2013: The Turning Point — Part 1: The Day Everything Changed

I believe there are one or two moments in everyone’s life that truly mark a turning point. Moments that knock you down or change you so deeply that they leave you no choice but to react.

Mine came in May 2013.

As I wrote in the previous article, about my first time in Thailand in 2011, my partner at the time, Beppe, had been offered a great job opportunity in Pattaya. We were both very happy about it. Me, perhaps, even more than him: from the very beginning, I had imagined that once his work situation had settled down, I would join him and we would continue our life together in Thailand.

Things, however, didn’t go the way I had imagined.

Sometimes I think certain things simply have to happen the way they do. That if my life had taken a different path, I probably wouldn’t be the person I am today.

What I know for sure is that I wasn’t, and still am not, made for a long-distance relationship. And, to be honest, I wonder if anyone really is.

Fifteen hours of travel, a five- or six-hour time difference, lives that were suddenly unfolding on two different continents: it was a difficult combination even for a relationship that had lasted more than thirteen years.

Even today, I can say that for eleven and a half years, growing up alongside Beppe was a joy. It was also thanks to him that I discovered Muay Thai and Satori.

The last few years, however, were different. After living practically in each other’s pockets, growing up together, sharing the same friends, the same places, and our entire daily life, that distance slowly began to wear us down.

I can only speak for myself: I was completely lost.

For years, Beppe had been my point of reference, my best friend, the person I had built practically my entire adult life with. When I suddenly found myself alone, I realized I no longer really knew who I was without him.

Where did Miriam, Beppe’s partner, end, and where did simply Miriam begin?

After so many years spent sharing thoughts, habits, friends, and pieces of our lives, I had almost stopped being able to tell the two apart.

I had just finished university, which I had started later than most people, and I still hadn’t found a real professional direction. Despite having a degree in Sports Science, the best job I had managed to find was as a gymnastics instructor.

The plan had become to join Beppe in Thailand once his work situation was stable enough.

But that stability never came.

During the periods when I went to visit him in Pattaya, I also tried to see if there might be any possibility of finding work there. At the time, though, I had little experience to put on my CV, my English was far from perfect, and finding a regular job in Thailand as a foreigner wasn’t easy. The frustration kept growing.

Between 2011 and 2013, I returned to Thailand several times: during the winter holidays, in the summer of 2012, and again the following winter. I would stay for a few months, then return to Italy. Beppe had only managed to come home for a few weeks over those two years.

In May 2013, he returned to Italy again.

I still remember how strange he seemed that evening when he came to pick me up from the gymnastics gym, just after getting back from his trip. I thought he was just tired.

We had dinner at his mother’s house and then headed to mine, where at least we had a double bed. On the road between Romans d’Isonzo and Villesse, I finally had to ask him what was wrong.

That was when he told me:

“I came back to Italy for my brother’s wedding and to leave you.”

Boom.

The blow hit me full force. Straight to the heart.

Things between us hadn’t been going well for a while, but I was convinced it was because of the distance. When we were together, in my mind, we were still us. Apart, everything was different.

I cried often, especially after our Skype calls. And even during those calls, by then I was almost always sad. Instead of the cheerful girl he had grown up with and built a life with, Beppe now found himself looking at a completely different person on the screen.

I had fallen into a spiral of sadness and longing that I could no longer escape. I was constantly thinking about how to join him, and living my days without him had become painful.

It really hurt.

Meanwhile, I kept training at Satori, but even my Muay Thai was affected by what I was going through.

I remember a fight in Umbria. As I was walking toward the ring, Alfio, who was with me for that trip, simply put a hand on my shoulder. A small gesture. An “I’m here with you.”

Watch the full fight on YouTube

At any other time, it would have fired me up. That evening, instead, my eyes filled with tears, and I had to make a huge effort not to let them show.

It ended in a draw, with a performance I’d rather forget.

That wasn’t me.

I was still convinced that if we could just be together in the same place again, we could fix everything. That’s why I had never really considered the possibility that he might decide to end our relationship.

