Because it was Rome

I lost 32 pounds during that time. Now I remember it as being very dark, but in my pictures it's sunny every day. I was a student living in Rome. I'd gone to Rome because I loved language, loved art, and wanted to be as close to these things as I could, language and art. (I knew both of these things existed in Minneapolis, but at 18, I wanted a lot more than what I could see around me.) I was so sure I'd love it there I didn't even bother looking at year-abroad programs. I signed up for four years at a little school in Rome that took a lot of American students. As I got off the plane into the sun I was so excited I was actually shaking.

After one day of immersion classes I was ready to quit. Twenty years later, now, I could do it, assuming I wanted to. But at 18 I was possessed of the powerful notion that as I had had a 4.0 in high school, had taken eight AP classes, had been captain of my volleyball team, I ought to be immediately good at anything I put my mind to. I sat through one class not understanding a thing, and felt a mild irritation with myself. After two classes I was nearly in tears. I'd been off the plane for 36 hours and all the things I'd loved or was up to that point had vanished as the world narrowed to the singular, overwhelming and deep-seated conviction that I could not learn Italian.

I have a picture of the Colosseum, taken, I suppose, during welcome day, when the new Americans were bused around the city before we were left to find rides to the apartments we'd managed to reserve a room in while still in the States. In the picture, the sky is washed-out and the structure looks oddly two-dimensional, as if it were a stage set that might blow over in a high wind. I have another picture of the interior of the little cathedral near the school where I spent so many hours. It also looks oddly washed-out, almost like a black and white photo someone had gingerly colorized. This is not what anything in Rome really looks like. In person, every piece of dirty marble is so real and full of character it's impossible not to touch them.

I struggled badly that first semester. My classes were about art and literature and history, my best subjects, subjects I'd already learned past the level of what was being taught here. But with each day that I failed to understand more than a few of the instructor's words, I became more convinced of my failure, and spent less time studying and more worrying. All of my hours outside class I spent either at the cathedral or in Lisa's noisy apartment. Lisa and I would never have been friends back home, but here she was the only person I wanted to be with, to get away from my Italian roommate whom I couldn't understand, and who was--I was sure--constantly making fun of me with the skinny boys she always had over. They would say something and then look at me, look at me and then say something to each other, until my ears were burning and I would leave.

Lisa didn't know where I was when I wasn't with her. Over the holidays we drank a lot and managed to visit a few of the sights the bus hadn't hit when we'd first got into Rome. I didn't think about Spring classes until I got into them. After the second day I stopped going to class and spent all my time in the cathedral, in a pew in the back row, watching the tourists come in and out and trying to pray. I would pray that God would make me stronger, braver, smarter, more capable at this monumental thing I'd taken on. Mostly I'd pray for the strength to go back to class.

I never went back to class, but it wasn't until the last day to sign up for Fall classes that it even occurred to me that I didn't want to be here another year. That I could go home. I'd spent hundreds of hours in a pew in a little cathedral and only a couple dozen in class, and yet all that time I'd held the idea in my head that I would simply press on. Because I loved language and art. Because it was Rome.

The plane ride home was the worst thing I'd ever experienced. I hadn't eaten in two days, had gotten no sleep the night before, had a sinus infection, and was convinced everything was over. My chance to live a great and rich life were gone. But then I saw my family when I got off the plane, and that Fall I was at the University of Minnesota, studying English and playing volleyball, and by October I wasn't thinking about Italy at all.

People have strange ideas about things. Everyone does, but if we're lucky, we grow out of them. I've never been back to Europe, and mostly, people are surprised when I tell them I spent a year in Rome. I tell them it wasn't for me. People need to hear that sort of thing. Kids need to hear it. I say it as often as I can.

Googled "I lost 32 pounds during that time" and went off this picture.