after so much suffering.

But I was wrong, once again. Very wrong.

If you are curious about how this story goes on, you can follow me and/or read my stories starting from here:

And here:

About me, in short.

inthewaves is a soon-to-be single mom, and she has a lot to write about this experience and the heartbreaks that preceded it. She wants to learn from her past and her mistakes, and if she can help you in the process too, that makes her very, very happy.

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

She is also: a woman in her thirties, a scientist, an academic, a free-time writer and poet, an expat, a daughter, a sister, a granddaughter, a friend, a lover of good Mediterranean food, a hiker, a traveler.

She is interested in mental health, self-growth, psychology, neuroscience, advice on how to navigate human relationships, advice on how to build a freelance career, advice on how to be more effective at writing, science, philosophy, society, feminism, and parenting.

Expect her to read, comment and write about these topics, too.

Finally, she loves coffee — but unluckily cannot drink any at the moment-, and she dreams of having two cats (and a dog, and a garden) someday.

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

inthewaves is also the Editor of MicroBoosted, a publication where she highlights the best Medium stories she comes across, month by month.

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

You can buy her a coffee (for after her pregnancy :) ) here: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/inthewaves