Lost in Translation

At 7 am I am not sleeping - and not because I just woke up, but because I couldn't fall asleep. I spent the entire night going in circles and being depressed. The efforts of the last months proved to be completely useless. I tried so hard to run away from my previous life and rethink everything while being on my own... and I so miserably failed. Not in the execution of my master plan, but in its core - this is NOT what I wanted.

Sometimes you spot a problem and make it the central point of your life. Finding a solution occupies your time fully and you toss and turn till you find one.... and then you become obsessed with putting it into practice. You think and rethink it and fail to see major flaws - so you start making it real. And once it's up and working, you look at it, and you realize - WHAT A FAILURE!

The wave of disappointment is mixed with shades of anger, of rage, of doubt. Facing the nothingness most of the people offer, you suddenly realize the meaningfulness of what you just gave up. You know that in your life some people are there to stay, while most of them are just poor players on a stage of shadows, coming and going - but when you realize what people are important indeed and that you so hastily tried to take them out of your life, you start understanding what makes the distinction. Some people stay and try and make efforts to stick together even when times are harsh - and you end up blaming them for the harsh times you are going through, both of you, but fail to see they still love you (love being that thing that's left when lust has gone).

I've been through very hard times with my boyfriend. We hated each other, forgetting that we used to love each other. And out of that hate, I wanted, like a caged animal, to run away. But now, when I am away, I miss him badly and I can only admire his resilience. He is a bulldozer and that killed me for a long while, but the same style made him endure the harsh times and still love me. I do not know how to define love, because it can take many shapes - but very few shapes are real and lasting. I do not know if an enduring love belongs more to its kind than a fling - however, I do know that I miss him a lot and that I don't want too much to continue this experience of being separated. Things were not perfect and they won't be - but, like in any Hollywood movie, the good guy wins the girl in the end. And he is the good guy here, I just realized it... it's all about the point of reference. Maybe that saying is right - that the key to a successful relations is to have low expectations. When you benchmark a person against your expectations, everything looks gloomy.... but when you change it, and compare what that person offers to how life is without... I dunno, blame Stockholm Syndrome if you want, but all I wish for now is to go back home. And my home is a person, not a place. I miss you, my dear.

The Sound of Silence

It's been a long month since I haven't even thought of my blog. I somehow felt I used all the words in the world and have nothing more to say. I wanted to leave Germany peacefully and silently, like I lived there. And every day bringing me closer to the end of my staying there made me realize that I don't want to go back to my home country. I knew the German stage has ended and it's about the time to start looking for a new place, but no way I felt like going back to where I grew up.

There were times in my emigrant experience when I missed speaking my native tongue or meeting my old friends from back home. I felt many times alone and isolated and that's when the idea of going back home sounded a bit appealing to me. I kept thinking I could call people and talk for as long as I wanted, not being limited by the minutes spent on international phone conversations... or I could (even better) go out with them, just to hang out and have a drink or watch a movie or chat... in this line of thinking, the country I left because I felt as being too much limiting my choices became the country in which I was free to be a social creature. And I was missing this more than many other things in those times, so the decision to go back home came naturally, in a way.

I bought a car, rented a place back home and headed for my trip of independence. With my personal life going through some unclear times, I considered it wise to be back home and think things over in a more clear manner. Change is never a bad thing. Driving two thousand km's with three dogs in the car sounded like a bit of adventure, and I never refused things of this sort. When my car engine exploded on the Autobahn, the adventure started to look a bit unpleasant but ... it's all well when it ends up well. So we kept moving, after a short interval spent in a small Bavarian village, where I had the opportunity to contemplate living in the country and to turn off any fantasy of this kind for good.

At Szeged, civilization ended. The four lanes highway going around the cities, like on a normal trans-European road, became a two lanes country road, where you had to cross small towns and cities, driving behind a long line of trucks. It all became worse after crossing the Romanian border, so any sort of home sickness that must have brought me back here, started to vanish. To make a long story short... I am home. Sweet home, Alabama.

Oddly enough, I feel more dislocated than ever. Times which were promising to be fun and alive and entertaining are actually boring and lonely. I look around and I fail to understand people anymore. I spend long hours to solve simple problems and this makes my heart shiver, reminding me of my Italian times. I feel insulated on a grey deserted island, where I understand the language but nothing else from the surrounding world. I do not hate, I just feel paralyzed - I wake up and I do not know what to do and where to go. I have no desire to call or to meet people and I have no places I know of where I can take a peaceful walk. I stay for hours in front of the TV screen, watching the pixels hit my eye and not getting one layer deeper and I feel deadly bored.

I must be feeling like a prisoner after release, but I was released in a place where I do not want to stay. In the world where I had no limit, I felt trapped by the vasteness of my horizons - anywhere equals nowehere. Strangely, I feel the same nowhere here; the surrounding universe is neither hostile nor friendly, just looks and feels more deserted than the place where I knew nobody else. There, loneliness seemed natural - here, being alone is weird, since I am alone by choice, at least apparently. However, this is how I feel - I do not refuse the contacts, I just don't feel that I want them.

As you get older, it is probably harder and harder to get to know and to accept new people. I look at new faces and at old places and I feel ... silent. Even writing this post made me feel somehow clumsy. I do not know what to say, words have left me and I'm caught in a limbo of silence. No hostility in me, no revolt - just a paralysis of senses and of mind, in which days flow one after another and I live in an expanding, pointless, today.