If you know my father, you know he has a habit of findinf hinself in the centre of the party- he has sparkling Irish blues eyes and an amazing head of jet black hair considering he’s 62 (“52 don’t you mean!” He’d yell at me) and will keep you entertained with various funny stories until sunrise (unless you’re related to him which means you’ve heard them all a fair few times, the repetition sending you to sleep.) His generosity in buying a round and making sure everyone in the establishment has a drink in their hand doesn’t seem to do his popularity any harm either (can’t say the same for his bank balance the following morning though..)
He’s visited Mil Palmeras a fair few times but usually when I’m not here. The last time we were both here at the same time was when I was living here with my ex-boyfriend four years ago. Dad took a particular interest in my ex’s little Jack Russell which amazed everyone since he will swear blind that he hates dogs. He got rather merry one night shall we say, took the little dog in his arms and climbed into the flower bed of one of the restaurants and danced with the dog in the window- the faces of those inside eating their dinner being somewhere between amusement and shock. My advice to anyone reading this young or old is- don’t waste energy being embarrassed by your parents- especially Irish parents- have a beer and watch the show, which is exactly what I did. I sat in the bar next door, watching my father dance in a flower bed with a very confused looking Jack Russell being jerked about.
The afternoon he arrives we take a stroll to the beach and several people say hello to him in the street- when I go to introduce him, I’m told, “We know Adrian, how are you mate?” To which my father just stands there looking slightly baffled, nodding politely.
“Who’s that then?” He asks me innocently when they leave. This is a regular occurrence during the week he’s here and I dread to think the alcahol consumption on his boys weekends over here since it seems to have blanked out any memory of meeting the locals. Whenever he has previously come to this little town, I’ve told him he can do what he likes, but specifically he is not allowed to tell anyone that we're related.
We eat in the steak restaurant in town, ordering two fillet steaks but when they arrive I nearly have a heart attack. I literally, have never seen a cut of steak so big on one plate. Whether the generous portion is due to him befriending ‘Paddy’ the Irish guy that runs the place is another question. The Irish are known for their ‘open arms’ mentality; put two Irish strangers together and within twenty minutes they’re best mates- suits me fine as I stare down at the mountain of meat on my plate. Funny enough, Paddy has lived in Essex at some point in his life- the Essex and the Irish get everywhere it seems…
The bar of this restaurant has a tradition where people write their names on the bar in marker ink, and Dad points out his name scrawled alongside various companions, one of which being ‘little Nick.’ Now little Nick wasn’t that little- he was my father's apprentice for many years, a really nice guy and came out here to Spain with my dad when they were painting the apartment a couple of years ago. He promptly fell in love with one of the waitresses from this particular restaurant, who to be fair, is particularly lovely- and little Nick sat at the bar goggle-eyed every night after they had finished painting. Dad told me how on the last night little Nick proceeded to get so drunk at the prospect of leaving in the morning, he fell off his bar stool and had to be carried home (he had to be carried to the airport and onto the plane pretty much too as a result of a head-splitting jaw-dropping hangover that ensued) never to see the beautiful waitress again.
Now if we’re talking about little Nick, there is one more story that has to be mentioned here. Nick used to walk with a bit of a limp- and Dad used to tease him, saying “Whoever gave you that leg, give it back.” He struggled with the ladders and the scaffolding slightly, but never complained and never said a word about my father’s teasing. Little Nick had been working for for about a year when he and his mother turned up at our door step. They were given a cup of tea and sat in the kitchen whereby little Nick’s mother solemnly said:
“We’re really sorry Adrian, we should have told you before, but the thing is, Nicks only got one leg.”
If I had one wish in this life, it would literally be to see my father’s face at that moment when Mrs-little Nick said that sentence.
It turns out that little Nick has had a prosthetic leg since he was born, but didn’t think it worth a mention when he took on a painting and decorating apprenticeship- up and down ladders, hopping around scaffolding. Perhaps an interesting profession to choose, perhaps not. Never the less, Dad didn’t stop the “give back that leg” jokes, in fact they took on new meaning and hilarity now that they were both in on the gag.
Anyway, back in España, we head off to the English bar after managing to tackle the huge steaks, and I decide to not mention the story of the burly bartenders that work here that paid me a 5am visit and scared the b-Jesus out of me. (See ‘Swedes and the Scantily Clad’…) He does however decide to wind up the burlier of the burley bartenders by asking for a coffee with his brandy. Now this may seem like quite a reasonable request, but if you have ever been a bartender, when you’ve taken that coffee machine apart, cleaned all the pieces and switched it off, it’s not going to make coffee for the Pope, let-alone my father. I’m not sure how the burlier of the burly bartenders is taking my father’s teasing as he goes on and on, using every coffee related joke, or worse, every lazy bartender and land-lord joke he knows- and I’m beginning to wonder whether he's going to receive a punch on the nose when I see him stumble off out the bar and down the road. Now before I have a chance to work out whether I’m supposed to follow him, he returns, with a plastic takeaway cup of coffee from another restaurant clutched triumphantly in his hand and sits at the bar with his brandy with a smile on his face. I watch the burlier of the burly bartenders to see if he is going to interpret his smile as smugness and therefore deliver him a flat nose. Dad proclaims loudly as he takes a sip; “aahhhh there’s nothing like a coffee with your brandy…mmmmm yum.” I resist the urge to punch him on the nose myself to save the burly bartender the trouble.
He meets a rather intoxicated fellow from Belfast who joins our ever -growing group, informing us that this evening, he has drank 27 pints. We are all suitable impressed at this statement. The Belfast accent is rather irritating with its distinctive twang- my dad has lived in England since he was a teenager so has lost the sharpness of it. This fellow, sadly has not.
I’m cleaning the bar at 7.30am but my father, being an even bigger party host than me, decides to invite everybody back to our apartment for an after party- there being a crate of beer in the fridge, although it’s probably important to mention here that it didn’t actually belong to either of us- my friend ‘trimmed’ had planted it there since he pretty much lives at mine and had decided by bringing a crate and leaving it in the fridge, my apartment was therefore more hospitable and ready for him any time of the day or night.
