Eternal City

13,000 steps and counting. Your back hurts, solely from walking and looking around, getting lost in the maze of Roman streets. A cobblestone wiggles under your shoe. An Italian woman brushes past you unapologetically. A Vespa swerves down a narrow pathway. Cigarette smoke swirls nearby and lands in your hair. A simple and seemingly basic day. But nothing short of beautiful.

You look out at the tiled roofs of the eternal city, sunlight catching your eyes. It’s golden hour in Rome; the buildings burst in shades of pink, yellow, and terracotta. Church bells chime, birds chirp, and sirens drone below. It’s just a busy city, yet its impact is profound.​

A new feeling creeps in, as foreign as the country you’re visiting. You sense its warmth crawl through you like the feeling you get from drinking a hot tea on a cold day. You notice your muscles and nerves relax and release. Contentment and calm. It’s been well over a year since you had the company of either of them. Now, they are your travel companions on this two-week adventure.  

For once, the dull ache in your body is due to the miles you ran. Planned several months ago, deep in the throes of the abusive relationship you left, this trip commemorates completing your second marathon. Soreness in your toes. Slight stiffness of your knees. The sensations are there. But you hardly notice them. They are incomparable to the pain you endured for well over a year, surviving mental and verbal abuse. This pain, rather, if you can call it that, was hard-earned from miles and hours of running the streets of Rome. And this pain earned you bragging rights and a medal. What did the abuse earn you? Deep psychological and emotional damage, and an ongoing therapy bill.

This is going to be a special trip, your sister assures you as you wait for your flight. You told your therapist the same just yesterday. Part of you dreaded it, feeling emotional and almost unwilling to go. Still, you think, this is going to be important.

​You’ve lost track of the number of trips you've taken alone at this point. Traveling heals you in ways you didn't know you needed. More flights booked, more stamps collected in your passport than any number of dates you've been on in recent years. And you wouldn't have it any other way. You'd rather be physically uncomfortable and sleep-deprived on a cross-Atlantic flight for 10+ hours than fight for your life in an abusive relationship for days and weeks on end. This discomfort you can do. The abuse, on the other hand, you could live without.

It’s only been a week since you left. Within days, however, you notice the miles and distance from home start to put pieces of you back together. Tiny stitches are made to pull your broken parts whole once again. Purple and pink bruises on your heart and mind begin to fade. Wounds begin to scab and heal over, leaving the remnants of faint scars that you’ll carry forever. You were right. This trip is important.

As you walk around the foreign cities in Italy and Greece, your mind wanders to him. At times, you wish he were there to experience this magic with you and to meet you at the finish line of your marathon. But as much as your head fills with these daydreams, you snap yourself into reality because that version of him doesn't exist. There is no version of him that would accompany you on a trip like this, let alone show up and support or celebrate your successes. At the beginning of the relationship, when you were future-planning a life with him, your head was filled with dreams of international adventures together, smiling and laughing hand in hand as you explored the streets of Rome. But you aren't dreaming anymore. You aren't sleepwalking in brainfog caused by the abuse you endured. You’re wide awake now. And the views here, in your own company, are spectacular.

I don't miss him, you notice and think to yourself. At first, you thought this trip would be difficult to do on your own. You thought it would trigger heartache and emotions from leaving an abusive relationship. It hasn't. Quite the opposite, in fact. Turns out the miles from home, from the scene of the crime, were just what you needed to push you further along your path to healing. Fucking pig, you say in your head as you replay one of the many horrific moments where he manipulated, gaslit, and diminished you. The harsh but important truth is that this trip would not be possible if you were still in that relationship. The vibrant colors of a Roman sunset would be dull and gray. The liveliness that comes only from looking across an Italian piazza would hardly be noticed. But now, you have the capacity once more to take in this experience as you’re meant to, for all its hustle and bustle, colors, sounds, tastes, and smells. A relationship and a partner are meant to make your life better, bigger, and brighter. Had you stayed in that relationship, you and your life would have stayed small, silent, and dull. As if allergic to the life he promised, you grab your passport, along with your will to live, and board the plane. I’m going to live a big, beautiful, fucking amazing life. You most certainly will not be part of it. And that’s a promise.

Sitting in a garden cafe, you watch people stream in and out. Waiters greet patrons. An older couple is seated nearby. A bartender mixes cocktails, filling a tray with colorful glasses. Tall Italian cypress trees rise along the ancient walls surrounding you, shielding you from the sounds of Piazza del Popolo. You gaze up, your eyes following the length of the cypress in front of you. A twinge of emotion stirs. You feel tears behind your eyes — the second time on this trip. The first was moments after you crossed the marathon finish line, pride and exhaustion mixing like the cocktails across the courtyard. Here, the tears are a release, a recognition of where you are. You hold them at bay. But it doesn't stop the feeling that envelopes you.

In the months before, you cried out in agony — from the pain of him breaking your heart and spirit every day, and then from the loss of it all, the gaping wound he left that you carried every single day after. You used to think of him with a heavy sense of grief and sadness. But sitting here, a slight breeze swaying the slender cypress trees above you, you realize you weren't thinking of him at all. You weren't missing his presence. You weren't fueled with anger and rage. Instead, you felt pure bliss. You felt present. You felt freedom.

I’m in fucking Rome right now, you say silently in your head, with a realization that this wouldn’t have been possible in the prison he kept you in.

​You bring your eyes back down to your table, reaching for the Aperol Spritz in front of you. With a swirl of your glass, you take a sip, the cool ice and bitter orange liquor meeting your lips.

How is everything? Your server asks. You turn to her and smile. Tutto bene. Grazie.