The Tether
Coming home after a month in Turin wasn't easy. Not because of nostalgia for the city or the places I'd left behind, but because of something more subtle and heavy: the weight of other people's eyes.
Being seen with new eyes
When you're traveling, nobody knows you. Nobody knows who you were three years ago, five years ago, as a teenager. They see you for who you are today, in this exact moment. You can be the person you've become, without having to justify the change, without carrying the judgment of who you were before.
At home it's different. People look at you through the filter of the past. They still see you as the person they knew, not as the one you've become. And this creates an invisible cage made of expectations and prejudices.
Reality is not absolute
During that time I was reading "Useful Not True" by Derek Sivers, and it helped me make sense of this feeling.
Reality is not a set of absolute facts, but a collection of perspectives. People express opinions as if they were universal laws. In reality, they're just describing their mental "time zone." They're not wrong, but their truth isn't the only one. It's just their current position.
It's easy to be fooled by those who use real data to support a distorted vision. When we have to explain why we feel love, anger, or jealousy, our brain invents a reason and blindly believes it. Many of our life choices and interpersonal conflicts are based on fabricated explanations that have no real foundation, but which we defend tooth and nail.
We tend to see the past as something solid and physical, but it's just a story based on incomplete information. The past you remember is only one of many possible stories. By changing perspective, the story changes.
Many statements that seem objective are just personal preferences in disguise. "It's your duty" often means "I want you to do this thing." Terms like "obligation," "duty," or "responsibility" are often tools of social manipulation. People invoke a "higher legitimacy" to avoid admitting they're simply expressing a personal desire.
As Sivers writes: "Almost nothing people say is true; ideas need to be useful, not necessarily true."
When a relationship can't withstand change
Beyond automatically distancing myself from some people, I had to finally face the closure of an important relationship.
When you become a completely different person, it's difficult to maintain the same relationships. There can be the strongest possible respect, but if only one of the two people evolves, or there's evolution in different directions, it's inevitable that sooner or later the relationship will take a bad turn.
During that month in Turin, I realized that relationship had become the only bond keeping me tied to home. Not in a romantic sense, but in a literal one: it was the rope preventing me from moving forward. And continuing to hold on when you're walking in different directions only means hurting each other.
And once I returned, I had to end that relationship.
It wasn't easy. I suffered a lot for that choice. And I'm convinced the other person suffered much more. But sometimes you have to choose between hurting someone you love or suffocating yourself. And neither option is right, but one is necessary.
📻 Soundtrack
📻 Colonna Sonora
🎵 Caricamento...
YouTube Music
The song talks about trying to move forward but always feeling something pulling you back. In Turin I had felt that freedom. I had seen what it meant to live without others' expectations, without the weight of the past. But every time I thought about returning, I felt that bond pulling me.
It kept me anchored to a life that no longer fit me. Not out of malice, not out of will. Simply because it had become the symbol of everything I could no longer be.