by Brielle Diskin
This is the first article in a four-part series entitled “Postcards From the Edge,” as part of our April/May Online Issue.
A tiny apartment in a land far, far away, where the pasta is endless and the wine is cheap and delicious, is where I get to call home for four months. Unlike the protagonist in Carrie Fisher’s 1987 semi-autobiographical novel, after which this column is named, I am not a recovering drug addict trying to piece my life back together. Instead, I’m actually trying to shake my life back up. With this as my mission, I have dedicated my time to collecting postcards and stories from my own version of the edge, hoping to frame this point in my life as more than just a memory.
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As I sit here in an Italian cafe staring at my espresso and pistachio creme-filled croissant, it seems strange to think that after four months of anticipation, I am finally here in Florence.
Of the one percent of the country’s population who is in college right now, only 28 percent decide to study abroad. An experience of a lifetime, as many say, one would think that, given the opportunity, taking the leap to live internationally would be a no brainer. Going about the decision, I soon found it to be quite the opposite.
From visa applications, to scholarship applications, booking the flight, health examinations—and don’t even get me started on packing—it’s a personal journey that might not be for everyone. I’ve discovered it to be a quest where you must both emotionally and physically pack lightly, meaning some baggage gets left behind.
Arrivato, as they say in Italian, means “I’ve arrived.” I was sort of hoping for my Julia Roberts moment in Eat Pray Love, where her plane touches down one second, and the next she’s overlooking all of Rome with Florence and the Machine’s “The Dog” playing in the background.
Instead, mine went more like a sequel to Lost in Translation where I, quite literally, got lost in the Rome airport trying to figure out how to get on a train to my new city. Try lugging a 70 lbs suitcase through a foreign city in a fur coat when it is 55 degrees and sunny out.
My Julia Roberts moment got swept into the ether by all that actually goes into a journey’s first stages. The first and worst would have to be baggage claim. Next, would have to be the the passport check, where everyone looks nervous—myself included—even though, unless their documents are fake, they probably don’t have anything to worry about. At the baggage claim, however, you have the loss of the entirety of your belongings to fear.
As grueling as the initial traveling is, I was somewhat hesitant to actually leave the airport and train car and get on with it. The perpetual movement of travel acts as a nice little safe haven before you’re really thrown into the unknown—learning to live, and be still, somewhere new. I was at the intersection of excited and terrified, but I never felt more alive. It was scary to think about conquering a new culture and a language that I had spoken in, but never before lived in.
The thing about the Italians is that they’re in love with their language—they call it musical, and that it is. After three years of highschool Italian and about four weeks of diligent practicing on Duolingo, I couldn’t utter or understand anything. There was a certain sense of fear and shame being an American in Italy, unable to communicate or comprehend. I became mute.
I attributed my loss of language to a couple of things. First and foremost was the intimidating barrier of dialects and the incompatibility the English language has with all romance languages.
Next, it was something I’ve been calling my “Americanism.” In Italy, from which we’ve also adapted their entire cuisine as our own, Americanism manifests itself as a sort of guilt. It also is the feeling of inadequacy in comparison to cultures that span thousands of years back. I asked myself, “what would my people offer to this rich land?”—aside from messing up our coffee (more like candy) orders and posting a ridiculous amount of Instagrams.
All of the symptoms of Americanism, and a nasty case of jet lag were coursing through my bones when I touched down in Italia. The fiction writer Walter Gibson once described jet lag as the lapse in your soul catching up to your body. Step one, then, in any soul seeking journey is allowing your spirit to adapt and change in new environments.
So, here I am in the beautiful heart of Tuscany, ready to marvel at a world that’s bigger than myself; ready to eat all the pizza and pasta I can; to drink wine in leisure and luxury; to experience the birthplace of renaissance art; and to travel all around Europe on the adventure of a lifetime. Arrivato, and now I’m just waiting for my soul to arrive, too.