I am here again, in the Blogosphere. I have recently reread the blog from the beginning and it was really interesting to delve back into that journey, knowing what I know now, and how that piece of my journey ended. So much has happened in the in-between years. In order to keep the story going, I will make a recap of what has happened and where I am now.

I had left Florence in 2012 and moved back to California, nursing a baby and a broken heart. My relationship with Cazzatore was over, finally and forever. On my little peanut, Dante’s first birthday, Cazzatore slipped back into his familiar routine of pulling the rug out from under me. I was domestically content, with us and Dante. I wasn’t working because I was on maternity leave (kind of-because my job decided not to renew my contract when I got pregnant, though I went on leave before it ended, which is how I managed), and I was enjoying the small moments with my tiny darling-going out to the markets for produce, taking walks and naps, visiting friends, keeping house. Cazz and I were engaged and it felt like life had taken on a slow and normal tempo. He had finally mastered those commitment fears, it seemed.

On Dante’s birthday we went to the pediatrician for the 1 year checkup. Then in the car in the parking space of that building, the old Cazz, long since buried, emerged like the undead. Long conversation short (and I touched on this in an earlier post, when it was occurring), he told me he didn’t love me and that he felt trapped, but he didn’t want to be a bad guy in the eyes of his family. It does not matter that he later tried to take the words back, or that he no longer remembered saying them. The damage and the healing started happening in that moment. As I started free-falling into the familiar despair I thought I had left behind, I looked at my tiny one and he became my parachute. I could not and would not fall apart again. I no longer had the option of getting caught in that frightening and destructive hurricane because I had become a mamma and I needed to keep it together for my child. All of that emotion had to go somewhere of course, so it did the only thing left. It broke my love for Cazzatore and my relationship to him ended there, abruptly (though I gave it another chance for repair in the following year). A wall had been created, protecting my heart from him and hindsight now tells me that there was no going back. He would not end it because it would destroy the bella figura, or his image as a wonderful partner and father, so it was left to me and it was the last thing I could do out of respect for myself. It was my job to end it, because I refused to crumble and stay with one who had told me so many times and in so many ways, over so many years, that he couldn’t love me. Of course, jobless and in a country of my choosing though not my citizenship, with a half-Italian child born in that country that would protect its own at the expense of the American mother, it took much longer to get out and on my feet.

Roughly (very roughly) a year passed in that delicate state. We lived together, and Cazz promptly forgot everything that happened and decided he was happy again. It felt over for me as I stepped off the rollercoaster for the final time. In that year, I went to Baking and Pastry school, began working part time at a pub and made new friends. But my heart needed to get out of the city and mend itself with my community and family. After that year, Cazz and I decided that we would move to California. I was honest with him and told him not to move there for me, though if there was any chance of repair, it would have to be in a new place and on my own solid footing. It was the very last fragment of a chance, however small, that we could repair anything and move forward. It didn’t work, however. We moved and shortly after I called it quits. I just could not come back from that place where my heart stopped loving him on Dante’s birthday.

He stayed for awhile, but was miserable. We managed to appreciate each other in that time and develop a friendship, though he has never since acknowledged that he played any part in our demise. He swears it never happened, and gave me all of the blame, as did his family and friends because I wouldn’t stoop so low as to let them know how it really happened. I accepted the blame as the price I had to pay. I wanted to believe he had changed when we got engaged and we had Dante, but it never had. It was the same story, played on repeat again and again. So, with the blame fully on my side, Cazzatore moved back to Italy.

I lived with C.R and her husband, who to this day remain my family-solidly, lovingly and forever. I got a job back at the Bookstore where I worked so long before and I got Dante into a preschool. Life was good and difficult. I lived in a city so expensive that it crushed the average person. As a single mother, with a barely over minimum wage job, and even living rent-free, I struggled so hard. I couldn’t make ends meet. Health care, food, preschool, childcare when I worked on the weekends-I just couldn’t do it. My heart had time to mend though and I was able to make the decision a year after I had arrived to move back to Florence where life was cheaper and simpler, and where a piece of my heart still lived because it was home. I said my goodbyes once again, and made my way back to the boot, though I couldn’t foresee what Life (and Death) had in store for me.

