What am I doing?
It was a question that had fluttered into my mind on the bus on the way to the airport, then on the plane to Doha, then on the second plane to Milan, upon landing at 6AM Italian time, and finally when I was ripped off at a currency conversion bureau at Milan Malpensa that left me more than a little out of pocket. Grazie mille.
As I walked through the airport to get the train into the city centre, I stepped on a message written in both Italian and English:
tutti i passi che ho fatto nella mia vita mi hanno portato qui, ora
every step I have taken in my life has led me here, now
When I rounded the corner of the street and walked up to the entrance of my hostel, trailing my case behind me, I saw a familiar yellow tram pull up outside. I remembered the quirky mismatched chairs before I saw them. The bookcases bursting with secondhand paperbacks in every language you could think of. Had there been a piano on the far wall before? Maybe. They still did the best scrambled eggs at the free breakfast bar.
What had led me here, now?
After checking in, I grabbed a plate of those eggs and chose the table nearest the window, looking around the same hostel I had stayed in four years ago. We had sat on that table, the long middle one, and drank mojitos with people we had never met before and would never see again. We had laughed. We had walked down to the canals for Nutella crepes at midnight. Well, who am I to say ‘we’? We were all strangers. I don’t remember any of their faces, let alone their names.
I was inflicting a twisted déjà vu upon myself. I had returned to the same summer job, the same airport, the same city, even the same hostel that I had stayed in four years ago! So, why was I retracing my steps? None of this had happened by accident – I myself had written my resignation letter, booked my flights and packed my suitcases – but suddenly faced with the reality of being back I couldn’t understand why I had brought myself here. Why here, why now?
I surveyed the empty room. Just one guy, nibbling on some toast. It was too early for backpackers to be up yet, though I was full of energy and still on Asian time. I had done a bad job of my coffee at the self-service machine – all milk and sugar.
I opened my laptop. I started to write. And as I typed the words ‘What am I doing here?’ over and over again, allowing a stream of consciousness to fill the page, I started to realise the answer: so I could ask myself that very same question.
Sometimes people have ups and downs. Even people who look like they’re living the high life in Hong Kong. A few rough patches and bumps in the road. No more than anybody else, perhaps – that’s life – but I’d had a bumpy year… or two.
Maybe something in me remembered the summer of 2012 – dancing all night in Rome, playing drinking games in Bajardo, consuming obscene amounts of pizza, gelato and spritz aperol. And this same part of me thought, ‘Amy, you need a little more of that.’
So my feet led me back here, now. Not to chase the past, relive old memories, or repeat the same experience I had already had, but to spend a summer being… happy. A summer of ‘freedom’. A summer of drinking espresso and prosecco, of eating ripe Mediterranean tomatoes like apples, of speaking Italian badly, of seeing a side of Italy that you can’t find in guide books, of laughing, of tanning, of making lifelong friends out of strangers, of singing ridiculous songs about bananas and llamas and magenta flamingoes.
And I didn’t even know I wanted and needed all of those things until I was already in Milan, questioning the motives that had led me there. Sometimes, your instincts kick in and you make choices without knowing why. Some people follow their head, others their heart, and I am led by my feet. My head might have been confused, but my feet knew exactly what they were doing. They always do. They had brought me back to my happy place.
And so I decided to have the best summer.
I left Milan for San Remo and I met the best bunch of people. I dug my feet into the sand on Taggia’s beach and watched the Mediterranean Sea lap at my ankles. I donned my red t-shirt and ACLE heart and got back into the routine of working with kids (how had I forgotten how hilarious children are?). I started serious work on my gelato gut. I stayed in an actual castle in Castelfranco. I cycled through fields of sunflowers. I danced Zumba at White Night in Montebelluna. I went to a Japanese art exhibition in Treviso. I repeatedly lost games of Uno to opponents under ten years old. I did the most tourist thing and took a photo of myself leaning against the Leaning Tower of Pisa.
I feel like I have laughed more in these past few weeks than I have in the last couple of years put together. And the best part is that I’m barely halfway through my time here yet. It’s still a work in progress but summer 2016 in Italy is definitely one of the best decisions I have made in a long time. Thank you, feet. You know me better than I know myself.
Sometimes to go forward you have to go back.