I FEEL UNBOXED !!!

DISCLAIMER - If you think my multilingualism won't sneak into our chat, think again! I'll keep it smooth, but brace yourself for surprise language lessons -because who doesn’t love a good multiculti twist? I sure do ;)

Ogni tanto mi chiedo se il gioco non valga la candela (Sometimes I wonder if the game is worth the candle). I should be good at goodbyes, but I always end up crying my heart out, and it never gets better; it only gets worse.

Non mi sento legata a nessun posto (I don't feel tied to any place). There are so many people with whom I feel "at home," but I don't think "home" is a physical place. La nostalgia è la mia emozione preferita (Nostalgia is my favorite emotion), and no matter how happy I am today, there are too many people and things I miss every day, and this feeling never really goes away.

My life taught me to live every moment to the fullest, to be here, now, ma in qualche modo… (but somehow…) time never seems to be enough e mi scivola sempre via (and it always slips away from me). They raise us asking people, "Where are you from?" as if everything you are can really come down to a country, a nationality, a language, or a culture. Yes, you are where you come from, but also where you have been and who you love. Who I am has been shaped by all the people I have met over the years; there are so many people who probably know me better than I know myself, all over the world, and I feel immensely grateful for experiencing all of this.

I used to think, “It’s just a phase,” but it was just the beginning. I used to force myself to choose, to fit into a single thing (to find the thing and stick to it, to find the place and stick to it), but I cannot even choose the language I think in, so how is that supposed to work out? I was not born into this; I somehow grew myself around it.

They say at some point you see and understand all the reasons why you did certain things. My mom was not expecting me to tell her, “I wanna study economics for my bachelor’s” as my 16-year-old self was learning five languages at the same time. But somehow, I always knew—that languages would not have been the thing I did but rather the means for me to do the things I wanted to do. I have always said it growing up, but only now I look around and realize where that led me. I was not even imagining all of this at 16, but I know that my 15-year-old self would scream now if she knew that, on top of it all, I managed to deal with six different languages daily for the past six months. We really cannot see how all the “little things” we do change us and shape us. Today, I am looking back and understanding why certain things had to happen, and I am so glad they did.

I have normalized this lifestyle so much at this point that I barely understand how not normal it is. Today I got asked “When are you going on holiday?” and how was I supposed to tell her that I came back from Italy last night just to stay in Copenhagen for two days, and that I am flying out again in a day, and that I do this all the time, not just for the summer. How can you explain that your life is all over? How can you explain to yourself that you will never fit in a single box?

Tante volte mi chiedo se il gioco non valga la candela (Many times I wonder if the game is worth the candle), but the love I got to have in my life crosses oceans, continents, and time and knows that different languages, cultures, and points of view are not limits but opportunities. We are just a mosaic of all the people we have met along the way; what matters is not where they come from but that, at some point, they have been in our same place.

Living unboxed means I'm a professional juggler of languages, cultures, and time zones. It's a wild ride full of emotional goodbyes, tearful hellos, and enough frequent flyer miles to circle the globe a few times. Sure, I may never fit into a single box, but who wants to be boxed up anyway? Boxes are for shoes, pizza, and those forgotten gadgets in the back of the closet - not for people. So, cheers to a life where "normal" is just a setting on the washing machine, and my greatest skill is making every place I land feel like home.

Why settle for fitting in a box when you can have the wild ride of an unboxed life? Isn’t it way more entertaining to embrace the chaos and live like every day is a new episode of your own reality show?

Life’s a messy chaos, live it to the fullest.

Lots of love,

Elena