Welcome Home - To Viterbo

Close your eyes.  Try to imagine that place you always retreat to.  Is it a beach?  On top of a mountain?  Or is it just away – far away from your desk and your computer?  For me, it is Italy.  Since the day I set foot back on American soil after my first study abroad in 2008, I was heartsick for it.  I didn’t realize how heavy the weight of missing Italy actually was until four days ago. 

Standing in front of a beautiful yellow church in Ischia Ponte during a religious ceremony, fireworks started to explode overhead.  And with those fireworks, I felt myself almost lifted up.  I wasn’t sure at first what the feeling was, but I think I’ve got it now: pure and complete joy.  Relief even.  What I experienced was a feeling of coming home after a long absence.

 In the spring of 2008, I left the U.S. for the first time for Viterbo.  Situated above Rome in the middle of Lazio, it is completely off the tourist track.  And by off the tourist track, I mean not even on the radar screen. 

For five months, I lived an entirely new life in a foreign country.  I spoke Italian every single day, ate everything Italian I could get my hands on, learned how to cook, and made incredible friends (friends I still have now).  I traveled around Europe, experienced my first long distance relationship, and grew in ways that were incomprehensible to me at the time.  I began examining life in a different way – replacing all of the “how is that even possible” with new words…”why not?” What happened in Italy has since spurred an insatiable thirst for exploration, and I have devoted the last six years of my life figuring out how to do as much of it as possible.  So far, I’ve been pretty successful.

 But now I’m at one of those crossroads.  School is over, and there are jobs on the horizon.  But I keep coming back to the same question: can I give this up? 

I was walking through a cemetery in Ischia on my birthday (morose, so what), and I stopped to think for a while.  Rich, poor, white, black, happy, unhappy – we all end up in the ground.  That’s it.  How you spend your years doesn’t change the end result.  We are all going to die.  So why not roam and run while we can?  The obvious answer – money – is the one that comes to my mind immediately.  It makes me wonder.  What if money were no object?  How would my life and the life of my loved ones be different?  What would we do? 

For the next month, I’ll be in Viterbo doing some thinking about the future and living out my daydream for the last 5 years.  While a month is hardly enough, my heart is happier now than it has ever been.  Have any of you ever been somewhere that you became attached to in such a strong way?