When he said those words, I was driving my black Renault Clio.

I pulled over and got out of the car because I needed to breathe. For a few minutes, I truly felt as if everything around me was imploding and nothing made sense anymore.

It was May 23, 2013..

And I had already bought a Qatar Airways ticket to Bangkok.

I even clung to that.

“And now what am I supposed to do with this ticket?”

When he told me to try to get a refund, I realized that, for him, there was nothing left to save.

The ticket, by the way, wasn’t refundable.

In the days that followed, there was another part I remember as particularly painful: telling our families. After thirteen and a half years, we weren’t simply announcing the end of a relationship. In many ways, our families had become one family.

I especially remember the moment we told my dad.

We were all in tears. My dad hugged me tight, so tight. Then he looked at us and asked:

“Is there really nothing you can do? If you love each other, you can find a way.”

I will never forget those words.

Seeing my dad so deeply affected made everything feel even more real. It was as if, every time we said those words to someone, another piece of the life I had known until then became part of the past for good.

A few days later, Beppe left for Pattaya again.

We said goodbye outside my house. He had brought back a bag with some of my things. I hugged him one last time, knowing that, most likely, it really would be the last.

Then he left.

And I stayed there.

Broken.

I even stopped going to the gym. I didn’t want to walk into Satori and face people who had known me for years, answer their questions, or risk bursting into tears.

So I started running. I ran a lot.

But when you run — at least for me — you end up thinking a lot. And sometimes, while I was running, I would get a lump in my throat and start feeling like I was suffocating, almost like having an asthma attack. At that point, I had to stop.

Villesse felt too small for me.

Every street, every place, every person seemed to take me back to a life that, just a few weeks earlier, I thought would be mine forever. I could run as much as I wanted, but I couldn’t escape that feeling.

And above all, I couldn’t escape one thing: I realized I had let events make decisions for me.

I had waited. I had hoped. I had spent months thinking the solution would come from somewhere else.

Years later, looking back, this is what weighs on me most about that period: not the end of the relationship itself, but the fact that I had let myself be carried along by events to the point where I no longer recognized myself.

How could I have allowed myself to become so lost that I couldn’t even make the right decision for myself?

Then, one afternoon, something seemingly insignificant happened.

I was home alone, sitting on the floor and crying. My friend Claudio called me. He was passing by my house in the delivery truck he used for work.

I didn’t feel like seeing anyone.

In the end, I let him come up.

He hugged me.

And in that hug, I suddenly felt small, weak, completely helpless.

That was when a thought became crystal clear in my mind.

Never again.

I never wanted to feel that way again.

That was probably the real turning point.

I had made up my mind.

I was going to take that flight to Bangkok.

I barely wanted to tell anyone. I simply wanted to disappear for a while. To go somewhere no one knew me, where no one saw me as “Miriam, Beppe’s ex,” where every street and every little detail wasn’t tied to a memory.

I felt I needed to understand who I was once everything I had considered an inseparable part of my identity for years was stripped away. I needed to see what was left of the cheerful, independent, happy Miriam I remembered. And from there, figure out what was worth rebuilding.

I wouldn’t have been able to do that in Villesse.

Maybe I wouldn’t have been able to do it on the other side of the world either.

But I had already lost the life I thought I was going to have.

And I had a fucking plane ticket to Bangkok.

It was worth a try.

One thing, however, was certain: I wasn’t going to Pattaya.

I wanted to stay as far away as possible from that city and everything it represented at that moment.

So I started looking for somewhere to go. It only took a little research for me to decide that my destination would be Isan, in northeastern Thailand: a region very different from the tourist destinations I had known until then, and the homeland of many of Thailand’s greatest fighters.

I chose Ubon Ratchathani.

I had three months ahead of me.

I could spend them in Friuli feeling sorry for myself.

Or I could go to the other side of the world and hold on to the one thing I knew for certain was still mine.

Muay Thai.

The one thing that, even in the worst moments, could still make me feel alive.

To make me feel like myself.

Thailand, summer 2013.