If there was one thing I was always sure about, it was that I wanted to leave Italy as soon as I turned 18.
My dream was to move to England and attend university there. It was something I had wanted for so long that I never really dwelled on the question of why. I liked the idea of leaving everything behind and having a new life, speaking a new language and putting the old Eva in a drawer. And so I did, at 19 years old, as soon as I finished high school I left for Germany (I was studying German at that time and wanted to learn the language better). Yet things did not turn out exactly as I had imagined. I did not find the perfect city with the perfect friends and the great love I expected. I never missed home, yet I couldn’t really feel at home anywhere else either. For years to come it was a whole sequence of departures and returns. Years of new languages, new cities, new people, friendships, loves, some of which were important, but never lasted too long, as if I felt I couldn’t really rely on anyone.
I went back to Milan at 20 and left at 21 for Scotland, at 22 I went back to Milan again, and at 23 I left for Barcelona, and this year, at 28, I’m back in Italy again, but in Florence, where I know some people and found a job.
As I said, I never felt homesick for my home (my real home of origin), but I was feeling nostalgic about really feeling at home somewhere. For years I blamed myself for not being able to leave everything behind and start a new life, but with time I realized that it’s very difficult to be able to build your own little garden somewhere when this feeling of a nest has never been experienced. It’s very difficult to jump up when we don’t have a solid base under our feet from which to do it. The family of origin somehow marks us forever. I cannot say that I had a bad family, absolutely. But if I have to tell the truth, I was never happy with them, nor did I ever feel at home. My parents are good people, and all my life I have felt guilty for wanting to get away from them (without ever really succeeding as I wanted to), but maybe for relationships (all relationships) to work it’s not enough to be good and to love each other. You also have to find ways to be good together. Sometimes some people just aren’t compatible and want different things. When this happens in a couple it’s much easier to come to a breakup; when it happens with one’s family, however, everything becomes more complicated. In my experience with my family, affection is inextricably linked with confusion, conflict and loneliness. Perhaps my perspective is exaggerated, but in the end it’s the only one I have that really matters to me, and so I have to give it space and voice, without guilt.
In all this, what does this continuous journey to and from Italy represent? It’s an attempt to create the life that I would like, but to come down to terms with what has been, which in the end is part of me and cannot be erased, although it certainly can be downsized.
Why then did I eventually return to Italy? Well first of all, I didn’t sign anywhere that it has to be a final choice, but I felt this need not because I missed pasta and pizza or speaking Italian. I’ve been away for so long that I don’t feel that I belong to this country all that much. The answer, simply, is that here, now, alone, everything seems easier for me. Being an Italian citizen here I already have all the necessary documents and bureaucratic paperwork, I know how to move better through “adult things,” and after all I have several important people here whom I have known forever. Perhaps for the first time in my life, I feel that I’m really trying with commitment and confidence to build my nest and my little garden. My home. Putting together all the pieces I have collected over the years. Maybe it will be a forever home, maybe just a solid base from which to start again. I don’t know yet. Starting this blog project is precisely part of this construction.
But, having had this lifelong dream of living abroad, part of me is having a hard time not seeing this return as a failure, as a setback, a compromise with the idealized dreams I had. Surely life is a pact between dreams and reality, the important thing is to find a balance. Maybe I’m not always sure I did the right thing and at times I get assailed by doubts, but in the end I think I did what I needed to do now and chose the easiest way to do it. And this is undoubtedly a new thing for me, since I have often complicated my life unnecessarily.
Then, if one day, when I have created my own stability, my own comfort zone, I decide to leave again, I hope that this will be with an inner security and integrity that I never had in the past. I hope that once I learn how to build a house, I will know how to build it anywhere.
