How I realized I was living life on hard mode

Midway through my first ski lesson this winter, I was accelerating down a snowy hill, two slick boards strapped to my feet, as a chainsmoking Italian woman called after me, issuing commands I could not understand.

I wish I could have deciphered her desperate pleas, because I was gaining more speed than I could handle, and made it down the hill without injuring myself only by some mix of luck and grit.

This introduction to skiing in Italy was, in a word, dispiriting. When I signed up for the group lesson, I indicated my preference for an English-speaking instructor. But when I showed up to the mountain, an Italian-speaking teacher whisked me onto a chair lift (also terrifying), with scarcely a word of English to be heard.

I muddled through the lesson mostly by copying what other people were doing, and catching a stray word here or there. Turns out, fluent as I was becoming with Italian, there were all kinds of skiing words I did not yet know.

While the skiing eventually got easier (and I did manage to take a lesson in English later on), it felt like a perfect encapsulation of what I was experiencing as an immigrant: Life on hard mode.

Because it wasn’t just skiing when I felt totally out of my depth. It was also in daily life, stumbling over words and struggling to understand the language. It was also at the hospital, where the bureaucracy of a routine doctor visit brought me to the brink of tears. It was at the cell phone store, where I found myself returning again and again to decipher mysterious bills.

Living on hard mode, as I came to describe it, was weighing on me. I was used to being a highly competent person in virtually all aspects of my life. But moving abroad forced me, every day, to be bad at stuff.

I couldn’t quite articulate this until I took up skiing. Like, wait a second, I’m choosing to be bad at another thing? On purpose??? When, one weekend, I chose to go on a winter hike instead (something I’ve been doing for almost a decade), it felt like a huge relief. Finally, I can just show up and know what I’m doing.

This contrast only became more clear on my recent (unexpected) trip home to New Jersey.

I resisted going home for a while. I had this sense that going home represented some kind of a capitulation. Like, I needed to stick it out for as long as possible here in Italy before even visiting my home country. (I am aware that there is no logic here).

I didn’t hesitate to book a flight after my grandfather passed away, but the experience of being back in the U.S. felt, as I imagined it would, like life on easy mode.

Oh, I can just understand everything that is being said to me? I know all the social norms? Things move quickly and on schedule?? Everything follows my expectations??? Wow, what a concept!

The distance between this and my new life in Italy felt palpable. I kept joking that it felt like I teleported back into another dimension. The eight-hour flight had transported me across more than just an ocean: it brought me back into whole different way of being.

Don’t misunderstand me: I did not yearn to stay, to melt back into the ease of American life. But it struck me, quite suddenly, that I could. That I had been in Milan for seven months—that I had built a life and a friend group and a home there—seemed to have no bearing on the matter.

It’s a hard feeling to describe, and I’m not sure I’m doing it justice. I had no desire to remain stateside permanently, and in fact was quite looking forward to getting back to Italy. But it occurred to me that I could, if I wanted to, just stop living life on hard mode.

Coming back to Milan, though, was also a relief. I could walk places again, I could get fruit at the local market, I could grab gelato with my friends. So many beautiful things flowed back into my daily life—which, indeed, is not a constant struggle.

As time goes on, things generally get less hard. I’m better at speaking and understanding Italian (something that absolutely delighted my grandma when I was back in NJ). I’m less rigid when dealing with Italian bureaucracy (surrendering to the process is part of the process). I’m more willing to take things at the slower, Italian pace of life (which even in the country’s industrial north is still slower than I’m used to).

There was a rumor floating around, among my friends and family, that I’d only be staying in Italy for a year. I do not know from whence this rumor came; I don’t recall ever setting such a deadline for myself, much less communicating it. But alas, many a relative came to assume my relocation to Italy was temporary, merely an extended vacation.

When I was visiting NJ last month, I got the question over and over again: How are you liking Italy? Do you think you’ll ever come back? Even the question betrayed the answer. Come back, in this [economy / political environment / insert atrocity here]?!

As if. Even when hard mode gets extra hard, it still beats life in America.

This week, I leave you with a stunning flower I saw on a hike a couple weeks back.