Florence felt different and the same, as home usually does when you leave it. Cazz and I were on good terms and he helped me find a tiny studio apartment on Via Ghibellina-close to the apartment we had first shared together years before. It was a neighborhood I loved, filled with memories and ghosts. Except this time, I was really on my own and with a 2 year old. The space was enough. It was warm and cozy and Dante and I quickly made friends with a young woman who lived next to us. In typical Italian fashion, the apartment had at one time been much larger, but then was divided up into 4 tiny apartments. The heater and water controls were in my neighbor’s apartment, and when someone rang her doorbell, it would also ring mine. Done as cheaply as possible to extract the greatest amount of profit, the apartment was nonetheless home, and my relationship with my neighbor was a lovely bonus of needing to work together. If we were both using the oven at the same time, our breaker would flip and we would need to work together to reset it. We fell into the routine of checking in with one another if we were going to use the oven or washing machine. She loved Dante, and he would often find his way over to her house to watch cartoons and eat cookies. It was just what we needed-community.

I found work almost immediately, part-time, but a job that paid enough that I didn’t need more. I loved that job, and my bosses/friends, who were a mixed couple (Australian/Italian) with a child of their own. We were close and it felt great. To combat other loneliness, I started a running club. I wanted to get in shape, get out more and meet people. I organized it through an expat group, and gained immediate friendships. One of those was very strong from the beginning, and I clung to it tightly. It was an American couple with two children, who were living illegally in the city, though had enough income to make it work and allow some of the school officials to turn their heads when they enrolled their girls in school. They were light, they were happy and they were free from much responsibility. They lived life to the fullest and they took me in as their kin. We became inseparable, having coffee together every morning and meeting up in the evenings for a nightcap, or dinner, or walk. I shared everything with them, as I often do with those who are closest to me because I prefer to live as an open book-honestly, genuinely and with great humor. Eventually, they helped me in the search for a new apartment that provided more space for my growing boy and was situated in the neighborhood most dear to me- the one where I lived when I first arrived in Italy- Santo Spirito.

Life was treating me well. I was happy and I saw myself staying forever. The couple and I spent every day together and talked about starting a business together. Work was good and with my help, growing. About a year and a half after I came back to Florence, an opportunity developed. My bosses wanted to sell the company, and they wanted to sell it to me and my two other colleagues (one of which I brought into the business). I was so excited to make something my own, and I worked tirelessly to go to lawyers and accountants and banks to be able to buy my portion of it. It was a company that I had put so much time and love in to, and where my efforts were rewarded by additional business and better efficiency. I shared every step of my process with the American couple, as they were my closest friends. Unfortunately, I couldn’t see what was coming.

The couple secretly met with my bosses and because they had a lot of time and disposable income, brokered a deal to buy the business out from under me. It would help them stay legally and give them something to do in the city. I had unknowingly been feeding them all of the information they needed about the potential for growth and profit, as well as how it could be done through the lawyers and accountants. I never imagined that they would do something like that, especially since they were so vocal about my bosses. It had even gotten to a point where they had been telling me how I was being taken advantage of, doing so much work that I wasn’t compensated for. Needless to say, things got ugly. I regret the resentment I started feeling towards my bosses, though there were of course things they could have done better as well, and were going through some of their own issues. I regret my anger toward them for agreeing to sell the business to the couple. They were doing what they needed to do.

I was so hurt and angry, though I tried to reconcile my feelings with the American couple, my dearest friends. But there were no apologies, just excuses. They tried to tell me that they were doing this for me as well. They wanted to bring me and my colleagues into the deal, buying smaller portions, though they would own the majority. They even offered me a contract, though it was much worse than the one I had already had and which they, once upon a time, had railed against as being so unfair to me. We went through some irreparable damages, and it dragged out for many months. My relationships with my colleagues and bosses soured, and there was no end of secret-sharing and ugly gossip, which I am very sorry to say, I participated in. So much anger, so much despair. But the deal was taken, and I was edged out of it, unable to bring myself to accept so much less than what I deserved, unable to forgive those who had taken advantage of me. But still, there was the offer of a job, where I had just lost one, and if only to survive, I had to consider biting back my feelings and taking it.

Then, things took a turn for the worse. I had just had an online interview with a prestigious University in the States that had a program in Florence. My mom had asked me to call her right after. That’s when she told me about the cancer (this story is in the post, Turning Point). She died shortly after I arrived in the States. I could not go back to Florence. I was no longer tethered to the States, and I feared that if I left again I would float away, forgotten by the world. My friend circle in Florence was much smaller, and the city became a reminder of pain, deceit and loneliness. I needed to be near my family and my community of long time friends in such a desperate and indescribable way. I needed to be loved and I needed to put myself back together.

