Living that Workaway life

Italy experience

The other day I was asked if I feel unsettled in my life, as I’m workawaying since over 4 month now. Actually I am NOT.

I feel rather settled and centered, much more though then in Berlin, where I felt lost and imprisoned. I feel like with every station of my journey I’m coming closer to my destiny and future home. That’s exciting even I don’t have a clue where and what it is yet.

If I am not happy, it`s because people are acting up crazily. The people I stayed with have large houses, land, family, children, pets, relationships. Non of them was happy so far, they were all more or less dysfunctional and unsettled. The couples did not have any intimacy, just a toxic chord due to common responsibilities.

I noticed that they envy workawayers, because they are free to go and leave the hell they have created for themselves. There is also the tendency — few can resist, to play the master-servant game, that’s needless to say, utterly done in the 21st century. Yet they still try.

I am happy to leave Italy in this beginning month of March. I know it was tough because of Saturn riding my final degrees of Aquarius like a heavy edgy rock. There was a lot of humiliation, I can tell. But that’s over soon. I am going to step into the sun very soon and a new world is starting.

Tomorrow I’m leaving this estate, that looks so beautiful and is a nature reservation— as it turned out to be my worst experience in Italy. In a series of inappropriate experiences of abuse. I was booked to this place by the woman who is really nice, but the man is a narcissist and compulsive liar. I did not see this in the first days because he was holding back first. Since she had left to go to London for work, (she tries to escape a lot) he got worse and worse with me. Making up stuff like „yesterday you did not do this and that!“ whereas he even saw I did it. When I cooked something for him and he said he liked it, next day he said he did not like it. The gaslighting and lying into my face was off the charts. I started being afraid of him, cutting myself when I cooked, I was bleeding a couple of times, and I got psychosomatic symptoms like nausea and headache. He basically told me that I suck at everything I do. It made him furious that I was still self confident and calm, so he put more and more effort into breaking me. He even tried to prevent me from getting out the estate and he cut my free days. A weaker person would have been destroyed. The experience overall: Workaway says clearly that you must have 2 days off and that you work 5 hours max. Every host up to now hated these rules and tried to suck out as much of the workawayer as possible. The place I was before I did not have a free day in 3 weeks and when I finally took one, my host got angry and tried to destroy it.

When she, his partner, came back this week, he was aggressive with her too. I asked her to have a talk, as I wanted to announce that I’m leaving. I would have ran away even.

He tried to keep her from talking to me, got even violent physically and bullied her. We still went to the next city and talked, she said she knew he was a narcissist and she wanted to separate, but she had a surgery 4 weeks ago and was on the recovery and also she was afraid of him and wanted to find the right time to do it, as he is sticking to her like glue. Not in a good way, more attached like a leech. He gets really nasty when she says she wants them to separate. The question is, why do you bring in Workawayers then and leave them alone with him? I was in a nightmare for a few days, and I should not have such experience. Clearly I should not be confronted with such things. Sadly I saw more of this since I`m in Italy since early December 2022.

She, my host, also told me that he was very nasty with the 2 other Workawayers they had before me. In the evening he bullied both of us, but we stuck together. That got him even more angry. Yesterday he had a break down and apologized to her. But that’s what narcissists do when the game seams lost.

Anyhow, I will have my emergency get out tomorrow to stay with a family who is practically saving me for 3 days. Then I will be leaving the country. Every experience I had here was pretty shitty, especially this one on this rich peoples estate.

I’m seriously done. There has been good moments. There have been lovely cats and dogs. I met a few nice people. But overall it was really difficult

and I don’t want to be in Italy any more. I will leave Italy via Venice in a few days. For now I hate Italy.

The sad part is that Workaway does literally Nothing to protect workawayers from abuse.