Firenze, Italia.
On a crisp December night, I stood speechless underneath the massive, yet incredibly detailed and intricate cathedral called the Duomo in Florence, Italy. Even after four months of walking by the Duomo every day, living, and "studying" in the city of Firenze, Italia, I was still speechless and finding parts of the buildings I had never seen before. My entire body felt heavy, I was supposed to be leaving this beautiful city in 24 hours but I wasn't sure how anyone could expect me to part with a place that had become so pivotal and significant in my life.
Before you go abroad, you're told that it will change you, and that the experience is irreplaceable. Nodding, thinking maybe that will happen to you, you start planning the weekend trips to Oktoberfest, Switzerland, and Croatia as previous students tell you which bars and clubs have abroad student discounts. They lecture you on culture shock, how to act appropriately and safely while traveling, and how to reintegrate into your university when you come back. What they don't, and can't, tell you is just how impactful the experience will be for you. Or just how much your perspective on life shifts. Or how much of your heart will be left in your new city.
As Andrea Bocelli's Con Te Partirò's echoed from the street musicians, I felt every emotion from the past four months over again. This semester had hit me with the most pain I had ever felt in my life. My father was diagnosed with cancer, I had to navigate how to be emotionally independent, not relying on a boy or best friends, and figure out how to work the train system well enough to explore an entire continent. Prior to Florence, I was embarrassingly dependent on other people. Only it took me an entire semester abroad to realize it, and another semester back at home to change it. I went through every emotion possible in the four months I lived a couple streets away from the Duomo. I felt like I had been split open, completely exposed, and given the impossible task of putting myself back together. As if someone had picked me up from my bubble of a hometown, bubble of a college, and plopped me in the middle of the novel Eat. Pray. Love. Only my divorce was healing heartbreak, and my mid-life crisis was a little less than quarter-life.
What I had envisioned my time in Florence to be was like LMU with all my best friends, but Europe version. Instead, I was surrounded by all new students from another university and quickly realized I had no idea what I was doing. There is no guide to studying abroad, you’re in classes four days a week but that’s about it; the rest of the time is yours, however you want to spend it. And everybody goes into study abroad with a different mindset, often molded from their background and guided by their interests. Even best friends have wildly different interests, no one is the same person, and no one travels identically.
It felt like my safety net of family, friends, my major, and the way I had been living was gone and I panicked because everything that had been constant in my life wasn’t anymore. I wasn’t taking science classes, my family was an 11 hour time difference and half the world away, my friends and I were taking separate paths, and the comfort, even if complicated, of having a significant other say they love you wasn’t there anymore. Dealing with this felt like struggling to stand up paddle board or ski, every time I was almost up, I just as quickly was back in the water.
I never talked about all of it, exactly how I was feeling. Maybe in pieces, about one specific thing that was bothering me, but never getting to what was actually wrong. For one, I couldn’t really put how any of it made me feel into words well enough to describe to anyone. But I was also incredibly frustrated that I was feeling like this in such a beautiful city. I thought I was supposed to be focusing on going to every city and taking every chance I could to see more of the world while I was there. The combination of frustration and not being skilled at talking about how I felt, which was never one of my greatest strengths, manifested itself into ignoring what I was feeling and trying to replace that with gelato (p.s. I absolutely do not regret the amount of gelato I ate in those four months). I tried not to force anything and to just strictly enjoy my surroundings, trusting that I would be able to figure out myself at some point. I thought I was doing okay with this, trying to let everything happen for a reason, put time and effort into new friendships, plan trips to new countries, and facetime my family on Sundays to tell them about how the week went.
