I’m sitting on a Park bench somewhere between Bologna and Rome.

Today I am supposed to visiting a friend from up North to go outlet shopping but, like a lot of other days recently, I’ve woken up with tears in my eyes. I’ve been living in Italy for a few months now and my university boyfriend back in Australia has recently informed me that he can no longer “do this”.

This being long distance.

This being me living halfway around the world.

In hindsight, it was the catapult into the making of myself. At the time, though – absolute heartbreak.

I get up, get dressed, brush my hair and in a risky manoeuvre, apply mascara. Chances are I’ll cry it off pretty soon. You know that weepy feeling? When a sadness hangs over you? That’s where I’m at. I feel shattered. Someone I loved who had promised to be consistent in my experience of this year has just been unimaginably inconsistent. What’s worse is that he had been one of my best friends for a couple of years at this point. So, it’s a double whammy. And I’m miles from home.

I head to the Station and before long, I’m on the train with my friend. She is older and at this point, wiser than me by a mile. Having just gone through a divorce herself, she’s the perfect combination of motherly and friendly. We are halfway to our destination when we pull into a station called Montevarchi. I’ve never been here before, but it dawns on me that I can’t do today. I don’t know if it’s her kindness or just my tiredness, but in a state of not knowing much right now, I know I can’t do today. I want to go home and crawl under my covers.
No.
I need to. 

If you’ve ever had your heartbroken, you’ll get that feeling. It’s like walking around holding your broken heart in pieces out in front of you. Somedays you just feel too vulnerable to be out in the world with a handful of heart.

I feel awful and guilty but in an act of grace, my friend totally understands. She tells me she’s a few weeks ahead of me in the grieving process.

“Get outta here,” she smiles and brushes my cheek.
“It’s ok, doll. You’ll get there soon enough.”

I squeeze her and before my eyes can spring a leak, I’ve grabbed my handbag and am standing on a strange unknown train-less station. I exhale deeply, relieved. Somehow, this last few weeks I’ve feel deeply alone in this city I don’t yet know and simultaneously exhausted by any company. The effort of trying to maintain a smile at some hours feels gargantuan. In other moments, I crave being noticed just to make sure I haven’t become see-through. 

With the rest of the warm Spring day ahead and the sun still rising in the sky before it heats the peak of day, I am staring ahead at a blank hour until the train arrives to take me back from where I came. I decide to leave the station and walk around the little town. 

I find myself a café and get my second coffee for the morning (standing up, of course – it’s Italy, after all). I wander a little and then settle myself on a Park bench not far from the Station. Looking back on this day, I remember yellow gold sand and pebble paths interweaving between rose gardens and manicured grass. The road wasn’t far from the Park, but I felt like I’d stepped into a little hidden spot where I could gather myself for the trip home.

I lean back into the green wooden slats and close my eyes, lifting my face to the sun. It’s just starting to get warm here in Italy and the warmth on my face feels delicious. I’m alone with my thoughts until… all of a sudden… I’m not. An Italian gentleman, probably in his mid 30s with salt and pepper flecked hair appears beside me and his voice interrupts the silence. He’s smiling at me.

“Do you mind if I sit for a moment?” he asks politely in Italian, his accent thick and rhythmic. My mind for a moment flickers to frustration. I really don’t feel being chatted up right now. I smile back and say I don’t mind, hoping my politeness isn’t confused as an invitation to launch into a “get-to-know-you”.

He seems to get the message and for a few minutes we sit together in quiet contemplation, the sounds of the birds and the Spring morning around us. I exhale. It must have been louder than I realised because he turns to me and puts out his hand.

“I’m Luca,” he introduces, this time in English, “and I hope you don’t mind me saying, but you seem sad”.

Instinctively, I place my hand in his.
“I’m Alessandra,” I reply. The Italians don’t have the letter ‘X’ in their alphabet, so my name has been transformed into something much smoother.

“And I guess I am sad.”

At this point, the effort of pretending is too far out of reach for me.

His face softens, and, in that instant, I realise there is no need to worry. He’s just being friendly. He tells me he drives taxis at the moment and points to his car parked on the edge of the Park. He notices my Australian accent and tells me about the time he spent there. I compliment him on his English, an uncommon skill where I’ve been living. He tells me he lived in Canada for a few years in his 20s and then, once we’ve exhausted the chit-chat, he halts.

“Dimme, Alessandra. What is it that is making a beautiful girl like you so sad on this warm Spring day?”

And there it is.

What do I say to this stranger? Anything? Nothing? Everything?

I settle somewhere in the middle. I tell him I’ve just had my heartbroken. I tell him I’m disappointed in someone I had really trusted. I tell him I’m mad and sad all at the same time. And I tell him I don’t really know what to do with myself.

He nods, knowingly. As I talk, and tear up, he passes me a handkerchief and assures me its clean. This small kindness strikes me.

I tell him that it’s been hard moving away. It was hard flying home to end the relationship properly. And that it’s hard coming back. I tell him that I feel like I’m here, in Italy, where I feel I am supposed to be, but I don’t know how to wake up and feel like myself. I don’t know how to not hate him for being cowardly. But mostly, I don’t know how to not love him.

