Everywhere I go

by Clizia Campoccia (Italy)

I didn't expect to find Indonesia

Everybody wants to go to Bali these days but nobody really knows why. I was among these people. As many others, I was broken and I guess that was a good reason to move to the other side of the world. I felt a strong call from this place. Bali was calling me and I picked up. I come from a small town in the South of Sicily, one of those places where you have no expectations in life, no perspectives of future whatsoever. Such a close mentality and strict environment, for a rebel mind that is constantly seeking growth and change and development. And if it does not get it, it feels trapped within itself. The human mind is a dangerous tool, just like a gun. It can be used for good purposes and also for bad ones. It’s your choice. It’s the use you make of it that makes all the difference at the end. My mind was a labyrinth and I could not find my way out. Yet I was aware that it was also the only tool that could set me free. Free from what? I don’t really know. I was born in Sicily, grew up there, then left it, only to decide to go back there a few years later. Sicily is where I belong and where I’ll never fit in. I have always known this. It is the land of contraddiction par excellence. Beauty is everywhere you look, but nothing works there. People are so welcoming and so harsh at the same time. It’s a land of traditions, but there is a fine line between traditions and narrow-mindedness, which easily becomes a dangerous ignorance “take over”. I am different. I am rebel. I am a bad woman. I am hopeless. For most of my life I felt wrong, inadequate. It was always me against the world and I could never win. Just because I didn’t want what everybody else wanted. Just because I didn’t care about getting married, having children, settling down. I simply want to settle down when I die. Is this so hard for people to understand? Eventually, I decided to stop fighting and try to find my place in the world. I realized that I am what I am and I’ll have to deal with it. Fast forward a few months later and I know that my place IS the world. As long as I keep moving, I know I’ll be fine. So I ended up in Bali and Bali actually surprised me. It was not all nature and beautiful rice fields as I pictured it in my mind. The towns are often over-populated and the traffic is horrible, you need to wear a mask when driving your scooter because the air is unbreathable. It’s the kind of “What influencers don’t tell you on Instagram” thing. Yet everyone here said that Bali is a magic place, but nobody could actually explain why. There is something about this place that’s hard to explain to who’s never been here. I started going around and observing the locals as I wanted to find the “magic”. I noticed that everybody was smiling at me, children, teenagers, women. I suddenly realized that in the other side of the world people know that smiling is free. If I were somewhere else and stared at people like that, all I was going to get was a “What the hell are you looking at”? Certainly not a smile. And I didn’t know what I was looking for, until I found it. I was looking for humanity. I found it in the free smiles that locals gave me, which were the cure to my illness. My illness of living. I didn’t expect to find a piece of my sould in every pair of eyes I looked into. I didn’t expect to find a piece of my story into everyone else’s. I am aware that my journey has just begun and I’m still picking up the pieces, but now I know where they are. They are all around the world. There is a piece of myself everywhere I go.