Harry & Catalina's paths align as they make their own individual journey of healing. Both grieving the loss of parents, they travel to fulfill the dream road trip their parents never got to have.
The final destination, Italy.
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📍 London — 2020
Fingers drummed on the hood of my car, the only sound I could seem to focus on. I felt the air fill my lungs as I inhaled deeply, my eyes still squeezed closed as I tried to stop my racing thoughts. Everything about going on this trip sounded like what I needed. Tour had been canceled in the States, no sign of it starting up anytime soon. I didn't have any other commitments for a long while. Deep inside the smallest corners of my heart, this trip felt right.
I allowed myself to open my eyes, taking in the yellow 1972 Ferrari Dino 246 GT my step dad had left behind for me. His passing still had a tight grip on my heart, this car the only physical thing I had left connecting me to him. Licking my lower lip, I traced my fingers gently across the small bits of chipping paint near the door handle. My mind pondering on the stories this car could tell; how it carried the dreams he never got to live out. He had always wanted to drive out of the UK, through Europe, finishing off in Italy. It felt only appropriate that the first time I drove it, it would be to make that exact trip.
God, I really actually needed this.
Taking a long extended break like this wasn't something I did often; and even now, this wasn't fully by choice, but more by mere circumstance. Still the idea of just sitting back and disappearing, nothing feeling rushed. It felt so inviting. I knew I owed something like this to myself; but I felt scared at the same time, making this trip alone, not really having a full plan as to what I was doing. Exactly where I would be going.
The irony of it all was, this trip felt like a reflection of where I was currently in life. I felt alone, though I wasn't. No plan as to where I was heading next in life. I was at a place where all I could measure my life by was the high points and my ability to ever reach as high again. One Direction had been the the first that eventually led me to the high point that was Fine Line and now that I couldn't finish touring for that, I didn't know where I was supposed to be. What the next highest point in my life was supposed to look like.
How could there be a higher point than what I already had? What if this trip, like the rest of my life, didn't go as planned?
I rolled my lips into my mouth, looking up at my mum's house. Looking at the blessings we now had that we never had before. Deep inside, I knew we could continue to live this way peacefully if I never found the next thing. If I never made it to the top of the next mountain. I had enough to not need to continue making music or performing.
Which felt insane to me.
I loved performing, it felt like it was embedded in everything that made me who I was. It was all I had wanted for so long, yet I was willing to walk away from it. All because of this never ending fear inside of me that I could never do the next great thing. That I could never take the next big step.