When I finish talking, Luca looks to the sky for a moment and then straight at me. When you’re an expat in a country where you don’t know many people and language barriers pop up every day, it can feel rare at first for someone to look straight at you. Like really at you.

He asks if he can hug me and I say yes. For the first time in weeks, I breathe out properly. He holds me and pats my back as I let out a sniffle. When the embrace ends, he tells me that he thinks we were supposed to bump into each other sitting on this chair today.

And then Luca tells me why. A few years ago, living in Canada, Luca met a woman. And, as all good stories go, they fell in love. In all the years that have passed, I no longer remember her name. What I do remember was Luca’s face when he spoke about her. He tells me of her lovingly and tenderly, his face creeping into a smile. After a few years, Luca asked her to marry him. They agreed to move to Italy together and start their married lives there. She teaches him English in that time and he teaches her Italian. Then, he tells me, soon after their engagement, she started to express her doubts. She wasn’t sure she wanted to live in Italy ever. Slowly, the cracks began to appear. Their love stayed as fierce, but something was disintegrating. Logistics wore them down. 

Finally, after a few months of torturing themselves about a future they can no longer see, they decide to separate, and Luca moves back to Italy to “lick his wounds”. He tells me that once he touched down on Italian soil, an anger came over him. All the plans they had made together, she tore apart. All the English he learnt for her – what did that mean if she had never intended to really use her Italian? Had she ever really planned to move? Had he been played for a fool?

Luca tells me he spent weeks furious. He told her they needed to take a break from being in communication. He was simply too mad.

And then, something softened slowly. He started remembering things that had made them laugh together. Songs that would remind him of her. Words in English that he couldn’t find an Italian translation for. And so, he called her. 

Within days, a flight had been booked for the following month and Luca was once again deeply considering a life in Canada. It was not as though everything had been forgotten or forgiven, but after years together, they agreed a conversation face to face was worthwhile. They agreed to speak the same time next week. 

I’m waiting for Luca to say, “and now she’s my wife”. Or to tell me that you never know how things will work out. To give it time etc. etc. In my head, I’m already gearing up to say, “I know I should have hope, but it feels so futile and I don’t believe we’ll ever get back together…yada yada yada” or something akin to that.

Luca turns to me and takes a deep breath.
“I called for hours that day. No answer. I texted and waited for her to call me back. I was pretty annoyed at her. It was a pivotal time for us, and I was about to get on a plane again to her. The least she could do was answer the phone”. I agree with him. I’m wondering if she met someone else in that time? If she was getting cold feet again?

 Luca continues.
“The following day, my phone rings and her name appears on the screen. It was her mother. She had been driving home two nights before and her car skidded on the ice. She’d been hit by oncoming traffic and even though the paramedics had done everything they could, she didn’t make it.” 

I place my hand on Luca’s. This man I have only just met. I see tears in his eyes and mine reciprocate but we don’t cry.

He turns to face me.

“Alessandra, I want you to remember one thing. You are allowed to miss him. You are even allowed to hate him. But deep down, I think you care for him. And so be glad. Be glad that he is out there somewhere,” Luca tells me.

And then he says something I’ve never forgotten.

“Even if he is a dickhead, at least he’s out there in the world being a dickhead. At least he still exists.” Dickhead is such an un-Italian phrase that it’s almost laughable to hear it in Luca’s accent. 

I sit with what he’s said for a while. 

In that moment, I knew I loved the boy who’d broken my heart. I also knew that I would get over him. In the years to follow, I would run into him at bars and parties a few times. He would even try to kiss me again about eighteen months on from this day. But in that moment, on that Park bench sitting next to Luca, with his thick Italian accent, I am released from a hold I thought might exist forever.

Not long after that, Luca tells me he has to go pick up a client and I notice my train isn’t far off. He stands up and in a very friendly gesture, strokes a piece of my hair back behind my ear.
“Alessandra, I don’t tell you this for sympathy. I have gone on to live a very happy life. And you will too. He is not the man for you, but you already know that. I tell you this because on this sunny day I couldn’t leave you sitting here sad. There is too much to be happy about. And too short a time.”
For the first time in weeks, I feel a genuine smile cross my face.

He turns to go and a timid voice comes out of me.

“Wait, Luca?” I ask. “What do I do now?”

He smiles at me.
“Get on the train, go home to Bologna and go buy yourself un gelato grandissimo”

It’s the first real plan I’ve had in days. And the only plan I’ve felt capable of carrying out.

Before he goes, we take a photo together. It’s the only photo I have of that Park and that encounter but I think of Luca all the time. I’m not even sure I’d recognise him if I passed him in the street. He surely wouldn’t recognise me. I was just a baby then, sitting heartbroken from my first love near a train station. Now? Well now I’m a woman. A woman much older and very much in love. But something he gave me that day will stay with me forever. And so, on the days where I don’t know what to do, I go and sit in the sun in a Park and close my eyes. And then when I’ve found myself, I go and get a gelato.