I’m not feeling the after-party and I tell Dad and his band of merry men that he’s collected like the pied piper on his way home from the pub, that regrettably I’m going to retire for the evening… Trimmed and my beautiful South African friend make a similarly sharp exit from the patio as my father and his Belfast buddy are beyond the point of being able to hold a coherent conversation.
My friends go off to the beach and told me the next day that they saw my father and his Belfast buddy stumbling along the beach- stopping to draw stuff in the sand. (!?) I probe him the next day and he’s quite indignant: “I wanted to go on the fecking walk on my tod.” Translation- he didn’t want company.
Dads told me before that he likes to go on evening beach walks (drunken beach stumbling perhaps a better description.) but I find it endearing for more than just comic reasons- my parents are divorced and me and my brothers always laugh incredulously at the fact we cannot imagine what they could have ever had in common in the first place- they’re so opposite. But hearing him talk about his love for an evening beach walk, how it makes him feel, I realize I’ve heard this speech before. My mum when she’s out here gets up every morning before any of us stir and goes for a long beach walk. And there it is- a perfect metaphor; they do walk on the same sand, but not at the same time, polar opposite, but there’s something there that connected them, however long ago it was.
Sometimes liking the same sand between your toes isn’t enough when you’re not walking on the same beach any more.
Then arrives my last night working on the beach bar. I have loved this job all summer and am actually sad that it’s the end of the season. Sitting on the sand before my shift I get a bit confused as to why I’m coming home- I’ve been offered work in two others bars and places to stay with friends because I hate staying on my own so if I want to stay, really I can. People say to me- why go home? You’ve finished uni, what have you got to go back for? I think it’s because for me, this place is a suspended reality- it doesn’t feel like real life. I don’t know whether that actually makes sense to anyone, but this town is a place that I speak a different language, I live barefoot or in flip flops, my make up bag disappears, I don’t have a pair of straighteners out here, people give me keys to bars and responsibility, I haven’t been clothes shopping all summer, eaten MacDonalds or even really seen any other franchise restaurant. I don’t think I particularly miss any of those things, but it’s a different life, and I like that I can go between the two.
So it’s my last night- and everybody comes down to the bar- I do my cocktail making thing and have the music really loud, I even have a request- from my father- “Melly, play that one, you know, ‘we do not speak English’ or something.”
"You mean 'We No Speak Americano' dad?”
"Yesss! That’s the one kido! Stick that record on for us."
It’s a usb stick, not a record but I digress. A fair few “la Melodia” cocktails are handed out and ‘We No Speak Americano’ played probably too many times but hey, everyone is dancing, and I’m looking around thinking one day, I’m going to have my own beach bar. And I mean it.
I close up around 3.30am and head to the English bar where some sort of lock-in is ensuing. Actually it’s not a lock-in but more of the-customers-won’t-go-home-so-I’m-still-here look on the burly bar tender’s face. Dad asks for a coffee and brandy. I wait for the black eye.
Luckily for him suddenly everyone think that’s a good idea and being outnumbered, the coffee machine is switched on- victory! We sit in the bar until 5.30am whereby my father invites everyone round to our apartment. Again. What amazes me is how everyone intends to drive there. Now this is a tiny Spanish village at nearly 6am, but driving when you can’t count the fingers in front of your eyes is a very very bad idea. (Also the fact that our apartment is a 45 seconds walk away slightly confuses me as to why everyone needed to drive there.) Any way, the usually Miller's Villa shenanigans ensue and I fall asleep after another, and one of the last, sunrises I will see in this beautiful town for a while…
Saturday, 25 September 2010
Tuesday, 14 September 2010
Batman, Footballers, Love and Mother Nature...
The Romanian security guard is like batman. I’ve mentioned this rather interesting character in previous blogs and its about time he gets some of the summer lime light (although he’s told me specifically not to mention his name…)
His job is to guard my beach bar and one other owned by the elusive Jose who also owns two more beach bars and a restaurant. I remember Jose years ago when he used to be just a waiter in one of the restaurants, and since this is a small town and rumours fly around, the version I have is that he married a Scandinavian lady who runs one of the most successful restaurants in town and she bought him the first two beach bars, Jose making enough money from them to buy two more. He spends the day going from bar to bar and can always be spotted by his strange habit of taking beer in a tiny cup and preferring it to be poured as half foam and half beer. So technically in each bar he’s only really having about an eighth of a pint, but if he does that all day long, by the time he gets to me at about 9pm to faff around with the takings, he’s usually a bit merry. Men with money often mistake the attention they get from women to be accounted for by their supposed good looks rather than using their common sense and realizing that its got more to do with their bank balance, so their self confidence with the ladies (especially ones that are half their age) is amusing, if not slightly disturbing. I generally play up to his small talk and nod understandably at his insistence that I wear a mini skirt to work. YUCK. I do manage to negotiate a pay rise though… (I wear shorts most days just to piss him off.)
Anyway, back to batman-he’s earned this prestigious nickname from his disappearing/ reappearing game. There’s a cliff between my beach bar and the other one he looks out for and you often see a dark silhouette, one foot on the dry wall looking down at the various partying shenanigans taking place down here, then you’ll look back and he’s gone, only for him to be standing next to you ten seconds later. This super-hero style movements unnerved me at first, but very quickly became a game between me and my friends; sitting with their back to the cliff, they’d turn around and see him, then turn again and he’s be gone. I’m pretty sure batman indulged in this little party trick, enjoying our screams of horror and admiration. When I asked him what hours he worked, he explained that it changed through the season- he starts at sun down, and finishes at sunrise. My heartbreaks slightly at the thought of not being able to see the sun while living on the coast, but batman’s not too bothered.
He’s a bit of a caffeine addict, and apart from buckets of strong black coffee, his preferred beverage is a disgusting concoction of coca cola and instant coffee, which bubbles up in his glass becoming almost a thick brown paste almost guaranteed to give you a stroke. Red Bull eat your heart out.
For some reason I find myself pouring out my current tale of woe to him one evening- a typical boy meets girl week of holiday romance, then (sadly just as typical) boy goes home and girl adds boy on facebook to find boy has a girlfriend. Pah.
