And then the newness and sparkle of it all wore away, and I realized I was simply a foreigner planted in an Italian college town, with absolutely no idea where I would be living for the next 6 months of my life and what seemed to be a just below mediocre grasp on the local language. Strolling beneath the beautiful and ancient porticoes unique to the confines of your walls I found myself exhilarated and terrified at the same time. I would walk casually by bars and restaurants at least 4 or 5 times before finally mustering the courage to simply open the door – a task that was at the same time a daunting and assured give away that I didn’t belong there.
I battled through the first two weeks of extreme Italian immersion, confusion, anxiety about being homeless and flu season, realizing that for the first time in my entire life, I had no idea what I had gotten myself into when I decided that you were the one. I guess you could say that those two weeks brought a concise end to the honeymoon I thought I would be promised the moment my plane landed on Italian soil.
Even in my darkest times, it was you and only you who brought me the saving grace that I found in the many relationships I was able to cultivate while I was away – even after I had left everyone and everything even remotely familiar some thousands of miles across the Atlantic. Friendships that unfortunately did not have the privilege of joining me on my flight home to America – something that has left me feeling empty and unfamiliar around people and places that have and always will be integral parts of my life.
You left me feeling helplessly discouraged with my ability to communicate and interact with you. I hated that you made me completely relocate and live without running water for almost an entire month. You made me so frustrated that I would break down and cry for no reason, and sometimes I blamed myself because I knew that I had made the decision to temporarily abandon all of my worldly comforts just so that I could be with you. You forced me out of my comfort zone and I often found myself staring in the mirror barely able to recognize my own reflection.
Sometimes all I wanted to do was leave you, and on many occasions I did. I left you for Spain, Morocco, Croatia, Belgium, Holland, and even Austria. They were all great lovers, but to be perfectly honest, none of them even began to compare to you. After all, you were the one I always came home to.
Only later would I finally discover that it was everything that I once hated about you then that has made me fall so blindly in love with you now. So what if all of my friends thought your name was pronounced like an American deli meat and that you paled in comparison to the more glamorous-seeming cities like Florence or Rome. From the homeless punk-hippies who made my street corner a common hang out place to the graffiti adorned carelessly on your old and faded walls, nothing of the sort could ever convince me now that you are not the one.
I miss everything about you. I miss dining with you for hours beneath the porticoes, drowning in liters of wine, incessant conversation and how simple a thing as happiness is to come by. I miss the friends you introduced me to who became such major parts of my heart, and yet are no longer parts of life. I miss your voice and everything that I once resented about the unfamiliarity of your language. I miss your aversion to dishwashers and dryers, even though that meant I had to wash everything by hand. I miss just being with you. All those lazy days we spent together lying in the grass in Giardini Margherita picnicking, playing soccer and listening to the locals playing Pugliese folk music. I miss the way you helped me discover so many different things about myself and the person that I could be. I miss your spontaneity and care-free attitude. How you made me feel like nothing could ever again be wrong in the world.
And the hardest part about all of this is that we had finally figured each other out the moment I realized how little time we had left to be together.
Some don’t believe our souls are meant to find a mate.
That no matter what, we will be left utterly alone at the end of the day.
You have you and I have me.
Until you wake up and discover that all this time, every part of yourself you considered your own unique piece, your personal treasure – well, it doesn’t actually belong to you.
Because after all, who are we but reflections of all the beautiful things we see in the world; smeared and speckled slightly by dirt and grime we either attempt to clean or condemn.
And yet neither beauty nor ugliness would exist in complete isolation.
Myself and my soul are me because of you.
Every tiny little ray of goodness that exudes from you has become a part of me.
For the beauty of the world lies not in the hands of I; but rather can be found in the crux of every different strand of companionship.
The chapters you have written in my life are extraordinary and unrivalled.
And though the eroding forces of time may one day leave those pages yellowed and torn, the stories they tell have been permanently imprinted in the most precious depths of my memory.
Maybe I don’t believe in a higher power than that of ourselves, but somewhere within me resides the belief that sometimes true love has a way of finding its way back into our lives.
Back to the people and places where the most pure forms of bliss and happiness dug their deepest roots.
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