I’ve never thought of myself as a patriotic person. I grew up in a small city in the north of Italy, in a family that was nowhere near traditional. I was raised by a very cosmopolitan mother who teaches Italian to refugees seeking a residence permit, a French-Bulgarian father who lived in the U.S. for most of my life (which brought on two amazing American siblings) and a very progressive, independent grandmother who divorced her husband when it had been legal for only a decade and went on to start her own business and travel the world. No one in my family is truly religious, most of them speak other languages and have lived in other countries. I attended a European public school, where language teachers are all native speakers and students are provided with extensive information about colleges all over the EU. By age thirteen, I already had my heart set on moving away. 

When I moved to Dublin I was only seventeen. My last two years of school had been primarily online – I spent them focusing on college applications and losing track of everyone other than my closest friends, most of whom had also been brought up in mixed nationality households. As I was working towards a European Baccalaureate and not the maturità, my school syllabus sometimes left me with small gaps in my knowledge of general Italian culture that I was made to feel ashamed (if not outright stupid) for. I was in no way discriminated against, but for many years I felt a deep disconnect with Italy. I saw my home country retrospectively. I spent the entirety of my adolescence firmly holding on to the knowledge that I was going to leave. So when I got here, overwhelmed by the novelty of it all, my relationship with Italy was the least of my concerns. I did, however, make it a point to keep up with the news. Specifically Italian politics, which I was becoming really invested in, almost out of spite.

First, the Zan bill was killed off. The law, which came after a series of vicious attacks, would have recognised violence against members of the LGBTQ+ community as a hate crime, guaranteeing aggravated penalties. The far right parties Fratelli D’Italia and Lega opposed this law, claiming it was aimed at ‘enforcing gender ideology’ on children and that it represented an encroachment on freedom of speech. In the following weeks, stories of hate crimes and serious discrimination kept on flooding the news. The perpetrators were often teachers, relatives, or parents of the victims. In 2022, the head of Fratelli D’Italia Giorgia Meloni arose as the likely winner of the upcoming general election. This is someone who got her start in politics in the neofascist Italian Social Movement (MSI). Her face, younger but just as determined, appears in videos from the 1990s, defending Mussolini’s legacy. She has consistently dismissed issues relating to gender inequality and climate change. Throughout her years as head of FdI, she has led and continues to lead an incessant campaign against immigrants, purposely fostering xenophobic and racial hatred by cherry-picking news stories to use as political propaganda — weaponising each and every instance of violence in which a non-white person is involved while regularly disregarding crimes committed by white Italians. I could go on forever, but all of this is to say that when it hit me that she really might win, and that Italy was at the top of a steep downward slope in terms of civil rights, I felt a kind of heartbreak that struck me as completely new and unfamiliar. It felt surreal to vote from my room in Dublin.

Whenever I bring up Italy to my Irish friends, I realise I sound much more patriotic than I actually am. When I asked  my friend Giulia, whom I met in Trinity, if she felt the same way she said yes. “I’ve never felt as Italian as I do here, and as little as when I go home” she explained, “but it’s a ‘practical’ patriotism rather than an ideological one, it’s selective. Italy’s political situation is cause for embarrassment. I’m always talking about how much I miss the food or the language or aperitivo but if you asked me would I want to move back it’s a no”. Her words could have come out of my mouth, and yet it hits a nerve when I hear people from other countries talking about Italy in the same vein, remarking on its backwardness. I was chatting to another Italian student once and when I started a conversation in Italian — we were alone — they replied in English, saying they preferred not to speak Italian unless necessary. I don’t know this person at all, or the reasons for their preference, but it stirred a certain sadness in me, enough for the memory to stick.