Now I’ve mentioned before batman’s ability to pull weird and wonderful quotes and phrases from out of his hat (or cape) and in response to my pathetic not-even-heartbreak moping around, he pats me on the head and tells me with a serious look;
“When one man goes in the house and cannot find something- he look outside” and shrugs his shoulders at me.
Ok- I’m not quite sure whether I’m supposed to be the inside or the outside in this little metaphor, but by the time I work out what he means, he’s disappeared off into the dark before I can protest.
I probe him further when he returns for another coffee. He says that this is nature’s way, that marriage is a tradition that we are taught by society from when we are small rather than monogamy being something that nature intended.
“The earth reproduces, and then there is more life.” He says. “Live life with your eyes not from what they tell you.” I understand what he means, but I like to think of marriage and the bonds we build as more than just a tradition, not just something we do because that’s what we think we’re supposed to do. Surely we’ve evolved- men aren’t going against nature by being monogamous. Surely we’ve evolved from animals that follow urges and instincts in to beings that build bonds, make connections with other human beings, feel loyalty and respect. We’re creatures that love- not just mate and reproduce under the pull of mother nature.
Men have this amazing ability; to compartmentalize. They can be in love and yet cheat- they can be a father, but still act on impulse. It seems every day we pick up the news and another footballer has cheated on his wife or girlfriend- its a growing catalogue of infidelity. But no one is surprised. I read in one of the broadsheet newspapers that what do people expect; if you make a young, uneducated male a famous millionaire almost overnight- how can we expect him to live a sensible respectable life. These people don’t live normal lives. Women throw themselves at footballers, even a man with great will-power would have serious trouble. But isn’t that sad that’s what it comes down to: will-power. They have to willfully stop themselves betraying the person they’ve built a life with, had children with. The man that wants to sleep with anything in a skirt seems to be completely separate to the man that plays football, to the man that goes home to his pregnant wife; he plays many roles and they are all completely separate in his conscience until they’re caught, by which point they’re on their knees with apologies (to sponsors as well as spouses.) Would it be biased to say that women have more of a connection between all the roles they play?
Batman also reckons that men can’t say how they feel, but I think of my friends out in Spain (in reference to the ‘my size crew’ here) and I think he’s wrong- that’s too much of a generalization- he’s letting men off the hook as it were by lumping them all together in an Alpha-male-following-natural-urges group. My wonderful boy mates out here are as soppy as hell; they fall in love every weekend and give it 100%. I’ve seen them get destroyed by girls cheating on them.
So its men and women. What kind of creatures are we that we can make a connection so strong with another person we want to declare it forever in front of God and the law, only to break it by sleeping with someone that doesn’t mean anything in comparison. I don’t think it’s that we’re better than animals- it’s just we’re far more complicated, making bonds and commitments we then don’t seem to be able to live up to. Maybe batman’s right. Maybe we’re not supposed to. Maybe that insatiable feeling of love isn’t meant to last forever. “Nada es para siempre.” He tells me. Nothing is forever. I don’t want to believe he’s right.
I realize my indignant moping around its not about Mr holiday fling- his face fades into nothing, it’s not that I want to be his girlfriend, I wanted him not have a girlfriend- because by him disappearing off back home to his long-suffering Mrs it made me feel cheap- his little holiday fling, whereas I wanted to be worth more, and more than that- he had me convinced that he felt more than that.
The boys don’t understand when I try and explain how pissed off I am.
“So did you want to meet up with him again when you got back to England?” they ask.
"No."
“So what does it matter that he has a girlfriend?” They tell me shrugging their shoulders.
I find their reply interesting considering they all, in turn, have been screwed over by members of the female species. These boys live in a town where girls arrive for a summer holiday in skimpy clothes and up for a good time for a week and disappear off back home into oblivion- their world is a playground. But they fall in love so easily it amazes me. I really have had an amazing insight in the male brain this summer- maybe it’s because I’ve never been so close to group of boys as I am out here before-but they’ve really surprised me. I get treated like one of them, which although endearing, needs to put out there that actually, I am a girl- so graphic descriptions of their sexual activities don’t go down too well when I’m eating my dinner.
I’m shocked at actually how much they notice. I listen to them talk about girls- they notice who's put on weight, who's lost weight and I’m outraged as women’s magazine have always sworn that’s our hang up- men don’t stress and obsess about weight the way we do. This is a lie- when my brother’s friends were all out here ‘Men’s Health’ magazine contained enough ‘advice’ to turn any bloke into a neurotic dieting, body building mess. I’d literally say it was more intense than women’s dieting magazines. The men’s magazine where a carved and chiseled figure on the front was interviewed completely shocked me. This man’s entire life literally revolved around what he could and couldn’t eat, eating ridiculous amounts of protein, complicated instructions when it came to carbohydrates and constant exercising. Yes his body looked pretty jaw-dropping, but I wouldn’t have said it was particularly attractive. And what was more unattractive was the fact his life revolved around the maintaining of this body. It’s the type of man you’d go on a date with and all they’d talk about is themselves, their body, and I’d hazard a guess that he is most definitely compensating for something else…
Its comical to think in this new age of dieting and body mania, sitting in a restaurant, it could be the male fussing about what he can and can’t possible eat.
Batman meanwhile turns up again from his prowling around in the dark for another coffee and gives up trying to explain to me the ways of men and the conversation switches to books. He’s used to seeing me with my battered brown notepad down here, and always gets slightly suspicious when I write while we’re talking. “You don’t put my name or my job on the internet” he’s told me several times but I can’t help it, the things he says deserve a blog post, so I scribble away.
I always like to ask people what books they’re in to- it’s my way of reading people if you like, you can tell a lot about a person by the things they read. He lists some of his favourites from when he was a boy- ‘The Three Musketeers,’ ‘The Picture of Dorian Grey’ to name a few. I get him to write down some authors for me that he’d recommend and he pours out names I’ve never heard of; Cervantes, Che, Sven Hassel, Balzak- he writes in capitals on my notepad, explaining plots and histories in Spanish to me.
