Reflection 18: roots before branches

"if the heart is always searching, can you ever find a home?" - Jonas Brothers

Three years ago, I sat my boyfriend down in a crowded square in our hometown, I held his face in my hands and, between tears, I told him I wanted to move back to Italy.
After 7 years in Scotland, I felt like a fish out of water wherever I was.
Edinburgh had been the place where I had let myself grow up, where I started facing some of my scariest demons and managed to come out the other side, mostly unscathed. But, still, the language sounded foreign in my mouth and I was scared of having children who would never really connect with me, because they would have been Scottish, not Italian.
At 25, I was beginning to seriously think about the possibility of a family; up until then, it had never seemed real, something that I expected to happen to a future self that wasn’t really me. But as I was crossing the line to my “late 20s”, which was a goalpost I never knew I was intimidated by, I realised that that future self had to live with the decisions that I was making.

I believed, then, that the solution would have been returning to Naples, close to my aging grandparents, my high school friends, my sister and my parents, who’d all learnt how to shape their lives around my absence and who I worried would not recognise the person I was becoming.

For nine months, I searched every corner of the web for a decent job that would allow me a safe return, but there was nothing at all that could possibly sustain the adult that I was. The wages were too low, the contracts were short and uncertain, the roles felt small and stifling. Eventually, I had to be okay with the idea of simply getting back on the Boot, and I landed a corporate position in one of the richest regions of Italy, Veneto.

We only had ten days to pack everything up and uproot our lives. The night before our plane back, I cried so hard I was afraid of damaging my throat. I was betraying the city that had given me so much and the friends who I loved more than I ever thought possible. But I was confident I was making the right choice, because I had slowly lost parts of myself to a city that was often gray and wet, and I was excited to feel the sunshine on my skin and be able to drink a glass of white wine with a cigarette in hand.

Our adventure began on a mid-September day, accompanied by my parents, who had devoted themselves to helping us find a flat and drive us around, seeing as neither of us really drove and we soon discovered that we were no longer in a walkable corner of the world. I convinced myself that the tears that were flowing the first week there were only normal, a classic symptom of settling in a new place. Each day, for the following months, I questioned my decision, and I began documenting my journey on here, with weekly reflections that felt essential for my mental wellbeing.

It would be unfair to the life I’ve built here, the kittens that are currently sleeping in the next room, to say that the past two and a half years have been a waste. It would be most sincere to say that I was chasing a dream that had DENIAL written all over it.

I’m saying this because in January, as my boyfriend and I were driving across the nation to to our routines, after two wonderful weeks with our families, we finally decided to be honest with each other, and spell out what we’d been so carefully refusing to say: we are unhappy here, we cannot imagine a future where we do more of the same.
Something needs to happen.

Back to the laptops and the forums we go, then. Off to find the next destination for our family_v1.
Around this time, my mother recommended a book, warning me that it was really going to resonate. The book in question is ‘The Anthropologists’, by Ayşegül Savaş. The young couple in the book are Asya and Manu, who come from different places but meet in a city foreign to both of them. They’re trying to make this city truly feel like home, but that comes with its hardships, hardships that sounded too familiar for me to not feel like I was reading an autobiography.

It got me thinking about my generation, the promise we’ve been sold that the whole world is out there for us, and what that means when you want to finally settle somewhere.

Obviously, it is an incredible privilege to be able to move cross-country, land a job and a flat. You have to have some money ready for the deposits, the flights, the furniture. You have to, at least, know English. Unless you’re moving from one EU country to the next, you have to have a job offer and a visa, which is often almost an impossible feat.
When you’re finally there you sort of expect everything to fall in place, and it is a rude awakening to discover that you’re still there and you, maybe, are the problem. And now, you’re going to have to live with knowing that whatever happens to your family, you’re going to be far away and you will only be told through the phone.
Every time your mom cries at the airport, every time you call your grandpa and he looks ever so slightly older than the last Facetime, you’ll have to accept the fact that you chose this, you prayed for this.

For a while, here, I thought I had beaten the system - I’d found a way back into feeling at home without having to give up so much. I am only a train ride away and, at least, when I turn the TV on in the evenings, I am comforted by the fact that I could be watching the same programme as my mom.
To come to the slow understanding that I have been locking myself away in a gold cage is heartbreaking. I almost convinced myself I would never get the itch to leave again; instead, I am looking up YouTube vlogs of the cities on my moodboard, hoping to catch a glimpse of who I could be if I moved away again. It’s exciting, imagining what million new places will become favourite of mines, what new walks I’ll get to go on.

Of course, I’m also afraid, because I’ve packed things up and left once already and I remember how difficult it was. But I’m not happy where I am and don’t I deserve to give myself another chance?

As depressing as it would be to think that I’m the only person to experience these thoughts, it is more depressing to be aware of the number of people in my same exact situation.
How many “young” adults does this story belong to? People who’ve had to leave their homes because our economic system isn’t able to satisfy the needs of everyone. If you’re born in the wrong postcode, you may always have to hunt for a home.
Where I’m from, there’s not enough opportunities for people who didn’t buy a house in the ‘90s, and most of my peers have had to either consider or go through moving abroad, often alone. So many of us have had to ask ourselves what we would rather live with, the memory of our family of origin or the unattainable dream of a future family, happy and safe.
If we choose to take the leap of faith, the next question is, inevitably, where we should set sail towards.

The one place I know I can’t go back to is Naples, even though my heart is always turned that way. Beyond that, there’s a whole continent that I can audition and cast in the role of my next home.

I think, perhaps, there’s too much choice. Sometimes, I would just like to have been born somewhere with a decent job market and plenty of green areas, so that none of this would ever be my problem. It is exhausting to have to scout around for your forever city, especially when you thought you had it, and it made you miserable, anyways.

There’s times when I feel like a failure for not being able to figure it out in Scotland or where I’m at the moment, and I am not sure I’ll be able to handle another unsuccessful attempt at relocation.
What if I am never satisfied? What if I make the wrong decision again?

I find myself at a crossroad, a different one: on one side, the path to potential sadness and the weight of living with another poor choice; on the other, a paved road to certain dissatisfaction and the weight of living with my own cowardice.

Either way, I’ll have to live with whatever I leave behind.