Joys and sorrows of provincial life

Since I moved to Milan, every time they ask me where I grew up I always answer Roma. The correct answer would be that I grew up in the province at least thirty minutes by car from the capital, but I am always vague. The reasons?

1) because it is useless to specify a place that with high probability no one knows
2) because if I say that I come from Roma I think I look better than a village of barely seventy-three thousand inhabitants.

And this too is a provincial thought.

via GIPHY

While having the province within me, I always thought I didn’t belong to the province: since I was a child I have felt an energy, mixed with curiosity and the enthusiasm of discovering reality and meeting different people every day who, despite the best efforts, such a small and restricted context can hardly satisfy.

But what’s it like growing up in the province? There is no hustle and bustle of the metropolis nor the despondency of a wasteland with hay bales: it is a middle ground. Growing up in the province can be a dream or a sentence depending on who you are or become.

The province is first of all reassuring: it is a place that repeats itself, renews itself at a snail’s pace, and generally tries to meet the needs of a small group but if you don’t want an alternative choice, you have to either create it or look for it elsewhere. The province changes with difficulty, and this can also be comforting: when you are a teenager and you are still trying to understand who you are, it is a place that does not reserve surprises or changes of plans so abrupt as to destabilize you. Always retracing the same path and recognizing the same faces, knowing that your mother and your father, your friends and all the people you know live and breathe the same air is something comfortable, easy, and familiar. In the long run it can also be boring, repetitive, and terribly suffocating.

via GIPHY

The province, in essence, is a cross and a delight. The cross comes in especially when you don’t do what ninety percent of the people around you do: nothing special, but if hypothetically you are queer, overweight and you don’t give a damn about pursuing weight loss diets; you are a woman and sexually free; you are non-white, growing up in the provinces can have its fair share of difficulty, depending on the case.

Growing up different (from the average) in the province risks making you feel terribly alone, with a constant feeling of discomfort and discomfort, fearing in the worst moments of being wrong and inadequate, and with a constant desire to leave as soon as possible and find a place in the world where you can feel welcomed, be it a thirty minute drive or on another continent. This one also has its own side effect: you risk feeling “special and unique in the world”, and you almost believe you are superior to those who find themselves in that small and comfortable reality. You’re a bit like that snooty Belle who feels the smartest in the village just because she reads a few books. Even less.

via GIPHY

If growing up in a closed context can be more or less demeaning, at the same time it is good to remember that
1) there is a place for you and there is nothing wrong with who you are
2) some people are fine even without diving into a metropolis far from the familiar reality, and even in this there is nothing wrong.

When I return to the province I find everything as I left it, just a few restaurants, a new brewery, and other hairdressers are added. I retrace the same paths I crossed when I was sixteen with a confidence I thought I would never achieve, and a confidence in who I am becoming that makes me laugh at any form of bigotry or new gossip. But I also look with unexpected affection and devotion at this place that I have never felt mine and at the same time has formed and raised me, remaining a part of who I am. Good or bad, I carry it with me every time I leave.