I've written about some fairly personal things on here already but I think that this topic really digs deep. This is something that I've really only been open about with just a few people.
When I returned to Gustavus the fall semester of my senior year, after having studied abroad in Italy for four months, I had a very difficult time getting back into the academic and social atmosphere of college. I felt very distant from my peers. I even felt like I no longer connected with my closest friends. I couldn't verbalize what I was going through. I didn't understand why the things and people that once made me so happy could barely get me out of bed in the mornings. I don't think I was depressed - I just felt blank. I didn't feel happy or sad. I didn't feel anything. I attributed this to the fact that I fell in love with Florence and that my ultimate joy in life meant I had to go back there. That everything else paled in comparison. That I no longer belonged at Gustavus. But no one can ever go back. The life I had and the person I was at Gustavus before I went to Italy no longer existed. And when I return to Florence some day I'll be a different person than I was when I studied there.
That semester at Gustavus I was enrolled in a creative non-fiction writing course. I've always loved writing and it has always been the one constant in my life. But, at first, I hated going to that class. I was so lost but I was purposely holding myself back. I was being incredibly stubborn and selfish by not allowing myself to contemplate the effect Italy had had on me because that would put me in the present moment. It would make the line between my time in Italy and my current situation visible and almost tangible. It would mean accepting that I had left Italy and was back at Gustavus. I didn't want to let go and assimilate into the new, post-Italy chapter of my life. In leaving Italy and returning for my final year at Gustavus, I felt like I had taken a huge step backward when all I wanted to do was move forward. I had seen just how big and beautiful the world is – I didn't want to spend the next nine months in a college campus, writing papers, eating at a cafeteria, and living in a cramped dorm room. It turns out that the root of all that was actually reverse culture shock and I had no idea until I started that writing class. It became the mechanism for coping with the reverse culture shock because it forced me to look inside myself. Fiction is my element but I signed up for that class with the intention of challenging myself. Throughout the course of the semester, all the readings and class exercises, especially those based in the memoir genre, chipped away the layers of resistance I had built. In the beginning, I wanted to avoid any and all memoir based exercises because I don't like sharing anything about myself. This blog is testament that my comfort level with that has since changed.
For the final portfolio I set myself up to write pieces that were very personal. Again, I wanted to challenge myself. By this time I was aware of how the class was subtly helping me through my adjustment issues. So, I wanted my portfolio to represent a journey. The writing pieces included in the portfolio represented a quest: personal, intellectual, and spiritual. The most important piece in the portfolio was a travel journal, “L'amore dell'Italia (For the Love of Italy.)" I used the journal structure so that it felt intimate. I don't want the reader to feel like an outsider, or be disconnected from my experiences. I wanted to bring them to feel as though they had been there with me. Writing for that class was very painful but beautiful. And to have others read and provide feedback was the best form of therapy for me. It also just so happened that the last day of that class was the same day I turned my honors thesis in to the Classics department. Since I was so lost I avoided most social functions and poured my time into writing that thesis. I even picked a topic related to what I studied in Italy. I couldn't let go of Italy so I wrote something like 35 pages and when I turned it in I felt like I could finally start moving on.
The next semester I took a senior seminar class centered on the theme of identity. It was the perfect continuation in the "healing" process. We read various books about other people's search for self and we incorporated zen philosophy/meditation. Almost a year after I returned to Italy, I was finally myself again. I felt whole. And those past few weeks of school were nothing short of amazing. I reconnected on a deeper level with all my old friends. I made amazing connections with new friends. I was living in the moment instead of dwelling on the past or letting myself become too overwhelmed by the uncertainty of my future.
Now that I am on the other side of my experience in Holland, it is time for me to begin the assimilation process all over again. I know it will be very different from the last time I had to go through this. For one, I am not clinging to the elements of my life in Holland like I did with Italy. I was already mentally preparing myself before I left Holland because I had a pretty good idea what I would face when I returned to US soil. Secondly, I don't have the same outlets like classes and assigned reading. I have to be the one to set up a curriculum. But it hasn't taken me as long to realize and accept that I have changed.
To be continued...
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