Why am I here?
At face value, the answer to that question seems easy. I am here to broaden my horizons and to experience things I had never dreamed of experiencing back home. I am here to see the sights, to smell the smells, to tastes the tastes. I came to Italy because I wanted a break from the mundane. I wanted to learn by experience. I wanted to experience what it was like just to be--just to exist somewhere that was unfamiliar. If you’re wondering why I haven’t posted pictures, I’ll tell you honestly: I don’t know how to take a pretty picture. Even if I did, I would never be able to capture things the way they are or, perhaps more importantly, the way they ought to be seen. So many people have told me that they are living this trip through me, that they are eager to see pictures and to hear stories, but I can’t. Maybe it’s that I’m selfish. Maybe it’s that I’m pretentious. I know I’m afforded a huge privilege; so many never get to travel in their lifetime. I am eternally grateful for the opportunity. I feel guilty every time I feel a pang of homesickness. I am living in the moment, wistfully, blissfully so. Perhaps that’s why I can’t share all of this with you. I’m sorry I bring you back week by week to suffer through my introspection when you were expecting details about the pizza and the Piazza, but what is travel without a little indignant self reflection? It's about the Italians, but in the same breath, it isn't. It’s not even really about Italy, sometimes. Italy never needed me, but I desperately needed Italy. Which begs the question: how can I be comfortable with taking when I have nothing in turn to give? Italy has given me plenty. Confidence, independence, a new perspective. I never asked for these things, but I half expected them. They have fallen into my lap, precious gifts that I’m not quite sure what exactly I’m meant to do with yet. More importantly, I don’t know what I’m meant to leave in return. Are my footprints enough? Is it sufficient just to say “I was here,” or is there some sort of work I’m meant to do? Perhaps I was selfish to expect to come here and expect that this was about me—but it is, isn’t it? This is about me. Never has it been more about me. I don’t feel as though I should apologize for that. You’ve likely read my story by now. You know that I was so desperately unhappy for the first half of my college career that it was stifling. Even as I made the transition to a better path, I clung to the familiar, even if it wasn’t necessarily what was best for me. Back home, I spent too much time giving bits and pieces of myself away to people who didn’t always necessarily deserve it. Here, I am removed from that. At first, I may not have recognized that; I held onto my guilt for leaving and tighter still onto my guilt for wanting to go back. I had not braced myself for the unexpected pang of loss, but when loss found me, I found that I did not shatter. Italy gave that to me. The least I can do is be grateful. It’s difficult to be bitter, when your heart gets broken in a foreign country. You get up and you go on with your day. I am doing, where before I would have been… I don’t know where I might have been, if not for Italy. Someday, Italy, I will find a way to pay you back that isn’t in footsteps or kind words. Forgive me, Italy, for not knowing how I am meant to pay proper homage to you. I’m sorry, Italy, I don’t know how to do you justice with words. Thank you, Italy, for the person I am slowly becoming, tucked in your hills, living from your land, amongst your people. Someday, Italy… I will know what I am meant to do, and it will be because of you, and I will owe you everything.
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To many the discovery of independence is the first death knell of childhood. I found my independence amongst the ringing of bells here in Siena; every hour on the hour, every half hour, they sing their song far and wide across the city. They are the tune to which I have found myself again, suddenly anew and suddenly alight. There is a bitter reality in flying the coup for the first time. To the chime of bells, I have at last been made to explore the world entirely on my own.
Where there is innocence to be found in childhood, it is intrinsically intertwined with dependence. As a child, you cannot explore without someone to set boundaries. There are questions to be asked, expectations to be met, dangers to be avoided. As a child, it is simply that one does not know any better. Independence is fleeting. We learn to buckle our belts, to tie our shoes, but there is almost always someone there to make sure we’ve done it correctly. As we venture slowly but surely into independence, we lose that double-checking safety net. I will be the first to admit that I have lived nearly the entirety my life in a rather plush and cozy comfort zone. I didn’t necessarily like to be pushed out of routine, however mundane I found it to be. The slightest upset was a major adjustment, and I did everything in my power to avoid it. I rebelled against excitement only because I found it to be not only wholly overwhelming, but wholly terrifying. I was essentially still a child. I had grown dependent on the familiar. Far too dependent. Traveling wrenched this dependence from my hands, despite the fact that I was still innocent to the ways of the world. In Siena, I am at once the most independent I have ever been and the most childlike I will ever be. The world is new again. It’s no small decision, leaving everything you know behind. I wasn’t even comfortable with everything I was absolutely certain of back home. There are times here where it is almost unbearable. I have no safety net. Only the ever present toll of the bells welcomes me here. I hear their song in the little magical things, too. The first view of the Piazza del Campo. The chill of the magnificent marble duomo. Mary’s cool stare as she holds an infant Jesus at her breast. I know there is magic in these things that I never knew at home… but I have found that there is magic in the fear that comes along with finally cooking for yourself, in navigating foreign cities, in simply not knowing whether or not you are capable. There are days, though they grow less frequent now, that I feel I am entirely unable to do this by myself. I’m not wrong, either. My independence was fast forged, but there is a pang—a bittersweet pang—that reaches my heart when I hear the echo of my father’s voice telling me how proud he is. I hear it. It echoes like the bells, and while it