He’s read Socrates and Plato and I get a bit geekishly over excited because I love Greek philosophy and literature, and he finds my squeaking and prodding him as we talk quite amusing if not tiring. Here I am, sitting in a beach bar, barefoot, talking about Plato’s republic in Spanish with a Romanian soldier from the French legion. Life is full and interesting and never ceases to amaze me every day.
I tell him about my university, how sad I was to finish, that it was the happiest three years in the most beautiful place and he tells me: “There is time, to see things more beautiful than this.” Two months ago I would have regarded this statement as sacrilege, (fellow Royall Holloway students will understand my indignation) but talking to him; someone so different from my walk of life, someone who has seen so much, so many different things compared to my short life, I realise that maybe he’s right.
My friend nicknamed ‘trimmed’ turns up at the bar (see previous blog if you really want to know where this nickname came from, do so at your own peril.) He always sits on a stool at the end and keeps me occupied when it’s quiet and in return I provide him with beer and mojitos. He’s sweet natured and feels like I do about this little town-I love the way he gets excited about the very smell of the place when he gets off the plane because that’s exactly how I feel. For me that excitement hasn’t faded, but I feel over the last few years I’ve made the most of every drop of sunshine here. This is my favourite place in the world and I got to live here, learn the language, be a part of the people; I have loved every street, and every path, spending hours as a kid wandering around all the little unfinished roads. This is my home on some deeper level but I’m getting closer to getting ready to say goodbye to this place. I have a tattoo on my hip of the Spanish bull, el torro- Spain is somewhere in my blood, the people the culture, the memories I’ve created here. I made a life and history here. This was my first time away from home at eighteen years old here, my first full-time job, my first love.. This place is my story, and if this blog is to be a slice of my life here- it all deserves a mention.
Every love story deserves to be written, no matter how big or small, because it’s the one thing that drives human nature apart from any other species. It’s why I don’t buy that men cheat and ‘plant their seed’ due to some natural instinct that they can’t fight. We’ve evolved from that. And anyone that’s ever been in love- truly, madly in love knows that.
I used to hold my breath every time he left the apartment. He’d only be out for cigarettes but I’d be so sure that he wouldn’t come back, that something would happen to him in the fifteen minutes he was usually gone. In my mind it just was not possible that a human being could be physically this happy. It wasn’t that I felt worried that something could happen, I felt I knew something would happen to him. I was too happy; he’d be taken from me to balance it up if that makes sense. I’d try and visualise him waiting for the lift, stepping in and pressing the button for the ground floor. He’d walk out of the apartment building and I’d imagine him smiling at various neighbours we didn’t know and walk down the hill toward the beach. I don’t think he knew I was watching but I’d stare intently from our balcony window waiting to see his Hawaiian shorts and scruffy t-shirt stride past. He was famous in our town for his horrific dress sense- he loved oranges and purples and had never heard of the word ‘clash’ to the point I thought he must be colour blind.
(When we moved to England I remember being genuinely worried, imagining him stepping out of Romford station in his favourite bright orange shorts and a purple t-shirt. “You’re going to get murdered,” I warned him solemnly- “we have to take you shopping before you enter east London”…)
Of course he’d always return unharmed, multi-coloured clothes intact (sadly) and I’d hold him so tightly for a few seconds at the door that sometimes after pulling away he would hold my head in his hands, looking at me, afraid something had happened while he had gone.
After a summer of working night shifts in bars our body clocks were completely back to front and would wake up at six in the evening. We’d moved from Mil Palmeras to Malaga and in this new apartment in this new town it was just me and him; there was no work in October with the tourist season coming to an end so with no income we’d would fill our evenings by watching movies and Spanish television and going to the beach at 3am. We’d bring sandwiches and sit on the empty beach bar tables listening to the sea on what felt like our private beach. We’d watch early morning cooking programmes before bed which would always make us hungry, but would improvise when it came to food. We managed to survive on pasta and oil for four days once because we had no money. We’d hide cigarettes in different places around the apartment so that when we ran out and had no money to buy more, there would always be one more cigarette that we could share. We drove without car insurance (verrry carefully) for a while because we just couldn’t afford it and one day we ended up at a toll booth for a bridge. “Ahh man,” he said to the toll booth fellow who was looking rather annoyed at our little dilemma, “Sorry, but we forgot our euro.” Our single solitary euro. And we laughed. (The toll booth dude did not.) I felt untouchable. Money was nothing, I had some pretty dodgy jobs (that definitely deserve a separate post at some point..) that to be fair, sometimes I truly hated but I felt like no of it mattered, I was untouchable because nothing on this earth could affect me outside of my little bubble of me and him.
I remember feeling afraid. Afraid when I realized that I would jump in front of a car for that man. I would literally cut my own arm off than let him get hurt. I remember that realization coming to me so calmly, realizing that all the drama of love and sacrifice suddenly was so clear and obvious, it just made so much sense. That frightened me, that I truly loved someone more than myself- my own life.
I’d ask- “Why do you love me?” And he’d say, “Because you love me.” That would drive me to distraction. I wanted to know we were built on something more than that. But really it didn’t matter because that’s when I knew I loved him; because I wasn’t afraid. It didn’t matter whether he laughed in my face, or ran a mile when after one week of us being together I told him I was in love with him; it was irreversible, unchangeable. It didn’t rely on what he felt, how I felt was strong enough to stand on its own, regardless of whether it was reciprocated. It didn’t rely on his love or his affection. I was completely and utterly his, whether he wanted me or not, and I wasn’t even scared.
Even now, I can’t find a fault with that man, I only have good memories of that relationship. He never told a single lie, he never cheated, he only loved and cared for me. And yet it wasn’t enough. Why doesn’t love last? Tell me that. It’s so hard to watch something you were so sure of just fall apart. Something you would have bet your life on just unravel so simply and gracefully that it’s difficult to imagine that not long ago it was hard to breathe without it.
I think that’s what’s scary about marriage- what happens if one day you stop loving your husband? I don’t think it happened overnight to me, and to be fair I was very young. But it’s more scary than infidelity- at least then there would be shouting and yelling, a direction to aim your hurt or loss. But when love fades, the ending of something so important feels unjustified; its deserves a bang, thunder and lightning, not the word fade, and a closing curtain.
