are we there yet?
It’s July 16th today. We’ve had a mild summer so far, which is pleasant after last year’s heat wave and severe drought. The windows are open in the guest bedroom where I’m writing. There’s a magnolia tree to my right, an olive tree and a stray cat outside to my front. An unwelcome six inch grasshopper (“biblical locust” as I like to call them) hanging on the window screen.
And at the end of this month I will have lived in Italy for three whole years.
Nobody warned me about the bugs. Various breeds of spiders, scorpions, two-inch-long hornets, horse flies, mosquitos, stink bugs, house centipedes. I know I’m forgetting a few. I spend a lot of time painting a romantic picture of life here. But I’m not here to talk about that today.
What I’m here to talk about is how gorgeous it is on the other side of living somewhere long enough to be annoyed with it.
Despite what you might be thinking, living in Italy is not a walk in the park. It is not a vacation every day. It’s itchy and poor air quality, foggy days and pot holes. Living here means letting go of every American comfort and shortcut you’ve been conditioned to have, and more-so, think you desperately needed. You may think you’re above these constructs, I thought I was, but believe me you’re not. Let me lay the facts out for you. You want to move to a foreign country? Amazing, do it! But you can likely expect the following phases to follow before it truly feels like home.
1.) Dream-like excitement, every day is a marvel, a vacation, an exploration!
2.) Oh my god I’m a fraud, everyone can tell that I’m an imposter wearing the wrong shoes for this weather
3.) Depression
4.) Going anywhere feels too hard, no one understands me
5.) Fucking “Allora…”
6.) Hey, I just drove somewhere without my GPS on!
7.) Hey, the cashier told me the total and I understood her!
8.) Hey, this is starting to feel like home!
9.) Fuck, someone get these cyclists out of the road before I drive them off the cliff
10.) How is there a stink bug in my toilet?
11.) Is this a ZTL?
12.) Wow there are even vineyards next to gas stations
13.) Goddammit if I see one. more. man. pissing on the side of the autostrada…..
14.) Speaking of the autostrada… just missed my exit, now I have to drive another 100 hours before my next chance to turn around
15.) I don’t think there are supposed to be so many mosquitos INSIDE the hospital?
16.) Is there such a thing as a compost bag that DOESN’T leak?
17.) Look! A deer grazing in a field of sunflowers at sunrise
18.) I love it here, I’m never leaving, I’m HOME! (24-32 months later)
Let me be very clear, I feel overwhelmingly privileged to have spent enough time with Lady Italy that I even have room in my heart to be annoyed with her. It is not lost on me that few people have this opportunity in their life. But that does not mean that I haven’t earned the right to be angry at her ways from time to time. It’s like the man married to the supermodel, even he has days immune to her pouty-face. My love for Italy and her repulsive, ridiculous infestation of year-round-nightmare-bug-issues is unwavering. She has made me appreciate rare, exotic, American things like central air conditioning, garbage disposals, and being able to run the dishwasher and the laundry machine at the same time.
I can recall a fraction of this same feeling when I first moved to Columbus, Ohio a few years ago. (No really, I’m being serious!) I had lived briefly in other cities, but after almost thirty years of Florida I arrived in Columbus feeling like a fish out of water. I didn’t know how to dress for winter while still looking effortlessly “cool” like everyone else I worked with at the Abercrombie & Fitch HQ. I could feel my body calling for the ocean, the bleakness of being landlocked setting in. I remember my first May there, when I was still wearing the same parka I had lived in for the last seven months, wondering when my skin would see the sun again. All of these little adjustments amount to feeling like an imposter, like everyone is looking at you. To make new friends, to drive somewhere without needing directions. To feel confident enough in your basic day-to-day needs that you can begin to enjoy yourself.
Oftentimes I can’t be honest with friends and family about what it really feels like to live here at the risk of coming across “ungrateful” because what could we complain about, right? “You live in Italy!”
Maybe you dream of living in Manhattan, Paris or Big Sky. Simply living in a dream destination doesn’t solve your problems. No matter how gorgeous the sunrise is today, it’s not going to bring your loved one back to life. It’s not going to make your depression go away forever. It’s not going to fix your finances or make anything "easier” for you. Eventually you are going to have days where it’s just where you take out your trash, where you get stuck in traffic that makes you late for a doctor’s appointment. Where you get heartburn or a pimple before a big day. Where you deal with weird 15th century plumbing issues or a spider infestation on your bedroom ceiling.
