Once We Repaired Things — Part 7 - Non è una buona giornata

Montalcino

I arrived in Montalcino in the late afternoon.

The bus wound slowly up the mountain roads, and I remember looking out the window in disbelief at how beautiful it all was. The light was beginning to change. The town was glowing softly against the hillside, and as we drew closer, little lights were starting to switch on across the stone buildings.

It looked unreal.

Ancient. Quiet. Safe.

I had wanted to visit this part of Italy for a very long time, and when I finally arrived in Montalcino, I walked slowly up the main street toward the clock tower, trying to take it all in. I still remember the feeling of standing there looking upward at the old stone buildings and narrow streets, dragging my suitcase behind me over the incline while trying to work out where my bed and breakfast was located.

I was exhausted.

Not holiday tired.

Life tired.

And despite the beauty surrounding me, I was carrying far more with me than luggage. 

When I finally found the bed and breakfast, I remember climbing the steep stairs to the entrance with my bags and feeling completely overwhelmed by where I was. I stood there in awe.

I had travelled to one of the most beautiful places I had ever seen. The lights were coming on across the hillside. People were gathering in restaurants and piazzas. Life was unfolding all around me. Yet I felt completely alone, not only because I was travelling by myself, but because the people whose support mattered most seemed unreachable. The beauty was real. The loneliness was real too.

And instinctively, like most people do when they experience something beautiful, I wanted to share it with someone.

So I took a photo.

I believe it was the clock tower near where I was staying. The lights were coming on, the streets were glowing softly, and I felt something close to peace, even if only briefly.

I sent the photo to Paul.

Partly because he was of Italian background. Partly because he was planning to travel to Italy himself not long after me. But mostly because I wanted to share the moment with someone who would appreciate it. 

It was simply:

“Look how beautiful this is.”

But sometime afterward, I realised I had been blocked. Sitting there alone on the other side of the world, that feeling was horrific.

In that moment, I felt profoundly alone. It felt eerie. 

When someone suddenly cuts off communication without explanation during a period when you are already emotionally vulnerable, it feels shattering.

It frightened me.

What made it worse was that I was already not okay before I boarded the plane to Italy.

I hadn’t travelled there because life was wonderful.

I travelled there because I needed to escape.

At that point, I was already struggling under the weight of what had been happening professionally. I was exhausted from trying to hold myself together inside an increasingly unsafe work environment while simultaneously carrying grief, confusion, isolation, and unresolved personal pain.

I now understand it for what it was.

A flight response.

I fled.

But what I discovered in Montalcino was something deeply unsettling:

you can travel thousands of kilometres away and still not escape what is happening to you.

Even there, surrounded by beauty, I could not sleep properly.

I had nightmares while I was in Italy.

Nightmares about work.

Nightmares about returning to Sydney.

Looking back, those nightmares and that dread feel almost like a warning from my own nervous system. I couldn’t have known what lay ahead, but somewhere inside me I already sensed that I was not safe.

At the time, I didn’t yet understand why my body seemed so frightened all the time. The worst of what was going to happen professionally hadn’t even occurred yet. The institutional escalation, the retaliation, the worsening psychosocial harm, the isolation and procedural cruelty that would follow — all of that still lay ahead.

The worst of what was going to happen personally hadn’t occurred yet either. 

But somewhere underneath it all, my nervous system already knew something was terribly wrong.

I was carrying dread long before I had language for it.

Most mornings, I would sit by the window in the dining room of the bed and breakfast with my journal.

The view was breathtaking.

Beyond the piazza below were restaurants beginning their day, stone buildings catching the morning light, and beyond them the rolling Tuscan hills stretching endlessly into the distance. It was everything I had imagined Tuscany would be.

People travel across the world hoping to find places like this.

And yet I would often sit there crying, because what was happening inside me had travelled there too.

I was carrying everything with me.

The uncertainty.

The loneliness.

The fear.

The grief.

The growing dread about returning home.

I could not leave any of it behind in Sydney.

It sat beside me every morning while I wrote in my journal and looked out across one of the most beautiful landscapes I had ever seen.

Giulia, the owner of the bed and breakfast, was kind. She would smile and say to me, “Ma Vicki, è una buona giornata.”

And she was right.

It was a good day.

The sun was shining. The countryside was magnificent. I was in a place I had dreamed of visiting for years.

“Lo so, Giulia,” I said.

“I know. But not in my heart.”

That was perhaps the saddest part.

I could see the beauty.

I simply could not feel it.

What lives in your heart, your soul and your spirit doesn’t disappear simply because you board a plane. It comes with you.

And despite being surrounded by beauty, I felt completely alone.

I didn’t want to go home.

But I couldn’t stay there either.

Looking back now, what unsettles me most is that the feeling I experienced in Montalcino was not entirely new. The fear I felt when communication was abruptly cut off touched something deeper. Soon after, I would experience greater forms of exclusion and silencing in both my personal and professional life. 

With my university employer, it was while trying to raise concerns about psychosocial safety and workplace harm. Different circumstances. Different people. But the same unsettling feeling of having decisions made around me while my own voice seemed to disappear from the narrative. The truth. 

With Paul, what hurts most is the deeper realisation that I was never really seen properly to begin with.

I had already shared enough of myself for someone to understand that I was carrying significant grief and hurt. I had already indicated that my life experience wasn’t  simple and that I was trying very hard to navigate it honestly and tread carefully this time.

And yet, instead of actually getting to know me over time, I felt as though assumptions were made about who I was based on other people, other experiences, other projections that had nothing to do with me.

I became a version of somebody else. Not myself.

That is an incredibly difficult thing to carry when someone represented your last genuine hope that perhaps there was still emotional safety, authenticity, and kindness left in the world, especially when you’re already drowning elsewhere in your life.

Looking back now, that moment in Montalcino feels almost like a premonition, of what would continue personally, and of what was still to come professionally.

Because over time, the pattern became impossible to ignore.

Blocked personally.

Blocked professionally.

Silenced personally.

Silenced professionally.

Excluded from conversations about my own life.

Reduced to assumptions instead of listened to as a human being.

By the time I boarded the plane home to Sydney, I was deeply frightened…

Of returning to my life.

To be continued…

 

Montalcino - Piazza del Popolo e Palazzo dei Priori

For readers interested in the workplace context, see:  

• https://mystory-myvoice.blogspot.com/2025/04/blocking-mobbing-and-truth-2020.html;  
• https://mystory-myvoice.blogspot.com/2026/02/what-nteu-decided-to-do-vs-what-it.html;  
• https://mystory-myvoice.blogspot.com/2026/04/is-it-safe-to-open-what-that-question.html; and
• https://mystory-myvoice.blogspot.com/2026/05/the-deputy-vice-chancellor-of-ethics.html