If you fall out of love with your husband you’re tied in knots with mortgages, cars, finance, children, social networks, and couples nights: do you wrench your life apart to chase that insatiable feeling where u can’t bear it when they leave the room? Where they are a part of the very oxygen you need to breathe?
I don’t know the answer to that question. I know I made the right decision to break up with my best friend, my first love, because I fell out of love. For no reason other than I just knew I didn’t feel the same anymore and being crazy in love is worth the mess you make. That sounds incredibly selfish but I’ll chase my whole life to feel that way again, where you’re terrified and strong all at once, a lamb and lion in the same body. It’s worth the chase.
I do know I broke his heart. And that kills me. It always will. To think I caused a single tear to run down his cheeks makes me want to scratch my own eyes out. But when its gone its gone and to stay and hold their hand when it doesn’t tingle in your fingertips anymore is more of a crime- Love does not pity.
Sometimes I felt I was a tornado in his life, He was the only thing that made sense to me at eighteen, when everything else was uncertain, in a foreign country on my own, I didn’t know who I was or where the hell I was going in my life, I just knew I was going with him.
He stormed out once during a heated argument, his sudden, inconsequential exit enraging me to tears, far outweighing the argument’s origin. I don’t remember now what it was about. I ran to the balcony window, watching for his stocky figure to come past the communal gardens down the road towards the town centre. I watched too frightened to blink, searching the quiet road for him. When no multi-coloured clothes appeared, I felt as if I was on the border of madness. He returned within twenty minutes, having sat on the bench in the car park behind our building, his natural peace and calm unable to handle impassionate rages. I told him if he ever walked out again, I would leave him.
The next time an argument ensued, a slice of panic cut me as I watched him put on his shoes and head towards the door. I beat him to it, shoving him aside and covering the door.
“You’re not leaving” I said, pointing my finger at him and proceeded to run out of the front door down the four flights of steps to the entrance. I paused when I got outside, unsure of the evening freedom that I had procured for myself. It took approximately twenty seconds for me to realise that I couldn’t get back into the main building without keys and I couldn’t leave the car park as I didn’t have the buzzer to re-enter. I was barefoot.
So I sat on the edge of one of the flower beds, strangely content in the early dark among the bougainvillea, waiting for another resident to pass so I could slip back in, all the while feeling an unhealthy sense of satisfaction at the suffering I hoped I was causing upstairs. To be the person waiting by the window was the worst type of torture I could imagine, although looking back, he was probably relieved to have peace and quiet as I was left to calm down somewhere else.
Out in the flower bed I lasted fifteen minutes until a neighbour suspiciously let a barefoot red-eyed English girl back into the building. On my return he said quietly that if I was to do that again could I please take my mobile phone. He didn’t ask where I had gone as he looked down at my naked feet. He had had his turn sitting at the window sill, and so I felt he could be forgiven. Or maybe it was me who was forgiven.
I’m writing this down thinking about these footballers, and what batman said, and the fact that even though I broke up with my ex last year, I never want to forget how I felt. I’m smiling writing this: I love writing about that time in my life- I’m not sad, I feel lucky that I can say I know what crazy-in-love feels like, but it would be sad to still be together and not feel that way anymore. I’m remembering that time with awe- at myself, and human beings for having the capacity to feel like that that about another human being. That’s why I refuse to let mother nature win this one- about men following some deep-seated old instincts that mother nature planted in them about spreading their seeds. I can’t imagine being in love like that and sleeping with someone else, because how could you hurt them like that if you loved them? And even if temptation lurks after a few drinks, a sticky situation, surely that insatiable feeling, the feeling that there’s only the two of you in the world- surely it’s not even a competition?
When it fades, and eyes wander, let go of their hand before you go reach for another. Because I know if he had of hurt me when I was feeling that way about him, I would have died. I don’t think I would ever ever have trusted anyone again if he had betrayed me. I know he won’t read this, but I’ve always wanted to thank him for taking my heart and giving it back in one piece, letting me love him an insane amount all over Spain, making him move back to England with me, and the dignity he had when I’d exhausted all love out of me.
I think Love is a blind crazy torneado that has you sprawling in all directions, but not into the arms of another. Humans have the ability to love and to hurt, in a way that animals don’t. So don’t tell me it’s nature that make men cheat. We make bonds and connections and have to accept the consequences when those bonds are damaged. Sod mother nature- I’m backing evolution.
Do women love men more that men love their women? Surely that can’t be it. Maybe women are able to respect relationships more than men do, but that seems to much of a generalization. I’m not even saying that women don’t screw up as much as men do. So if were saying we all do it. Then what??
Then its not love. If you love, its stays in your pants boys and girls. End of story.
“Love to faults is always blind, always is to joy inclined. Lawless, winged, and unconfined, and breaks all chains from every mind.”
His job is to guard my beach bar and one other owned by the elusive Jose who also owns two more beach bars and a restaurant. I remember Jose years ago when he used to be just a waiter in one of the restaurants, and since this is a small town and rumours fly around, the version I have is that he married a Scandinavian lady who runs one of the most successful restaurants in town and she bought him the first two beach bars, Jose making enough money from them to buy two more. He spends the day going from bar to bar and can always be spotted by his strange habit of taking beer in a tiny cup and preferring it to be poured as half foam and half beer. So technically in each bar he’s only really having about an eighth of a pint, but if he does that all day long, by the time he gets to me at about 9pm to faff around with the takings, he’s usually a bit merry. Men with money often mistake the attention they get from women to be accounted for by their supposed good looks rather than using their common sense and realizing that its got more to do with their bank balance, so their self confidence with the ladies (especially ones that are half their age) is amusing, if not slightly disturbing. I generally play up to his small talk and nod understandably at his insistence that I wear a mini skirt to work. YUCK. I do manage to negotiate a pay rise though… (I wear shorts most days just to piss him off.)
