Island Life:Koufonisi

The city has never felt more glum and I feel so disconnected, as if I've been gone for ages. In truth I was only gone for a week which thankfully seemed a lot longer as it was going by but suddenly feels brief and tiresome now it's passed. I wish I had stayed on the island. Time seems to work differently there or wherever summer finds you. As if it stops and starts at its own pace, languidly and hastily all at the same time. An hour feels like ages on the beach and a night feels like a minute. I'm a city girl, I grew up in the city, I adore the city. The traffic, the noise, the impurity and the beauty in the grey and murky. I mean I live in Athens so it's not so murky, actually sunny and alight most days. The murkiness perhaps draws itself from routine, from characters and from the idea that a city should be something out of comic book, dark and brooding. At least in my head. But I adore it. Summers though are really when  Greece is at it's most astonishing. Ever since I was a little girl the islands were my escape. I lived in Santorini as a baby, and later while other kids would visit their grandparent's villages I would be swimming in a different sea, discovering a new island.The water was always essential to me. I was always in the water. I guess it's where I feel most comfortable and weightless, flowing but secure. I swam and held my breath under water until I was blue in the face( I still do) and over the years I've associated the sea, the blue, the island with good things. But I always came back to the city and it always seemed different in its sameness. This time I just didn't get enough. My mind wasn't ready to quit daydreaming and my body didn't want to leave the water. I almost wanted to quit my job, not for any particular reason other than to protest coming back. To live in anarchy, not to conform, not to be told when to come back to responsibility, not to be told when to get out of the water because I'm not a child anymore..and yet isn't it funny that we get told what to do more so now that we are adults than when we were children? Not in the literal sense like when our parents told us to brush our teeth and eat our vegetables. Alas as adults we still have to sleep at a certain time to go to work, work certain hours, look a certain way, eat a certain time and in a sense those things aren't dictated by us we just enforce them on ourselves because of circumstance and routine. Many times I think part of what made me want to be a writer was that I could make my own schedule, not to have an everyday-ness that someone set for me, do it from anywhere and because I hate working with other people. Maybe next year I'll have written a book and moved to an island. Maybe I'll go back to the island we've been going to for the past two years. Speaking of which, the reason I started writing this, my vacation. Koufonisi is paradise, in no way exaggerating it is heaven on earth.

The waters are crystal clear and tirquoise, the cuisine is amazing and the people are friendly but at safe distances. There is a lot of walking involved but it is so worth it. Even this city girl found herself enamored with the blue skies and brownish green shrubs and white flowers that grew in the sand. Walking along the coastline, navigating around rocky, sharp cliffs and white, sandy shores was even more adventurous and majestic done at night, in the pitch black, when the sea looks like oil and everything seems somehow bigger. In total we must have walked about 20-25km during the 5 days we were there. We snorkeled through deep caves that led to open sea and along the rocks where my boyfriend kept collecting live seashells and I kept making him put them back in their "home". We climbed down to the most spectacular hidden beach where the water is milky white and frothy. We didn't spare any expenses or calories when it came to delicious meals and I'm so glad we didn't. I crave luxury and richness and I found all of that in the nature's colors, the sea, the food, the essense of the island life. In the end I don't know that I could live there but it is certainly hard to leave it behind.

Too many fucks

As it happens, the island was good for me. It was like a little vacation from myself. I realised unlike the trend that would have people giving zero fucks, my problem, ironically, is having too many fucks to give. My brain won't switch off and I'm constantly thinking and worrying about too much, all at the same time. It's exhausting really to not only contemplate things that are happening but to not be able to separate them from the hypotheticals you create. Those three days on the island though may have taught me something after all. While I was there I had conversations that revealed myself more honestly than I could have imagined. The words coming out of my mouth were being spouted unconsciously and never had they been wiser. I no longer want to waste myself away for people and situations that don't matter. Neither do I feel like I need to control anything beyond what is in my reach. I will not try to fix anyone who doesn't want to be fixed and that includes aspects of my own personality. I shall take my time, as long as it may be, until things become clear instead of trying desperately to make them so. And if I have too many fucks to give, that's alright too. That's who I am. I care about things.What was interesting was something my friend said that has been on my mind. She said she doesn't think I can be alone, because I have too much to give and need someone to give it to. I took that to mean that I am dependent on others. But no, I'd never thought about it that way, I am not dependent on others, I guess I just realise my full potential when I have people around me that are accepting of what I have to offer them. I like that idea. Further than that, I like this person I'm growing into, with all the quirks and little imperfect details and its the first time I feel that way. I think the reason for that is I always wanted to be perfect and I tried my very best, I achieved a level of what I perceived was perfection and it didn't matter, things still ran their course as they would and for once I didn't believe that was on me, simply because it wasn't. I stopped blaming myself and started being myself, however perfect or imperfect. And you know what? That was enough, people that were important to me were still there, the compliments that I thought depended on being the equivalent of a porcelain doll still came when I was just me, and at the end of the day things were not worse as I thought they would be, they were better(once I got that stick out of my ass). Certain people might think I have no problems, I haven't faced hardship or experienced the worst. When I talk to someone they often get the impression I am the sunniest, most optimistic person, because I'm trying to make the best out of their situations or to see the best in other people. That simply isn't true. I'm prone to self-destructive behavior, I often get depressed and I may at times be one of the least enthusiastic people I know. And yet it's because I've seen the bad that I choose to see the good and it's because I've experienced the unpleasant and been the harshest judge of myself that I want to see the optimism and beauty and judge others kindly. Although it doesn't always work, I try my best to give good advise to others, sometimes in order to hear it myself. I wear my heart on my sleeve and while sometimes I wish I could be all mysterious and elusive, my face betrays all my emotions and I can never seem to hide what I'm thinking. It's fine though, me and my many fucks to give will be alright being just the way we are and you, whoever you are, reading this, will be alright too, just the way you are.