Is Florence still my home?
Of late, I wake several times a night, gripped by something I’m still unable to name. Is it solitude? Worry? Fear? Regret? Restlessness?
I look out my window and stare at the darkness, hopeful for answers that never come. If I’m lucky, I get a little call from a particularly vocal owl that has taken up residence in my garden before being lulled back to sleep by the dog’s snoring.
I’m also dreaming intensely, in muddled chapters and marathon sequences, that tire me and return as destabilizing flashbacks throughout the day. They’re often recurring dreams I’ve been having for years. Thankfully, not the ones where I’m trying to scream but unable to make a sound, or where I’m standing in front of my high school locker and can’t remember the combination, or, my favorite, in which I’m taking the final for a college class, and suddenly come to the scary realization that I haven’t studied or ever gone to class.
I’ve had a complicated relationship with sleep and rest since I separated from my ex-husband in 2014. I’m a highly anxious person, and there’s much to be anxious about these days. All of it keeps me awake. When I try to rest, I can’t. There’s too much going on, and I’m plagued, day and night, by the question, “is Florence still my home?” I have to be honest, I’m just not sure anymore.
I’ve been talking a lot lately, on the podcast and off, about the city’s changed and ever-evolving landscape: the over-tourism, proliferation of Airbnbs, ubiquitous fake wine windows, and abominations like the Starbucks in a Renaissance palazzo. I’m normally someone who embraces change, but all of the changes in my life, in my adopted city, and in the world are doing a real number on me.
For over twenty years, I had a job that required my daily presence. Now I can do my writing, podcasting, and consulting from anywhere in the world. I once had a partner, in-laws, and an Italian family, but when that relationship ended painfully and badly this past May, those bonds disappeared.
I am 55 and a soon-to-be empty nester. What’s next for me? Do I pick up and start over somewhere else? And where would I go? To another Italian city? Elsewhere in Europe? Back to the U.S.?
I loathe the idea of moving again. While I embrace change, I can’t bear the thought of another move, especially a transatlantic one. Florence has been my chosen home for almost half of my life, it’s where I have raised my daughter, built a career, found a community, and put down roots. But those roots seem to be weakening and risk decaying. I no longer recognize what surrounds me.
All these transitions, those looming and those that have transpired, have left me feeling lost and unanchored.
Some days I wander around downtown Florence feeling lost. I can no longer find places I once frequented or, even worse, I see something new has opened and can no longer recall what was once there.
I battle every day with the dreamy representations of an Italy that I don’t recognize. I love, value, and appreciate so much about my adopted country and the life I’ve made for myself here (and there are many swoon-worthy things about it), but can’t stand to listen to one more word from people who have barely scratched the surface of the culture yet feel compelled to offer up vapid, picture-perfect depictions of life here with no awareness of what it means to be on the inside.
Do you know why groceries are cheaper here when compared to the U.S. and other places? Because the salaries are shockingly low. Nobody wants to talk or hear about that, but that’s what lies beneath the gorgeous sheen you’re being served up like an Aperol spritz. Young people survive and have been able to survive for generations, thanks to la famiglia, because Italians are notoriously thrifty and like to invest in property. Things have gotten very expensive here, too. In places like Florence, and it’s by no means the only city, locals can’t afford to rent or buy because of the seemingly endless flow of foreign money coming in that has jacked up prices and caused a real housing crisis. The average family struggles and would likely be unable to make it to the end of the month were it not for the strength and support –financial and moral – of their family of origin.
Life is hard here, career mobility is extremely challenging, making and saving money is difficult, and bureaucracy is thick and ever-present. What you see is not what you get.
My Dolce Vita
Just about a year ago, in the wake of the U.S. presidential election results, I felt demoralized and melancholy. I wandered the streets of Florence aimlessly, looking for meaning and familiarity in a landscape that often feels cosmetic and foreign, one fueled by greed, money, and shallowness. Much like the world.
But while meandering, something magical happened, and thankfully, magic does still happen here, and inspiration struck. The first words of my novel came to me. Then more words came on subsequent, long walks. Florence is a city that’s delightful to walk in and my jaunts often are what save me. The streets are thankfully the same, landmarks remain, and a simple conversation at a beloved café, an exchange at the market, or a song can transport me back to when I was a student and a young adult making my way through Italy and building my life here in the early 1990s.
The words came so furiously and quickly that I often had to stop to dictate them or jot them down in my phone. I was nostalgic for what once was and needed to go somewhere more hopeful and safer, at least in my mind. Those words that appeared seemingly out of nowhere became sentences, then chapters, and ultimately my first novel, set in Florence in 1995. Neither this city nor the world was perfect back then, but it was full of spontaneity, chance encounters, unexpected discoveries, and a kind of raw, flawed, and beautiful realness that I wanted to recreate to fill the emptiness I was feeling.
Right about now I’m feeling like it’s time to start working on the sequel.