Anyway, back to batman-he’s earned this prestigious nickname from his disappearing/ reappearing game. There’s a cliff between my beach bar and the other one he looks out for and you often see a dark silhouette, one foot on the dry wall looking down at the various partying shenanigans taking place down here, then you’ll look back and he’s gone, only for him to be standing next to you ten seconds later. This super-hero style movements unnerved me at first, but very quickly became a game between me and my friends; sitting with their back to the cliff, they’d turn around and see him, then turn again and he’s be gone. I’m pretty sure batman indulged in this little party trick, enjoying our screams of horror and admiration. When I asked him what hours he worked, he explained that it changed through the season- he starts at sun down, and finishes at sunrise. My heartbreaks slightly at the thought of not being able to see the sun while living on the coast, but batman’s not too bothered.
He’s a bit of a caffeine addict, and apart from buckets of strong black coffee, his preferred beverage is a disgusting concoction of coca cola and instant coffee, which bubbles up in his glass becoming almost a thick brown paste almost guaranteed to give you a stroke. Red Bull eat your heart out.
For some reason I find myself pouring out my current tale of woe to him one evening- a typical boy meets girl week of holiday romance, then (sadly just as typical) boy goes home and girl adds boy on facebook to find boy has a girlfriend. Pah.
Now I’ve mentioned before batman’s ability to pull weird and wonderful quotes and phrases from out of his hat (or cape) and in response to my pathetic not-even-heartbreak moping around, he pats me on the head and tells me with a serious look;
“When one man goes in the house and cannot find something- he look outside” and shrugs his shoulders at me.
Ok- I’m not quite sure whether I’m supposed to be the inside or the outside in this little metaphor, but by the time I work out what he means, he’s disappeared off into the dark before I can protest.
I probe him further when he returns for another coffee. He says that this is nature’s way, that marriage is a tradition that we are taught by society from when we are small rather than monogamy being something that nature intended.
“The earth reproduces, and then there is more life.” He says. “Live life with your eyes not from what they tell you.” I understand what he means, but I like to think of marriage and the bonds we build as more than just a tradition, not just something we do because that’s what we think we’re supposed to do. Surely we’ve evolved- men aren’t going against nature by being monogamous. Surely we’ve evolved from animals that follow urges and instincts in to beings that build bonds, make connections with other human beings, feel loyalty and respect. We’re creatures that love- not just mate and reproduce under the pull of mother nature.
Men have this amazing ability; to compartmentalize. They can be in love and yet cheat- they can be a father, but still act on impulse. It seems every day we pick up the news and another footballer has cheated on his wife or girlfriend- its a growing catalogue of infidelity. But no one is surprised. I read in one of the broadsheet newspapers that what do people expect; if you make a young, uneducated male a famous millionaire almost overnight- how can we expect him to live a sensible respectable life. These people don’t live normal lives. Women throw themselves at footballers, even a man with great will-power would have serious trouble. But isn’t that sad that’s what it comes down to: will-power. They have to willfully stop themselves betraying the person they’ve built a life with, had children with. The man that wants to sleep with anything in a skirt seems to be completely separate to the man that plays football, to the man that goes home to his pregnant wife; he plays many roles and they are all completely separate in his conscience until they’re caught, by which point they’re on their knees with apologies (to sponsors as well as spouses.) Would it be biased to say that women have more of a connection between all the roles they play?
Batman also reckons that men can’t say how they feel, but I think of my friends out in Spain (in reference to the ‘my size crew’ here) and I think he’s wrong- that’s too much of a generalization- he’s letting men off the hook as it were by lumping them all together in an Alpha-male-following-natural-urges group. My wonderful boy mates out here are as soppy as hell; they fall in love every weekend and give it 100%. I’ve seen them get destroyed by girls cheating on them.
So its men and women. What kind of creatures are we that we can make a connection so strong with another person we want to declare it forever in front of God and the law, only to break it by sleeping with someone that doesn’t mean anything in comparison. I don’t think it’s that we’re better than animals- it’s just we’re far more complicated, making bonds and commitments we then don’t seem to be able to live up to. Maybe batman’s right. Maybe we’re not supposed to. Maybe that insatiable feeling of love isn’t meant to last forever. “Nada es para siempre.” He tells me. Nothing is forever. I don’t want to believe he’s right.
I realize my indignant moping around its not about Mr holiday fling- his face fades into nothing, it’s not that I want to be his girlfriend, I wanted him not have a girlfriend- because by him disappearing off back home to his long-suffering Mrs it made me feel cheap- his little holiday fling, whereas I wanted to be worth more, and more than that- he had me convinced that he felt more than that.
The boys don’t understand when I try and explain how pissed off I am.
“So did you want to meet up with him again when you got back to England?” they ask.
"No."
“So what does it matter that he has a girlfriend?” They tell me shrugging their shoulders.
I find their reply interesting considering they all, in turn, have been screwed over by members of the female species. These boys live in a town where girls arrive for a summer holiday in skimpy clothes and up for a good time for a week and disappear off back home into oblivion- their world is a playground. But they fall in love so easily it amazes me. I really have had an amazing insight in the male brain this summer- maybe it’s because I’ve never been so close to group of boys as I am out here before-but they’ve really surprised me. I get treated like one of them, which although endearing, needs to put out there that actually, I am a girl- so graphic descriptions of their sexual activities don’t go down too well when I’m eating my dinner.
I’m shocked at actually how much they notice. I listen to them talk about girls- they notice who's put on weight, who's lost weight and I’m outraged as women’s magazine have always sworn that’s our hang up- men don’t stress and obsess about weight the way we do. This is a lie- when my brother’s friends were all out here ‘Men’s Health’ magazine contained enough ‘advice’ to turn any bloke into a neurotic dieting, body building mess. I’d literally say it was more intense than women’s dieting magazines. The men’s magazine where a carved and chiseled figure on the front was interviewed completely shocked me. This man’s entire life literally revolved around what he could and couldn’t eat, eating ridiculous amounts of protein, complicated instructions when it came to carbohydrates and constant exercising. Yes his body looked pretty jaw-dropping, but I wouldn’t have said it was particularly attractive. And what was more unattractive was the fact his life revolved around the maintaining of this body. It’s the type of man you’d go on a date with and all they’d talk about is themselves, their body, and I’d hazard a guess that he is most definitely compensating for something else…
Its comical to think in this new age of dieting and body mania, sitting in a restaurant, it could be the male fussing about what he can and can’t possible eat.
