Cortona is for Crying

Apr 25

Cortona is a perfect Tuscan hill town: compact and cute historic center, the hills are more gently sloped than some other towns so walking is not terrible, the views of the valley leading to Lake Trasimeno are stunning, and the lilacs were in full bloom.

It is small though - I was there for just one night and I feel like I saw a lot of the same people as I wandered around. I only went to Cortona to fill in a night that I was meant to be at the Roccastrada AirBnB but they had double booked, overlapping me with private (non-AirBnB) guests by accident on the Saturday. Ezio and Angela invited me to stay in their actual house for that night in their daughter’s room since it was their mistake which was sweet but I declined and figured I could head toward my next stop, Citta di Castello in Umbria and Cortona was a sight along the way. It’s known by women of a certain age as being the place where Under the Tuscan Sun was set.

I reached some new level of grief on the drive from Roccastrada to Cortona, helped along no doubt by my listening to Taylor Swift’s Evermore. I was wanting a wallow and did I ever get one.

I arrived at the lovely Hotel Villa Marsili, where they were so nice and spent 15 minutes showing me a map of town and recommending and marking at least 18 restaurants despite my one night booking. I don’t remember what triggered the tears at first, maybe seeing that my one-person room had a twin bed? And that symbolic visual representation of YOU’RE ALONE! JUST THE ONE IN THIS BED FOR ONE!

I was only meant to be dropping my suitcase before moving my car to the parking lot, but after seeing the bed, I saw myself in the bathroom mirror, and I dramatically took to my knees and held onto the porcelain sink and thought and maybe said out loud, “How did I get here?” It was like a scene from a movie, the kind of scene you think is so fake and no one does in real life. It could be referred to as ‘keening'. I got it together and moved the car and went straight to the Etruscan museum (MAEC) and saw metal clothespins from five centuries before Christ and also cool jewelry.

Every time I was in the room, I cried. After the museum, in the shower, before dinner, after dinner: fully sobbing into the crisp sheets with snot, those weird gasps, the whole thing.

I am actively grieving at least three things: my identity as a partner/wife; the actual person of my husband who was part of my daily life for a decade; and probably most acutely, the hope that I had for the relationship.

Now that we are officially divorced, I can no longer imagine what it would be like, the relationship, if we figured out what was wrong, if we just fixed it and made it good for us. The “maybe if” or “maybe when'“ are gone. The possibility is foreclosed. There is nothing to fix. It’s over. As is all the time I spent trying to figure it out. Intellectually, I understand there’s a reframe here. But I’m having such a hard time imagining a feeling other than this, than being alone and rejected by the person who promised me they wouldn’t.

WHAT IS THIS TRYING TO TEACH ME WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO BE LEARNING CAN WE SPEED IT UP PLEASE