Change number 4: I’m cool to travel solo

Girlie holidays were not only mandatory in my early twenties but they were also a much needed medicine; a tonic to gulp heartily after a break up, a tense year of study or as a prerequisite for my quest for sunshine.

Endless hours filled with researching, comparing, asking, haggling and finally, after booking, anticipating. The present day lost its value in the fervent wait of the future; nights out were drained of their appeal, standing for nothing but squandered money that could be better spent on our holiday. Summer wardrobes were thought about well in advance, our pale skins growing darker in front of our very eyes, the visual of the sun drenched versions of ourselves taking precedent over anything else. And then, early airport drives and surreal aeroplane conversations later, we found ourselves in our chosen exotic place. Rising earlier than we ever would have in London, racing ourselves to the beach, worshipping the sun, sky and waves. We’d stay there until sun set, marvelling at the different shade the dusk made our skin. The face loving light of twilight. We loved it.

And for a long time, that’s what holidays meant to me. I associated them with friends, beaches and nightclubs. So when a decade later, I found myself on an aeroplane about to embark on a ten day break alone on the romantic island of Santorini, my excitement matched my fear.

Was ten days too long? Would I feel completely isolated? Beyond this, would I even be safe? Three and a half hours and a Caldera view later, my worries were burnt to nothing by the brightest sunset I had ever seen. I soon found my routine within no routine. Sleeping for as long as I wanted, eating a daily breakfast of bread dipped in honey, taking hour long hot showers and dressing at my leisure. When I left my hotel suite for the day, I often had no idea where I was going, deciding only when I reached the bus station. I slept on a beach of black volcanic sand, read until sunset and wrote. When I met a local village boy, there was no guilt attached to my spending time with him and I spent an afternoon on the back of his of moped, zooming past vineyards and mountains; the island an open air museum. Even a simple green hill offered romance and we sat overlooking the Aegean as he filled a city girl mind with the ways of small island life.

He told me that when it rained, the mountain changed colour, proving that even things that can’t move have their own way of evolving. We kissed goodbye and I never saw him again after that lazy day, but I carefully folded the memory away for when I would need it again.

The days stretched into one long moment and I soon forgot which day it actually was. Clocks and watches lost their role as I woke when rested, ate when hungry and slept when tired. Sure, it was weird at first asking for a ‘table for one’ and I can’t pretend I didn’t crave the comfortable chatter of other adults, but being alone forced me to spark up a conversation with people I would have ordinarily dismissed when in the comfort zone of my friendship. I listened to taxi drivers who regaled me with stories about the local area, found out about the lives of people from the other side of the world and I walked for hours, popping into quaint shops and spotting a donkey or two on my travels.

I left in the middle of the night, hoping the island would forgive me for going. As the plane touched on home land, I felt with it an empowerment that came from giving myself a great opportunity. I knew I would always love the bonding that came with holidaying with friends but in the end, it was important to know I could go it alone sometimes too.

I felt different after and trying to live the same life on my return was weird. The grey pavements bored me and the red bricked houses seemed to block something. But within time and as expected, reality won the race and I grew used to my surroundings again. I suppose they were here first. I could only take what I had learnt about myself and add it to my way of living.

There was nothing else left to do other than to keep dipping my bread into honey because in one way or another, it had rained and I’d changed colour.

 

 

 

 

Change number 3: I’ve outgrown old friends

We’ve all got that one friend. You know, the one whose doorbell you ring on repeat, whose house you go to and before you’ve even sat down, you’ve already raided the fridge, slapped the kettle on and changed the tv channel. The kind of friend that remembers you when you had a mono-brow and bad teeth. The friend whose Mum you have a nickname for and whose face is an indelible etch on the wallpaper that houses your childhood memories.

But what happens when, after years of hanging out on their sofa in comfortable silence, you no longer have anything to say? Or you realise that you disagree with their way of thinking and that somewhere in between cups of tea and drunken nights, the friendship that you once thought was so strong, had been slowly chipped away at with the passing of time and the changing of ideas?

I couldn’t admit it at first because I liked having a friend who had known me for years. It was the warmest of safety blankets and gave me instant trust factor; I must be a good person if I can keep a friend in my life for almost two decades, right? But we had reached the stage that all long friendships must pass; the ‘who are you becoming?’ test. School had passed us by, college was a distant memory and we were now working hard in our chosen careers. Throughout it all, we had stayed friends long enough to have to make the decision; what next in our lives? We were either going to get married and start a family or just continue on to become who we were destined to be. The transient pit-stop in-between teenager and adulthood was drawing to a close. She chose marriage and I chose me.

Her life began to involve wedding dresses and seeking out semi detached homes in suburbia and my life involved enrolling on writing courses, spending hours walking around art galleries and meeting new people. People who hadn’t grown up in an insular community. People who were different to me, who were better than me. Just their presence encouraged different sides to myself. Dimensions that had always been there but had lain dormant in the hope that someday, they would be allowed centre stage.

Prenovias and Wang dresses may have dominated many a conversation but I knew it wasn’t her imminent marriage that made us drift away from one another. After all, many friends have different lifestyles and desires and they make it work. In many cases, the differences are what keep friendships together; various facets complementing one another to provide a solid basis for a strong partnership.

No, it was more the fact that she no longer understood me. She couldn’t understand why, at the age of 30, I had not shown an inherent desire for marriage or children. She couldn’t fathom why I chased a career in writing as opposed to being wholly sated by my comfortable teaching job and she never got why I would well up at the sight of a full moon or falling snow. Instead of challenging me, she ignored this whole new part of my life. She ignored the texts asking her what she thought of my new blog, her face met mine with disdain when I attempted to delve into deeper issues and in the end, she ignored me. Not in the physical sense, no it was a different type of neglect. She was always available to me and open to meeting up but the silences that floated between us were an echo of a dying laughter and punctuated only by comments on television programmes or questions about people we both once knew.

It took a while to admit it to myself but the palpable truth was, we had both changed and we could no longer reserve a space for one another in today’s version of our lives.

But how do you tell an old friend that you no longer want to be friends? That you find their company uncomfortable and that you don’t really know who you are together anymore? It was impossible to speak out without hurting someone.

In the end, I fazed her out. It wasn’t an overnight thing of course and certainly not symptomatic of the vast friendship that we had, but it was the only way I could do it. I did still text her but ceased to suggest meeting and ignored her suggestions of doing so. I didn’t ever call her of my own accord and I declined invites to birthdays and family events that I was once expected to go to.

When I changed my number and didn’t include her in the text to let people know, I knew it was over. And like a person just about to die, our friendship flashed before me; nights spent on holiday lying under the stars on a Mediterranean beach, two teenagers smoking weed on a flat roof and evenings turning into mornings playing cards and laughing. My heart fluttered and I felt a wave of emotion at the line that was being so indefinitely drawn. But I knew. I so knew. Changes would be happening a lot from now on and this was one of them. I was evolving but the me that loved her was still inside and so the love I had for her would always be there. Her laugh, the way she drank her tea and where the spoons were kept in her kitchen; I’d never forget. But it was today’s truth that I couldn’t keep a friendship alive with the insalubrious water of the past.