Batman meanwhile turns up again from his prowling around in the dark for another coffee and gives up trying to explain to me the ways of men and the conversation switches to books. He’s used to seeing me with my battered brown notepad down here, and always gets slightly suspicious when I write while we’re talking. “You don’t put my name or my job on the internet” he’s told me several times but I can’t help it, the things he says deserve a blog post, so I scribble away.
I always like to ask people what books they’re in to- it’s my way of reading people if you like, you can tell a lot about a person by the things they read. He lists some of his favourites from when he was a boy- ‘The Three Musketeers,’ ‘The Picture of Dorian Grey’ to name a few. I get him to write down some authors for me that he’d recommend and he pours out names I’ve never heard of; Cervantes, Che, Sven Hassel, Balzak- he writes in capitals on my notepad, explaining plots and histories in Spanish to me.
He’s read Socrates and Plato and I get a bit geekishly over excited because I love Greek philosophy and literature, and he finds my squeaking and prodding him as we talk quite amusing if not tiring. Here I am, sitting in a beach bar, barefoot, talking about Plato’s republic in Spanish with a Romanian soldier from the French legion. Life is full and interesting and never ceases to amaze me every day.
I tell him about my university, how sad I was to finish, that it was the happiest three years in the most beautiful place and he tells me: “There is time, to see things more beautiful than this.” Two months ago I would have regarded this statement as sacrilege, (fellow Royall Holloway students will understand my indignation) but talking to him; someone so different from my walk of life, someone who has seen so much, so many different things compared to my short life, I realise that maybe he’s right.
My friend nicknamed ‘trimmed’ turns up at the bar (see previous blog if you really want to know where this nickname came from, do so at your own peril.) He always sits on a stool at the end and keeps me occupied when it’s quiet and in return I provide him with beer and mojitos. He’s sweet natured and feels like I do about this little town-I love the way he gets excited about the very smell of the place when he gets off the plane because that’s exactly how I feel. For me that excitement hasn’t faded, but I feel over the last few years I’ve made the most of every drop of sunshine here. This is my favourite place in the world and I got to live here, learn the language, be a part of the people; I have loved every street, and every path, spending hours as a kid wandering around all the little unfinished roads. This is my home on some deeper level but I’m getting closer to getting ready to say goodbye to this place. I have a tattoo on my hip of the Spanish bull, el torro- Spain is somewhere in my blood, the people the culture, the memories I’ve created here. I made a life and history here. This was my first time away from home at eighteen years old here, my first full-time job, my first love.. This place is my story, and if this blog is to be a slice of my life here- it all deserves a mention.
Every love story deserves to be written, no matter how big or small, because it’s the one thing that drives human nature apart from any other species. It’s why I don’t buy that men cheat and ‘plant their seed’ due to some natural instinct that they can’t fight. We’ve evolved from that. And anyone that’s ever been in love- truly, madly in love knows that.
I used to hold my breath every time he left the apartment. He’d only be out for cigarettes but I’d be so sure that he wouldn’t come back, that something would happen to him in the fifteen minutes he was usually gone. In my mind it just was not possible that a human being could be physically this happy. It wasn’t that I felt worried that something could happen, I felt I knew something would happen to him. I was too happy; he’d be taken from me to balance it up if that makes sense. I’d try and visualise him waiting for the lift, stepping in and pressing the button for the ground floor. He’d walk out of the apartment building and I’d imagine him smiling at various neighbours we didn’t know and walk down the hill toward the beach. I don’t think he knew I was watching but I’d stare intently from our balcony window waiting to see his Hawaiian shorts and scruffy t-shirt stride past. He was famous in our town for his horrific dress sense- he loved oranges and purples and had never heard of the word ‘clash’ to the point I thought he must be colour blind.
(When we moved to England I remember being genuinely worried, imagining him stepping out of Romford station in his favourite bright orange shorts and a purple t-shirt. “You’re going to get murdered,” I warned him solemnly- “we have to take you shopping before you enter east London”…)
Of course he’d always return unharmed, multi-coloured clothes intact (sadly) and I’d hold him so tightly for a few seconds at the door that sometimes after pulling away he would hold my head in his hands, looking at me, afraid something had happened while he had gone.
After a summer of working night shifts in bars our body clocks were completely back to front and would wake up at six in the evening. We’d moved from Mil Palmeras to Malaga and in this new apartment in this new town it was just me and him; there was no work in October with the tourist season coming to an end so with no income we’d would fill our evenings by watching movies and Spanish television and going to the beach at 3am. We’d bring sandwiches and sit on the empty beach bar tables listening to the sea on what felt like our private beach. We’d watch early morning cooking programmes before bed which would always make us hungry, but would improvise when it came to food. We managed to survive on pasta and oil for four days once because we had no money. We’d hide cigarettes in different places around the apartment so that when we ran out and had no money to buy more, there would always be one more cigarette that we could share. We drove without car insurance (verrry carefully) for a while because we just couldn’t afford it and one day we ended up at a toll booth for a bridge. “Ahh man,” he said to the toll booth fellow who was looking rather annoyed at our little dilemma, “Sorry, but we forgot our euro.” Our single solitary euro. And we laughed. (The toll booth dude did not.) I felt untouchable. Money was nothing, I had some pretty dodgy jobs (that definitely deserve a separate post at some point..) that to be fair, sometimes I truly hated but I felt like no of it mattered, I was untouchable because nothing on this earth could affect me outside of my little bubble of me and him.
I remember feeling afraid. Afraid when I realized that I would jump in front of a car for that man. I would literally cut my own arm off than let him get hurt. I remember that realization coming to me so calmly, realizing that all the drama of love and sacrifice suddenly was so clear and obvious, it just made so much sense. That frightened me, that I truly loved someone more than myself- my own life.
I’d ask- “Why do you love me?” And he’d say, “Because you love me.” That would drive me to distraction. I wanted to know we were built on something more than that. But really it didn’t matter because that’s when I knew I loved him; because I wasn’t afraid. It didn’t matter whether he laughed in my face, or ran a mile when after one week of us being together I told him I was in love with him; it was irreversible, unchangeable. It didn’t rely on what he felt, how I felt was strong enough to stand on its own, regardless of whether it was reciprocated. It didn’t rely on his love or his affection. I was completely and utterly his, whether he wanted me or not, and I wasn’t even scared.
