This season is really full of homesickness. Probably because it's almost Christmas. Probably because the end of the year is near. Probably because I'm sending to Italy all my presents for my family and friends. Probably because I got used to Idaho and life in the U.S.
But this doesn't mean that I'm enjoying less my time here. It's like a roller coaster: there are extremely good days when you just feel like you could beat the world, and then there are terrible days when you feel depressed and you miss home more than anything and you just want to close yourself in the bathroom and cry listening to sad music. But this is what makes it interesting, and scary, and fun, and full of adrenaline and it makes you feel alive, like you've never been.
I'm seriously living my life at 100 mph, and this is the best feeling ever. Even in the everyday routine every single thing that I do, I do it thinking that I'm thousands of miles from home, with people that I didn't even know exsisted less than 5 months ago. Even when I unload the dishwasher, or do my homework, or wake up in the morning at 7.15, or step out of the door with -20 degrees Celsius and snow on the ground and a wind that blows the cold into your bones and limbs and into your soul; even when I do all those things I never stop thinking about that moment when I left my group of italian exchange students at the airport to take my third flight, to Denver and I was walking into the crowd of people terrified that I would have lost my flight, all by myself like I've never been before in my life. I never stop thinking about how I felt when the airplane was landing in Idaho Falls and I saw all the lights of the city at night and I started crying, partially because I was exhausted and I haven't slept for more than 24 hours, and partially because it was the most emotionally intense moment I've ever experienced.
I will never stop remembering those moments, when the water will get high and life'll get hard and I will feel alone and useless and helpless...I will think about running through the crowd in Chicago's airport, I will think about the tears I shedded looking at the Idaho Falls city light at night for the first time, I will think about my first A, the first time I understood completely what someone told me in another language, the first time I read a poem of one of my favourites poets in English and got in all without the need of a dictionary, the first choir performance in front of the whole school, the first time I saw an italian movie with american people and realized how much I missed it, the first time I saw my host family's faces, the first Thanksgiving, the first Christmas tree, the first night we jumped on the trampoline and sang at the top of our lungs remembering where we came from and how far we got. And these are only some of the memories that I will remember, and I can't wait for all the future ones to come.
Somewhere I read that "life is a journey, not a guided tour". Because life doesn't give you guarantees, it throws you out there and you just have to hope that things go how you try to make them go...and sometimes you get slapped in the face. The only thing that is sure in this life is that everybody dies, no matter what you believe. And I believe that, as everyone says now, 'you only live once'. You only have one chance to get it right, to do something, to make a difference, to be able to look back when you're in your oldest days and have no regrets, no "I could have done" or "I should have said". And this is what pushes me to work harder and dream bigger. The idea that there is no second try.
That's why I am here, to live the most adventurous journey, with all its problems and challenges and expectations and satisfactions. Because life is only one and it's too fast to spend it sitting on a tour bus waiting for things to happen. Because you can really live 'like there's no tomorrow', but only if you plan to have one. And I'm building my tomorrow with my own hands. One brick at a time.
