Who I’ve Always Been
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Who do I become when no one around knows me? With a new home, food, scenery, friends, and a language that is completely foreign to me. Come on, how often is it that someone gets to practically start their life from scratch again? For some, that might sound like a daunting task or a complete waste of time. But for me, it sounds like an opportunity to break free, to create a new persona for myself, different from the shy and reserved personality I had back at home.
I have always been very independent and self-sufficient, which has made it harder for me to step outside of my comfort zone. I was more reserved and had found opening up and changing my behavior around people who knew me to be quite an impossible feat. Any shift in character was often met with questioning and judgment, making growth feel impossible. Being here has given me the freedom to change without constantly wondering what other people would think. One way this has happened is at Monday night karaoke with my classmates, where I can dance and sing freely without being confined to the introverted version of myself that people at home have come to know.
I have also experienced this newfound sense of freedom when spending time alone. Along with making new friends and exploring new places, I have begun solo traveling for the first time in my life. One of the biggest differences I have noticed while solo traveling here in Italy is that I no longer feel embarrassed about being alone in an unfamiliar space. Strangers’ judgment holds little weight, and that realization has been extremely freeing. I used to hate walking into sports events alone because I felt embarrassed to be by myself. Now I have been able to navigate cities, trains, buses, and beaches alone and am letting go of the mindset that being alone makes me look lonely or strange. I have overcome my fear of being alone while in Italy, without a second thought as to what others at home could have to say about it.
Breaking those chains has led me to go even further and socialize with strangers in a way that is unusual for me. While in Rome for my birthday, I was invited into a conversation with strangers in my hostel. Two were American, one was English, and the other was Swedish. I got to know them all a little bit, and heard about what brought each of them to Rome, and even made plans to meet up with them later that night. Letting “stranger danger” go, I was able to have a great night with amazing people. Experiences like that never happened to me at home. Here I feel like I have the freedom to use my own judgment about what I am capable of doing, without letting my old expectations and customs from home decide for me.
I am beginning to realize that the outgoing and spontaneous version of myself has always been there; I just needed a different environment to bring it out of me. Maybe Italy isn’t changing me, but rather letting me be who I have always been. Italy has given me the nudge I needed to uncover myself in a place where I felt safe enough to do so. Now the question is, will I be able to take this new version of myself home, or will she be left in Siena right alongside everything else I have grown to love here?
Writer’s Bio
Milly (Sarah) Olson is a first-semester student at Hope College, on the Hope in Tuscany first-semester-study-abroad program in Siena, Italy, a program that seeks to establish the community of Hope in an international, diverse context. This is her first column for the Hope in Tuscany blog.
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