My stories are written with love from Italy. They are about courage, love, and what’s right for me. They’re about challenging norms and living dreams in reality as they are meant to be. They’re written with truth, experience, and authenticity as a recount of actuality rather than a perfect-ending fairy tale fantasy as you might expect it to be.
I spent eight years in a bank with an adequate salary and moderate rank. It was thought by many to be valued, to be stable, to be great. This position, however, was slowly killing me as I was trapped by monotony in a bleak existence without creativity. It was a rigid fixed role in a cubicle void of love, development, passion, and the possibility to affect others more greatly. It was a prison in which I would sit, pondering a life opposite. I had a wanting and desire to break free, to live what I felt inside of me, which was life with a man who I had seen one time, one day, as a tourist in Venice, Italy. The belief that great love was a possibility had never left me and I dreamt of moving around the world and abandoning everything because I thought that life could be greater elsewhere and could give me what I was missing.
I wished and I waited four years for the timing to be right, to follow the man I had loved at first sight. Then, around the world I went leaving everything behind and found life not as I’d imagined or fantasized, but a reality much more difficult to realize. It was one in which the knowledge of culture and language was lacking, in which obstacles were continually mounting. I fought, failed, and found myself torn between love and a life that was ridiculously hard. I learned, grew, got married, then separated, then reunited anew. I passed one year, two years, three, then more, and despite the challenges, I never gave up on the love I came for. I have now what I have always believed to be true, which isn't love with the man I once knew, but love for the richness of experience that has graced me with its presence and for the resistance to fight for my dreams till the end of existence.
I came to Italy with the thought of a fantasy and of a love and life that would fit me perfectly. I assumed that I would learn the language rapidly and easily speak fluently. I imagined that every moment would be harmonious, enchanting, and amazing, but this is just a fairy tale folks. It’s the one they sell us in Hollywood movies. What’s real requires patience, understanding, growth, and commitment, along with struggle, dedication, and change, controversy, agony, and strength. There is beauty in following your dreams, but not in the way you imagine or expect it to be. I am here to share what it really takes. It’s the version you don’t see in most films or on TV. It’s the one in which nothing goes perfectly and you're not instantly rewarded for your bravery or your courage to follow your dreams indefinitely. It’s the one that won’t have you living happily ever after, but will touch you more deeply than a fairy tale could offer because despite the difficulties, it exists in reality - a life in which your heart wins the fight and where there is always the possibility of dreams at first sound and love at first sight.
So who am I? What can I tell you about me? My name is Jessica. I’m somewhere in my 40s, a mother to my beautiful daughter Aurora, hard-working, and a bit silly. I’m originally from Seattle, Washington, but currently, I’m an English teacher living in a small town near Bologna, Italy. I graduated in 2010 with a bachelor’s degree in communications from the University of Washington where I discovered that I am a writer and I would like to write biographies composed in poetry. In life, I have one goal and one goal only: to share my experiences in order to help others follow their dreams and live more truly, and to inspire a life more exciting and rewarding.