About halfway through the semester, my father was diagnosed with colon cancer. My natural reaction to serious or devastating news is to go into shock. I immediately pretend that I’m in a dream, it can’t be real, doing everything I can to avoid admitting it was real. I can vividly remember that evening, my parents holding themselves together as best they could over FaceTime to tell me that he had cancer and things were going to be okay. There was an unevenness in my dad’s voice that sent my heart to my stomach. I had made plans to go to our favorite restaurant with my roommate, so after the FaceTime I shut my laptop and walked back into our room, not sure how to act. It took me hours to be able to say out loud that my dad was diagnosed with cancer. I felt like I physically couldn’t say it out loud, there was legitimately something blocking my voice. I finally told her at the end of dinner, hoping that telling someone would make it better. Like she would be able to tell me that it wasn’t real. I held myself together relatively well until that night, when it really hit me what was happening. Again, I found myself in unknown territory, not knowing what to do next. Not having a clue how to act, what to do, or how to talk about it. I was half a world away from where I desperately wanted to be. I wanted to retreat, to quit and leave the semester; to find the safety net that I had been missing.
The next month and a half were filled with excruciating waiting. Waiting for the surgery to be over so my mom could tell me it went well, for the semester to be over so I could go home, for my discomfort to be over. But at the same time, I had some of the greatest trips I had ever been on in that month and a half. I saw the Cliffs of Moher in Ireland, I biked around Amsterdam, I strengthened the new friendships I had grown so fond of, stared in awe at the Duomo countless times, listened to the street music of Florence, had hour long dinners with the people I loved. I felt emotions in extremes, and was taking it day by day. Every day I still had my dad, I was in a beautiful place, I was still passionate about marine biology even though I was taking sculpture, I was still surrounded by friends, I was learning a beautiful language, and I was deeply thankful for everything I did have that day. I was slowly realizing what and who I wanted to surround myself with, what truly made me feel alive, and who I wanted to pride myself on being.
My dad was declared cancer-free towards the end of the semester, just in time for me to come home and be reunited with my family. I felt like an entirely new person, I had been stripped of who I thought I was and what I had been dependent on in order to experience the struggle of figuring out who I actually genuinely wanted to be. Having someone you love face the evil and emotional, unknown journey of cancer shocks you into a state of restarting. Everything I thought was important up until that point, I realized wasn’t nearly as crucial to my life as I once thought. The following six months after Florence were difficult, like I was restarting or re-choosing what I wanted in my life and who I chose to surround myself with.
A year after I had left Florence, I put all the pieces back together smoothly and with super glue. Turns out I was really just farther up, higher than I ever had been from my safety net instead of those comforts being gone. Florence gave me more than I could have ever asked for and more than I originally bargained for, but I wouldn’t change a thing. I am a better person for having taken a chance on Florence. Which I realized a year later, was actually taking a chance on myself.
Before you go abroad, you're told that it will change you, and that the experience is irreplaceable. Nodding, thinking maybe that will happen to you, you start planning the weekend trips to Oktoberfest, Switzerland, and Croatia as previous students tell you which bars and clubs have abroad student discounts. They lecture you on culture shock, how to act appropriately and safely while traveling, and how to reintegrate into your university when you come back. What they don't, and can't, tell you is just how impactful the experience will be for you. Or just how much your perspective on life shifts. Or how much of your heart will be left in your new city.
As Andrea Bocelli's Con Te Partirò's echoed from the street musicians, I felt every emotion from the past four months over again. This semester had hit me with the most pain I had ever felt in my life. My father was diagnosed with cancer, I had to navigate how to be emotionally independent, not relying on a boy or best friends, and figure out how to work the train system well enough to explore an entire continent. Prior to Florence, I was embarrassingly dependent on other people. Only it took me an entire semester abroad to realize it, and another semester back at home to change it. I went through every emotion possible in the four months I lived a couple streets away from the Duomo. I felt like I had been split open, completely exposed, and given the impossible task of putting myself back together. As if someone had picked me up from my bubble of a hometown, bubble of a college, and plopped me in the middle of the novel Eat. Pray. Love. Only my divorce was healing heartbreak, and my mid-life crisis was a little less than quarter-life.
What I had envisioned my time in Florence to be was like LMU with all my best friends, but Europe version. Instead, I was surrounded by all new students from another university and quickly realized I had no idea what I was doing. There is no guide to studying abroad, you’re in classes four days a week but that’s about it; the rest of the time is yours, however you want to spend it. And everybody goes into study abroad with a different mindset, often molded from their background and guided by their interests. Even best friends have wildly different interests, no one is the same person, and no one travels identically.