does not chime on the hour anymore, it rings just when I need it… and I am comfortable with being a child again, if only for a moment. "But what am I to do? I must have some drug, and reading isn't a strong enough drug now." - C.S. Lewis When I was little, there was nothing I loved more than to read. I fondly remember the time I spent tucked under my loft bed, enjoying fantastical series the likes of The Magic Treehouse and Harry Potter. In a sense, I grew up on magic; from a young age, I learned to explore worlds far more vast than I had ever imagined. I cannot tell you what books like that meant to me then. I still cannot say what they mean to me now. They will have a place in my heart. Always. Just as words grew on me, they grew with me. I am a self taught writer. My eloquence is borne of years of self-inflicted suffering on public forums. I still cringe to think what I’ve left out there on the world wide web, but I’d like to think it’s all buried at the bottom of long dead forums on long forgotten websites. Every once in awhile I’ll take the time to begrudgingly glance at a month old piece and a tiny piece of me will die every time I find even the most minute of errors. I can promise you now that as you are reading this, I am too. I am picking over the details with the fine-toothed comb of self-doubt. I have likely edited this post at least three times and I still feel that it isn’t good enough. That’s just the thing: writing is the one thing I’ve any natural talent for. I can pride myself on it, but my sense of humor is a pieced together mash of all the jokes I’ve laughed at over the years. My sense of style is a scrapbook page ripped out of the books everyone carries around me. My affinity for goats is likely the product of some meme or another. I’ve hodgepodged everything I’ve ever been and while my writing is no exception, it’s certainly the one thing I’ve ever felt that I’ve been able to successfully make my own in spite of my outside influences. Is studying abroad likely to have an impact on the way I write? Perhaps. Has it shaped how I feel about my writing? Most definitely. There are a lot of things about leaving home that you never consider in the midst of the excitement of planning to leave home. You don’t think about how you’ll feel in a country where your mother tongue is not universally spoken. Instead, you’ll think about what boots will go best with the majority of the sweaters you’re packing. You don’t even begin to consider how absolutely and totally incompetent you’ll feel at even the most basic of social tasks. You’ll wonder if your hair dryer is going to work and how you’ll style your hair if it doesn’t. That vulnerability—that complete and utter sense of idiocy that overwhelms you when you can’t even answer a waiter—forces you appreciate what you are good at. I’ve always been proud of my writing. I might be quietly proud, but I am. There are some who say that artists with a natural talent for their craft have the touch of God; I am not qualified to say whether or not they do, but me? I was not touched. I did this. I sculpted this talent for words. When I am overrun by the unfamiliar, I run to this. When I am stressed, I run to this. When I am sad, when I am desperate, when I am lonely, I run to this. I run to this ever-changing constant. Whether or not studying abroad has changed the way I write at the end of this experience has suddenly become a moot point. That’s no longer the sort of growth I’m after. This newfound confidence, however? Siena and I could definitely stand to keep working on that. Perhaps it’s a bit young in my trip to write a memoir, but even now I have a feeling that at the end of this journey, I will look back and one thing will stick out: a runway.
Dawn had just barely begun to peak over the horizon as we prepared for landing. My flight between Atlanta and Amsterdam had been fairly uneventful. The turbulence was soothing, a welcome distraction from my aching heart. The first leg of my journey was spent fighting back tears, but even then I wouldn’t have been tell you what exactly I was feeling. My emotions had become a mushy conglomeration of elation and fear. My heart hadn’t stopped pounding in my chest since Hartsfield-Jackson. Having only slept three hours over the course of the flight, I was caught somewhere between the pull of exhaustion and the draw of sheer adrenaline. For nearly an hour, I’d been glued to the inflight entertainment system, watching on the map as the distance between the plane and the Netherlands grew ever shorter. The ping of a seatbelt light being switched on jolted me from sleeplessness; I was no longer concerned about the pounding in my head. For the seasoned traveller, a landing is a non-event. As a pilot’s daughter, I’ve never had any doubts as to my safety on an airplane. I owed my curiosity to my inexperience, and as such, I slid the cover of my window open as we began our descent over the wide expanse of runway. While I’m sure it would have been no less magical a landing by daylight, at night the tarmac is lined with glowing lights—red and green, if memory serves, and their meaning is lost on me—and it twinkled like stars on the flip side. When this journey began, I could have never imagined how I would feel the second the wheels touched ground in Amsterdam. It was not my final destination, but as someone who has never been to Europe, there was an inherent excitement in that sudden jolt. Instantly, my eyes welled, and my heart felt so very full. While the past few months had felt like nothing more than a slow climb, it suddenly felt as though I had been pitched over the top of a hill on a roller coaster. When we finally landed, it was not relief that washed over me but contentment. My dreams had come true, and yet, I still felt as though I was in their midst. I have always been one to find magic in little things, but I am certain there was magic there that morning. As I watched the sun rise from across the world—dawn breaking over the swirl of airport activity on a busy runway—I realized that if I had asked myself even six months ago if I would have simply imagined myself there, I might have said yes. Six months ago, I never would have imagined that it I could be capable of making it a reality. But here I am, writing a blog in Italy, crying about a landing… |
AuthorA junior college student with a dream somehow managed to convince her parents to let her study abroad despite the fact that she's grown and sometimes she can't get the lid off of a jar. ArchivesCategories |