Breaking Up with the Past

Before I went to Dubai I felt this overwhelming need to get rid of things. Throw things away. Dump them. I realize now that this was a kind of breaking up with my past. My long lost distant path that was supposed to take me to a completely different destination but instead brought me here.

I took what had up until that point been my prized posessions. My books. The ones I carried with me from house to house all through my university years, the books that would be my home decoration of choice (Warms up the place! So cozy, a place full of books! I love having a LIBRARY!) and put them into 7 garbage bags (they weren't light either. Heavy like dead bodies, which I only know because I know how much live bodies weigh) and I brought them one at a time down to the dumpster.

I pitched them. I mean, I put them into the paper recycling bin, which felt more humane.

I emptied the bags so that passers by could see them and pick at them. One guy did. He took one and then got embarassed when he saw me see him. I wanted to say TAKE MORE! But I walked away hoping he would when I got out of sight.

I think I heard my heart cry.

But something propelled me back to the apartment to repeat the process over and over again until the bags were gone and the bookshelves looked, gulp, ORDERLY.

Most of my books were in French. That was part of the reason they were so precious to me. They were a link to my year in Belgium as a high school Rotary exchange student, to my first time in Europe, to my first taste of autonomy, to the University where I became a really good student for the first time because I had the advantage of already being fluent in the language. Plus I loved reading and writing in French. I majored in French literature. My other books were in Portuguese, the other language I chose and loved. Those books were a link to the Brazilians I met in Belgium (sigh!), my amazing teacher at the University and the very courageous time in my life when I quit my job to move to Brazil and learn the language better.

 When I bought them, foreign books were really expensive and (I started university in 1991) the internet was still not using windows. I am not kidding, websites were all text and you used DOS commands to get there (not that I was an early adopter or anything, but, okay, I guess I was). So books were kind of a big deal. I guess they still are for some people. To put things into perspective, I was still writing people letters on paper in those years. We had PEN PALS back then. Peter Hass, you know what I am talking about. Paper was king. And the WAIT to get a letter back and write send another one (The anticipation I now feel at a nearly unhealthy cronic level with What'sapp)!

And touching paper is still a big deal. Who doesn't love the feel of a leather bound book? The silky feeling of a really nice softback cover?

But those shelves were weighing me down. They were a constant reminder that I had changed my mind. That I hadn't quite gotten to where I had meant to go. That I stopped short.

I lugged those things with me all the way over the ocean to sit on my shelves here and say "nyah nyah nyah nyah nyah" every time I passed them (I couldn't always hear them. I am very good at distracting myself).

What made me give up my old life and my old possibilities and my old career path to come to Italy and start over eleven years ago? Actually, that part is the easy bit to explain.

What made me stay?  That is the tough question. When you leave your home country you have to start all over again as a NOBODY. You spend a long time wondering what you did for the first most of your life (you actually go through a sort of amnesia. You forget basic things about your old life) and why.

The hardest part is that nobody here cared AT ALL what I had accomplished in my old life. What I had studied. What I spoke. In fact, come to think of it, they still don't. What has changed is that I finally JUST NOW got the feeling that I have reached a point where all of my experiences at home, abroad and here have come together to make me go just a little bit further than I probably could have gone had I NOT moved.

It only took eleven years, but it was time to break with the past. I guess I could have accomplished the same by cutting my hair. But it is already short.

This all came back to me today (I have never once regretted this decision, although when I have told people it has caused them visible pain) when I was looking at my shelves for the Betty Crocker cookbook (which I kept) and I realized there was one book I did not part with.
The Catcher in the Rye. Damn. I think I have read it about 30 times. Usually once a year. And the cover is that silky soft kind of having replaced the original because it fell apart.

And it made me feel a little happy and sad at the same time. I am still in touch, I guess, with the 13-year-old me.