Being completely honest with you, outside of the first couple weeks here, Year One living in Italy was more of a struggle than a breeze. Everything felt like work. We weren’t just drinking cappuccini and eating gelato, we were moving our entire lives here. Furniture, cars, cultures, habits, emotional baggage. Year Two was better, but we had a newborn baby, and I found myself missing idiotic things I previously hated like strip-malls. I’d fantasize about only having to get my baby out of the carseat one time and InstaCart grocery delivery to my front door. Italy isn’t set up for convenience like America is and I hadn’t been here long enough to know all the shortcuts you pick up years later. I was generally pissed about living here in a way I didn’t expect, and worse, didn’t feel like I could talk to anyone about.
We used to joke, “When will we stop referring the United States as ‘back home’?” The process of acclimating my mind and my body to Italy took longer than I thought it would. It was a frustrating pattern of one-step-forward-two-steps-back for months, years even. But somewhere in the last few seasons I wasn’t as nervous driving on these narrow roads. I became less and less homesick. I was able to look up to see the hot pink hydrangeas, to appreciate the rolling hills covered in patterns of farmland and agriculture.
I started to let Italy seep into me, influence me, and change me. Truly change me… shirking a concept I previously subscribed to: that “People don’t change.”
“They just are who they are…” on some fundamental or chemical level this rings true. But how do you explain how I have changed? On the inside I feel like I’ve changed so much that people “back home” wont recognize me when I do return. I’m terrified of how hard it will be to re-acclimate to life in the United States after living here. Somewhere between Year Two and Year Three it’s become abundantly clear to me that a person does change, if they allow themselves, when they really sit outside auto-pilot for longer than a two-week-vacation abroad. What would my life be like of I never left Florida? Would I have ever grown if I never left my comfortable first job at Champs Sports? Would I have become adaptable, strong, more patient, accepting of others. Accepting of myself.
I wouldn’t have. Every brick that’s been laid within me since leaving the “comfort zone” of my hometown, at my safe jobs, in my perfect apartment, has built a foundation of an entirely new version of myself. Because I had to! Resistance of allowing yourself to move through the motions of how another country works only leaves you spiteful, angry, and closed off. I’ve met plenty of those Americans who openly express frustration that Italy is different from the United States. You want to say, “but what did you expect?” But, I get it, there’s comfort in convenience, safety in predicability and both can be an addiction when you’re moving at a high speed like we Americans tend to do.
When my husband and I agreed that moving to Italy was the right choice for us, I thought it would simply be an adventure we’d regret not taking. But it’s turned out to be so much more. At first it’s the big differences you notice like the architecture, the sweeping landscapes, the sound of Italians chatter in their rhythmic and romantic language. Then come the little things, like noticing the hours spent enjoying a meal together on Sunday, the quiet farmer tending to the rows of his tomatoes at dusk. The way Italians stop everything in the afternoon like sunflowers turning to face the sun on a summer day.
Living in Italy for three years has changed more than my wardrobe. My entire story has veered onto a new path. It’s been a blend of days so impossibly easy followed by moments so painfully hard. The deepest, growing pains of my life have existed within her walls leaving me with no other answer but to thank her for getting me to where I am now. I can’t believe how far away I am from who I was in 2020. The rate at which I have grown is exponentially greater than if I had stood still in the same place, following the basic steps before me. Are we there yet? When I chose to take myself off auto-pilot if forced me to concentrate on every forward move I made. I lead with intention now. I know how to say “no” to things that don’t serve me. I no longer worry about what hasn’t happened yet.
I used to only feel the vibrations just under my skin, never going deeper for fear that I would realize I was going too far in the wrong direction. I lived in a very just-keep-going “don’t look down!” headspace. So much time committed to the life I was building that starting over, somewhere new, felt like an impossible task. Growth is exhausting, just ask a toddler. There were plenty of moments in the first months here that if my husband asked me to move back, I would have said “yes!” because it felt easier than facing what was happening inside.
Three years later it’s not just Italy I’ve learned to love despite her flaws. She’s taught me how to love myself, because of all the things that are broken in me. I finally love myself enough to have room for annoyance…. with myself.
Feeling like I am finally me, a souvenir I never expected to find here. I’ve opened myself up to epiphanies within the center of me that I didn’t even realize I was silencing, and they are endless.
What will this year bring? Hopefully less biblical locusts.