It felt like my safety net of family, friends, my major, and the way I had been living was gone and I panicked because everything that had been constant in my life wasn’t anymore. I wasn’t taking science classes, my family was an 11 hour time difference and half the world away, my friends and I were taking separate paths, and the comfort, even if complicated, of having a significant other say they love you wasn’t there anymore. Dealing with this felt like struggling to stand up paddle board or ski, every time I was almost up, I just as quickly was back in the water.
I never talked about all of it, exactly how I was feeling. Maybe in pieces, about one specific thing that was bothering me, but never getting to what was actually wrong. For one, I couldn’t really put how any of it made me feel into words well enough to describe to anyone. But I was also incredibly frustrated that I was feeling like this in such a beautiful city. I thought I was supposed to be focusing on going to every city and taking every chance I could to see more of the world while I was there. The combination of frustration and not being skilled at talking about how I felt, which was never one of my greatest strengths, manifested itself into ignoring what I was feeling and trying to replace that with gelato (p.s. I absolutely do not regret the amount of gelato I ate in those four months). I tried not to force anything and to just strictly enjoy my surroundings, trusting that I would be able to figure out myself at some point. I thought I was doing okay with this, trying to let everything happen for a reason, put time and effort into new friendships, plan trips to new countries, and facetime my family on Sundays to tell them about how the week went.
About halfway through the semester, my father was diagnosed with colon cancer. My natural reaction to serious or devastating news is to go into shock. I immediately pretend that I’m in a dream, it can’t be real, doing everything I can to avoid admitting it was real. I can vividly remember that evening, my parents holding themselves together as best they could over FaceTime to tell me that he had cancer and things were going to be okay. There was an unevenness in my dad’s voice that sent my heart to my stomach. I had made plans to go to our favorite restaurant with my roommate, so after the FaceTime I shut my laptop and walked back into our room, not sure how to act. It took me hours to be able to say out loud that my dad was diagnosed with cancer. I felt like I physically couldn’t say it out loud, there was legitimately something blocking my voice. I finally told her at the end of dinner, hoping that telling someone would make it better. Like she would be able to tell me that it wasn’t real. I held myself together relatively well until that night, when it really hit me what was happening. Again, I found myself in unknown territory, not knowing what to do next. Not having a clue how to act, what to do, or how to talk about it. I was half a world away from where I desperately wanted to be. I wanted to retreat, to quit and leave the semester; to find the safety net that I had been missing.
The next month and a half were filled with excruciating waiting. Waiting for the surgery to be over so my mom could tell me it went well, for the semester to be over so I could go home, for my discomfort to be over. But at the same time, I had some of the greatest trips I had ever been on in that month and a half. I saw the Cliffs of Moher in Ireland, I biked around Amsterdam, I strengthened the new friendships I had grown so fond of, stared in awe at the Duomo countless times, listened to the street music of Florence, had hour long dinners with the people I loved. I felt emotions in extremes, and was taking it day by day. Every day I still had my dad, I was in a beautiful place, I was still passionate about marine biology even though I was taking sculpture, I was still surrounded by friends, I was learning a beautiful language, and I was deeply thankful for everything I did have that day. I was slowly realizing what and who I wanted to surround myself with, what truly made me feel alive, and who I wanted to pride myself on being.
My dad was declared cancer-free towards the end of the semester, just in time for me to come home and be reunited with my family. I felt like an entirely new person, I had been stripped of who I thought I was and what I had been dependent on in order to experience the struggle of figuring out who I actually genuinely wanted to be. Having someone you love face the evil and emotional, unknown journey of cancer shocks you into a state of restarting. Everything I thought was important up until that point, I realized wasn’t nearly as crucial to my life as I once thought. The following six months after Florence were difficult, like I was restarting or re-choosing what I wanted in my life and who I chose to surround myself with.
A year after I had left Florence, I put all the pieces back together smoothly and with super glue. Turns out I was really just farther up, higher than I ever had been from my safety net instead of those comforts being gone. Florence gave me more than I could have ever asked for and more than I originally bargained for, but I wouldn’t change a thing. I am a better person for having taken a chance on Florence. Which I realized a year later, was actually taking a chance on myself.