Buonanotte,
Italia! Sei una storia di amore. Una storia che si scrive piu tendera con ogni
giorno che trascorre.
Damn! I’ve
fallen hard for Italy. I’ve been trying to put my feelings to words for the
last weeks, but just when I think it can get any better, it does. I sit down
just to find my words painted with emotion and my mind deluded by wonder. I am
slowly descending from that cloud as I get back to work and reality, so it is either
now or never to blog about it; chances are the next high is just around the
corner.
I’d lie if
I said I haven’t spent some time in an exercise of self-congratulation. I’m
really happy I jumped into the unknown once more. It sounds cliché, but my life
was not short of people that told me I was being stupid for leaving stability
and for the first two months here I believed I had made the wrong choice. Fortunately
I had a shift of attitude and one event after another, like domino pieces
falling, has brought an amount of goodness into my life I cannot understand. I
attribute that to making the right choices and surrounding myself with the
right people in this marvelous setting. I’ve have grown, and the universe felt
like rewarding me for doing so.
At the
beginning of this experience, I sabotaged myself a lot. I fixed myself in not
allowing the people over here to be as awesome as my friends back in Costa
Rica, and I was skeptical this time could be better than those 6 months I lived
in London in 2011. In just 4 months, I’m certainly positive this experience
will be better. London was a teenage dream; Cagliari and all of Italy are a
grown up, constructive love. I already told my friends here, in a manner of
confession, that I didn’t think they were going to be special at the beginning.
I arrived with the resolution of keeping
my circle small. Now I kind to want to shame myself for bearing that stupid
thought. When I get to the office and my girls give me hugs, when they grab me
to dance in the club, I know I’m being loved. I also have dudes here, the way I
like the dudes around me to be: rough, slightly vulgar, honest. This is what a
year abroad should be about: memories and friends. Career development can wait
a little longer.
I pictured
my stay here so differently. I saw myself being a start player for the NGO,
super fluent in the first two months, incredibly fit and balanced. Instead, I
am contributing with bits of work because I am not that exceptional after all,
learning Italian at half of my normal learning capacity because I’m too lazy to
study as often as I should, and my body hasn’t really changed much. I dreamed
of a writing break, instead I got travels to write about. I longed for stability;
instead I’ve got uncertainty and constant change: even now I’m not sure where I
will live the next six months. I thought I was tougher because I had lived
abroad already but still got a horrible month in which I even looked for tickets
to go back to Costa Rica because I felt on the breaking point. It’s all in the
past now. I’ve accepted my powerlessness, and I live more at ease with myself
now that just go with the flow. But oh, is the flow good!
Fortunately,
the last month has been a story of love. Italy is simply amazing. Every city I’ve
been in tells me a myriad of stories and allows me to feast my eyes as much as
I want. The food is a dream. The language hasn’t stopped surprising me. I keep
on stumbling on people talented in arts, photography, words, languages: people
like me that haven’t really succeed much financially but are connected to the
most quintessential energy wire of this life. I’ve kept myself away from choices which could
potentially ruin everything, and that’s why this time is so different. I am learning
to build instead of creating chaos.
Goodness
gracious, the amount of times I will sigh in the future thinking of this times.
As for my roots, I still have them back in Costa Rica, but since I know I’ll be
back and I’ll be back for good, I feel entitled to just disconnect from all the
problems there and enjoy this moment that taste like artichoke in olive oil,
that smell like freshly baked pastry and freshly served cappuccino, and that
are filled with the color of the Mediterranean, that sea that is the mirror of
my soul and blue like my dream of calm infinity. I’ll be back to seeing the
time pass from a hammock on the beach, and the nights fade in the lights of la
California. All the same, this dream will last for six more months, and I don’t
want it to last a day less.
Buonanotte,
Italia. Grazie per l’accoglienzia. Grazie per essere così bella che mi hai
lasciato vivire un sogno meraviglioso che non potrò dimenticare mai piu.
