Home sweet, strange, foreign home

It’s odd being home. Feeling familiar and foreign at once; sometimes thinking God, I’m such a poser, I know nothing about this place anymore. And other times, almost like a split personality: I do have a right to be there, dammit –I was born here, in that hospital right there, and it doesn’t matter how long I have been away nor how many changes have been made (plenty, and yet not really, if you consider it’s been 16 years) this is still my hometown.

It’s odd being home. Especially when it no longer feels like home. Did it ever really? When I went to school here, when my entire family and all my friends were here? This gives me pause. Because I cannot remember a time when I wasn’t craving more space, more freedom; when I wasn’t dreaming of walking down strange unknown streets while walking down those I had walked a hundred times; a time when I wasn’t wishing for adventure and the chance to explore a new place while looking around me and seeing all the old places.

I remember my favorite summer vacations being those when we went somewhere new, visited a new beach, explored a new stretch of coast, walked through a cute little coastal village. I remember my last summer here, when I wasn’t really here, when I went camping in Campania – the beaches weren’t as lovely as the ones back home, but it was all new, new people, new beaches, new camping, and that was good enough for me.

I remember looking forward to finishing high school so I could leave to go to University. I remember looking up the universities with the best language programs, and settling on Pisa. I had never been there, but Pisa had a good language program, the leaning tower, and Gianni, one of the friends I had made on vacation the year before – that was more or less the extent of what was familiar to me about the city. And yet I coulnd’t wait to go. Pisa had to be better than here; my days would be filled with school work and friends there just like here, but the rest of the time I could spend walking around, seeing new things and new places, walking new streets, exploring my new hometown, as I already pictured it.
I knew one thing: once I was gone, I woulnd’t come back. I wouldn’t be one of those who had the chance to escape this tiny island, this beautiful prison, with it’s blue-green waters instead of iron bars –I woulnd’t be one to have the chance to go, to be free to leave and build a life somewhere else, only to come back here, back to the nest, to live with my parents and try in vain to find a job, only to end up overqualified, underpaid, bored out of my mind, living my whole life wondering what could have been.

When I shared that, people treated me like I was a snob. Like it was a crime, a sin, to dream a little bigger, to want to accomplish a little more. Others patronized me, laughed at me, said I would grow up, like wanting or imagining or dreaming something more than what you have is silly, immature, a child’s unrealistic view of the world.

It’s not that I have an awful family – I don’t, and I know they love me, these aunts and cousins and friends, or at least most of them do – but I still feel like a bit of a circus freak, when they look at me, when they marvel at my unusual life, as if the mere fact that my life happens in another country is just so weird!

Maybe I’m imagining it, maybe I imagine it all, every time I visit – maybe I’m just a drama queen. And just when I feel like I’m going stir crazy, when I am oh-so-ready to bid everyone farewell and get the hell out of this small town, this island I used to call home… we decide not to waste another minute of this gorgeous day and spend it where we should, where it deserves, where it begs to be spent: by the sea.

And all of a sudden I’m not in such  hurry to leave.

All of a sudden I wonder how I stayed away so long. 

Tagged as: the little Sardinian