I have been in this country now for over a year. Sometime it feels like it was only yesterday that I arrived, and other times like I have never lived anywhere but here. I feel like in a way, I have died since coming here, and I have been reborn again as someone new. I am not sure who that new person is. But I am starting to understand that this country has changed me, altered me, found its way between my bones in a way that is, most likely, inextricable. Italy has marked me, taken me as its own, and it will not let me go. I am not sure what my future here will be; how long I will stay within these borders - sometimes I am in love with my surroundings, and other times I want nothing more than to leave, escape, to run and fly and flee from this place and never look back.
I love Italians and I hate them; I love who I am here and I hate her. I feel a constant estrangement from myself, a knowledge of dislodging of the mind and soul from its original center, a feeling always of slight misalignment, sometimes much more than slight. I am aware here of my otherness, of my foreignness, of my largeness, much more than I ever was at home. It is not easy to blend in here, and the assumption is immediately that I am other, that I am not one of these people. I do not know yet if I like this or not. I believe that I spent a good part of this last year trying desperately to change myself, morph myself, reconfigure my face and body as well as my voice so that I would appear less conspicuous, less large, less different, less me. I know also that I have spent the best part of the last few months trying to reverse this damage. I am not yet sure how the scores have settled.
I am lonelier than I have ever been and yet I long constantly for time alone with myself. Solitude is a luxury here, as is quiet and peace. I am perceived as an extroverted socialite and suffer as a depleted introvert, constantly wishing to be alone and feeling an inconsolable loneliness when I find myself surrounded by a mass of indistinguishable others. I have felt more anger, more intense frustration with and loathing of the world - and others - more than I ever have before. My therapist would tell me that this is because my boundaries are constantly being crossed, by others and by myself. I feel anger and frustration almost daily, and rarely have I felt at peace. I am aware both of the privilege and the extraordinary nature of this endeavor and the circumstances in which I find myself and the utter lack of health and happiness that I find within myself. I am not settled here, not at home, not myself. I am not sure what I am doing here or what this experience is meant to teach me. I know that I have learned a great deal of things since coming here, about the world and about myself; but I know also that I have suffered greatly, physically and mentally, because of it. I worry sometimes about taking years off of my life for the stress that I am under, and the stress that I place upon myself. The vision that I have for my life has changed; no longer do I see a lengthy list of nominal accomplishments that I wish to check off but rather a short and concise listing of things which I have come to understand as absolutely nonnegotiable for myself and for my life.
I have found lately that all I truly want, all I truly long for in my life, is happiness and health. I want to find that peace again, the peace that you feel only within yourself, when the rest of the world is silent and still. I want to live on my own, or with one person that I love, preferably somewhere close to nature. I want to be in complete control of my life, my schedule, my days, my routine, and how I spent my time. I do not wish to alter my schedule for the whims of capitalistic demands, nor will I subject myself to being outside of my own world for hours on end every day that I live. I need solitude, great mounds of it, and I will not keep striking bargains with a world which does not seem to want me the way that I am. I wish to live only in the true world, not the false one, and spend the precious time I have been given interacting and sharing thoughts and moments with only those whose spirit does not aggravate mine. I am done with feeling anger and frustration at others for the simple fault of not understanding my essence. Perhaps no one will understand that but I. Yet I simply do not have the energy to continue trying to explain that essence to others, or to continue altering or hiding parts of myself to make them more comfortable. I am who and how I am, and I will not apologize for that. I want to live in my world, and mine alone. I wish to be happy, and healthy, and completely in tune with myself, body, soul, mind, heart, spirit. I want to love and be loved, without falsity or empty promises. I want to live fully and wholly, fiercely and unapologetically, expansively and truly. I want to be in nature, spend my days in fresh air and sunshine, smell the damp grass and the smell of alpine herbs after a rain. I want to do my work and feel that I have done my best to live up to the calling that I feel inside of me, in the moments before sleeping and the shadowy seconds right before I wake. I want to fill myself completely so that I can overflow, and use that extra to help fill others. But never again do I want to take from an empty cup to give to them. I am done doing that. I am tired, and I am old. I have always been. Now I simply now more clearly what it is that I want, and do not want, from the rest of this one, short, precious life I have.