I was the same, I used to dread going home. I felt as though the only reason I was doing it was to see my family. My friends would be around for only a fraction of the time that I was, but together we would talk about how much better our lives were since moving away – how it had opened the door to a myriad of creative, social, and career opportunities we never would have had access to had we stayed. We all picked up on this sense of disillusionment and hopelessness that so many young Italians feel. Not only is unemployment staggering among younger generations (the rate in June of this year was 21.3% for young people, 7.4% at national level, according to the National Institute of Statistics), but the fact that all these manifestations of hatred and nostalgia for fascism are going unchecked takes a toll. Giulia told me that what led her to leave Italy was the need for a social as well as cultural open-mindedness which she has yet to find at home. Another friend, Sveva, said that what she found most alarming was how pervasive misogyny is within Italian culture. I don’t disagree with either opinion, and I feel extremely fortunate to have had the chance to begin my twenties elsewhere, although it doesn’t come without sacrifice. Because she misses me and part of her wishes I still lived in Italy, every once in a while my grandmother will pettily tell me I’m not Italian anymore, that “all that speaking English” is making me less eloquent in my native language. Even though I know it’s not true and that she’s only joking, it still makes me feel as though I’m missing out on part of a specific cultural life experience, and that everyday that I spend away, I have less and less in common with people my age in Italy.

This summer, I sublet my room in Dublin and headed home, telling myself it would be the last time. I was convinced I could find a service job to put some money aside with the CV I had built up in Dublin, maybe even a small unpaid internship. I found neither, and ended up having all this free time I wasn’t sure what to do with. I would just pack a small bag, take my dog, and travel back and forth between the two cities my parents currently live in and my hometown. I was prepared for all the loneliness and the anxiety of missing out on things in Dublin, but no one could have prepared me for the nostalgia I felt once I let myself enjoy what being home had to offer. I talked to strangers, I reconnected with friends I hadn’t spoken to in years, I went to the outdoor cinema by myself twice a week, I watched old movies by Nanni Moretti and Fellini, I wrote often, I took photographs of people. It all started as a way to keep busy and kill time, but at some point, I realised I was actually enjoying myself. I met a man who was heavily involved in the political activism of the late 60s and early 70s and listened to all of his stories. One day, when I was making my way out of the Santa Maria Novella train station in Florence, carrying two huge bags as well as a cross-body dog carrier with Totò in it in forty-degree heat, I randomly ran into Sergio Mattarella, the President of the Republic of Italy — one of the rare figures Italians are unanimous in their appreciation of. The huge crowd parted in two perfect halves, like the waters of the Red Sea for Moses, and I found the reverence everyone instinctually addressed him with really touching. I visited my grandmother, who was staying in the mountains near Genova, and went hiking with her friends, who gave me advice on how to make the absolute most of my youth. They all told me I was smart for leaving. I followed the work of young Italian writers and artists, which I hadn’t done in a while, and I realised there are people doing exactly what I want to be doing, something I didn’t think attainable in Italy. 

A couple of days ago, I met up with Mariana, a friend of mine who has been living in Dublin for fifteen years. She hadn’t been back to Brazil, her home country, in ten. This summer, she took a five-week trip to visit her family and friends. We talked about patriotism and how our views of our respective countries have changed since moving away. “Being away can make it easier to be patriotic”, she said, “you’re free to enjoy whatever aspects of your country you please, without being afraid that people might jump to conclusions about you.” We agreed that some things, within specific cultural contexts, can become symbolic of values you aren’t aligned with, and she thinks that being away can become an outlet to freely express your appreciation for them without being misunderstood. The freedom that distance offers improved both of our experiences of being back.

At the end of August, I moved back to Dublin, resuming my normal life; a prospect that usually makes me beyond excited. This time, I faced it with an unknown calm. I still love Dublin just as much as I did before – only now that love is interlaced with a homesickness I didn’t think myself susceptible to. Does that mean I’ve become more patriotic? I’m not entirely sure. I’m still just as disappointed with Italy’s political situation, I still feel the same indignation for all of the injustice that is ongoing. But I do have hope for the future (which I want to be an active participant of), and I do believe in my generation. That hope has also made me believe, for the first time since I can remember, that I could be happy in my home country; and that just makes things all the more complicated and beautiful.