I came back to Santa Cruz after spending months at my aunt’s house, immersed in the ugliest parts of what happens to families when trauma occurs. This was the city that I had veered in and out of since college. I started working at Bookshop again, while applying for jobs that would support me better. I lived on a futon in my friend’s house, and as summer arrived I finally got a job offer at the University where I had graduated from a decade earlier. Cazz and I worked out an agreement where Dante would go back and stay with him and nonna for two months every summer, and I would have him the rest of the year (an arrangement that I thought I would hate, but which I have since come to appreciate). So I hopped on a plane to take him to his mother-country for the summer, stayed a couple of days and turned around to start my new (temporary) job. From there, I was hired as an interim in the same office where I started for a position that opened at exactly the right time, and then eventually got hired into that job, which is where I have been for almost two years.

I started dating the friend of a coworker-the first time I dated since Cazz and I split years before. We have a hard time talking about our feelings as we both have baggage. I just need to know that I am loved and I can’t be in a relationship if I feel that someone is settling for me which is a direct consequence of the Cazz relationship where I opened up my heart and was crushed over and over again. I am not sure how to move forward when I am unsure of how he feels.

The other thing that happened as a marker in my life is that shortly after I moved back to Santa Cruz, a friend contacted me to tell me that the friend I once had, who had participated in my betrayal-the woman in the American couple- had just been diagnosed with stage 4 liver cancer. It was close to hopeless, but she was trying to fight. Over time, I forgave her, though I couldn’t forget, and we began repairing our relationship slowly. I felt no need to maintain a resentment that would eat me alive, and in the face of a terminal disease, I felt compassion for this person who had played such a large part in my life, especially as I had just seen that same disease up close and personal in the struggle of my mom. Forgiveness was the least I could do for her and for me.

I went to Florence to deal with some things at one point, and we met up for a coffee-for old times’ sake. We hugged tightly when it was over, vowing to see each other again when I came back for Christmas and to continue trying to repair what we had destroyed between us. Disease changes people, and I like to think that she was making amends for her actions toward me, though we never talked about it. We talked a few times in the following months and made some plans to see each other when I arrived. On Thanksgiving Day, 2016, as C.R, her husband, Dante, my boyfriend and I made our way back from Disneyland, I got the call that she had died. She had gone through brutal months, though she never shared her pain, and had finally let go.

During my Christmas trip, I saw her husband again for the first time since I left Florence, and their daughters. They were hanging on. We talked, we let the past go. I see them now when I go to Italy, and our relationship is easy, though we never mention the bad blood that ran between us. It is enough that we once held each other as family, and we once loved the woman who is no longer with us. Florence has become a ghost town for me, filled with memories, but no longer with the people who made up the canvas of my life there. Cazz lives in Verona and is doing well for himself, others have gone, or died. I have friends there still, and it is a balm to see them and relive my once Italian-life with them, eating at my favorite restaurants and walking around the city whose architecture never fails to stun, but whose inhabitants are constantly changing. I don’t know if I will ever live there again, or if it is time to close the chapters on that part of my life and begin again. It is a constant journey, and I change all the time. It has been almost 10 years since I moved there, with a hopeful heart and nothing to lose. I have since lost much, grown perhaps more jaded, or perhaps just more realistic and come to see the world from a different perspective.

In going back through my story, I am reminded of my lightness and excitement at striking out on my own. I am grateful to the city that gave me so much, and took much away as well. I’d like to think that I understand more fully how to unpack my baggage and try to move through my journey as lightly as possible. I like to think that I can rediscover the sense of joy and anticipation in new beginnings. I continue to build myself better, to love myself more than I love the idea of love, to be a better mamma to my now 7 year old, Dante. I change, years pass and yet I still find comfort in a plate of spaghetti al pomodoro, because it feels like home. Here’s a toast to the beginnings I love so much, to the words that flow into story form and heal me, and to my people, from all of the places in the world that hear me and hold space for me.

In T.S. Eliot’s “Little Gidding”:

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, unremembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;
At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple-tree

Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.
Quick now, here, now, always–
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flames are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.

And so I have arrived…back at the beginning, and ready for the next chapter.