Even now, I can’t find a fault with that man, I only have good memories of that relationship. He never told a single lie, he never cheated, he only loved and cared for me. And yet it wasn’t enough. Why doesn’t love last? Tell me that. It’s so hard to watch something you were so sure of just fall apart. Something you would have bet your life on just unravel so simply and gracefully that it’s difficult to imagine that not long ago it was hard to breathe without it.
I think that’s what’s scary about marriage- what happens if one day you stop loving your husband? I don’t think it happened overnight to me, and to be fair I was very young. But it’s more scary than infidelity- at least then there would be shouting and yelling, a direction to aim your hurt or loss. But when love fades, the ending of something so important feels unjustified; its deserves a bang, thunder and lightning, not the word fade, and a closing curtain.
If you fall out of love with your husband you’re tied in knots with mortgages, cars, finance, children, social networks, and couples nights: do you wrench your life apart to chase that insatiable feeling where u can’t bear it when they leave the room? Where they are a part of the very oxygen you need to breathe?
I don’t know the answer to that question. I know I made the right decision to break up with my best friend, my first love, because I fell out of love. For no reason other than I just knew I didn’t feel the same anymore and being crazy in love is worth the mess you make. That sounds incredibly selfish but I’ll chase my whole life to feel that way again, where you’re terrified and strong all at once, a lamb and lion in the same body. It’s worth the chase.
I do know I broke his heart. And that kills me. It always will. To think I caused a single tear to run down his cheeks makes me want to scratch my own eyes out. But when its gone its gone and to stay and hold their hand when it doesn’t tingle in your fingertips anymore is more of a crime- Love does not pity.
Sometimes I felt I was a tornado in his life, He was the only thing that made sense to me at eighteen, when everything else was uncertain, in a foreign country on my own, I didn’t know who I was or where the hell I was going in my life, I just knew I was going with him.
He stormed out once during a heated argument, his sudden, inconsequential exit enraging me to tears, far outweighing the argument’s origin. I don’t remember now what it was about. I ran to the balcony window, watching for his stocky figure to come past the communal gardens down the road towards the town centre. I watched too frightened to blink, searching the quiet road for him. When no multi-coloured clothes appeared, I felt as if I was on the border of madness. He returned within twenty minutes, having sat on the bench in the car park behind our building, his natural peace and calm unable to handle impassionate rages. I told him if he ever walked out again, I would leave him.
The next time an argument ensued, a slice of panic cut me as I watched him put on his shoes and head towards the door. I beat him to it, shoving him aside and covering the door.
“You’re not leaving” I said, pointing my finger at him and proceeded to run out of the front door down the four flights of steps to the entrance. I paused when I got outside, unsure of the evening freedom that I had procured for myself. It took approximately twenty seconds for me to realise that I couldn’t get back into the main building without keys and I couldn’t leave the car park as I didn’t have the buzzer to re-enter. I was barefoot.
So I sat on the edge of one of the flower beds, strangely content in the early dark among the bougainvillea, waiting for another resident to pass so I could slip back in, all the while feeling an unhealthy sense of satisfaction at the suffering I hoped I was causing upstairs. To be the person waiting by the window was the worst type of torture I could imagine, although looking back, he was probably relieved to have peace and quiet as I was left to calm down somewhere else.
Out in the flower bed I lasted fifteen minutes until a neighbour suspiciously let a barefoot red-eyed English girl back into the building. On my return he said quietly that if I was to do that again could I please take my mobile phone. He didn’t ask where I had gone as he looked down at my naked feet. He had had his turn sitting at the window sill, and so I felt he could be forgiven. Or maybe it was me who was forgiven.
I’m writing this down thinking about these footballers, and what batman said, and the fact that even though I broke up with my ex last year, I never want to forget how I felt. I’m smiling writing this: I love writing about that time in my life- I’m not sad, I feel lucky that I can say I know what crazy-in-love feels like, but it would be sad to still be together and not feel that way anymore. I’m remembering that time with awe- at myself, and human beings for having the capacity to feel like that that about another human being. That’s why I refuse to let mother nature win this one- about men following some deep-seated old instincts that mother nature planted in them about spreading their seeds. I can’t imagine being in love like that and sleeping with someone else, because how could you hurt them like that if you loved them? And even if temptation lurks after a few drinks, a sticky situation, surely that insatiable feeling, the feeling that there’s only the two of you in the world- surely it’s not even a competition?
When it fades, and eyes wander, let go of their hand before you go reach for another. Because I know if he had of hurt me when I was feeling that way about him, I would have died. I don’t think I would ever ever have trusted anyone again if he had betrayed me. I know he won’t read this, but I’ve always wanted to thank him for taking my heart and giving it back in one piece, letting me love him an insane amount all over Spain, making him move back to England with me, and the dignity he had when I’d exhausted all love out of me.
I think Love is a blind crazy torneado that has you sprawling in all directions, but not into the arms of another. Humans have the ability to love and to hurt, in a way that animals don’t. So don’t tell me it’s nature that make men cheat. We make bonds and connections and have to accept the consequences when those bonds are damaged. Sod mother nature- I’m backing evolution.
Do women love men more that men love their women? Surely that can’t be it. Maybe women are able to respect relationships more than men do, but that seems to much of a generalization. I’m not even saying that women don’t screw up as much as men do. So if were saying we all do it. Then what??
Then its not love. If you love, its stays in your pants boys and girls. End of story.
“Love to faults is always blind, always is to joy inclined. Lawless, winged, and unconfined, and breaks all chains from every mind.”
William Shakespeare.
Saturday, 11 September 2010
The Swedish and the Scantily Clad
This really is a small world. The little beach town I work in is barely on the map and somehow I manage to bump into two of my fellow Royal Holloweigens- and they’re very very Swedish. Both are blonde with rather perfect teeth, strong jutting jaw-lines and friendly mannerisms. I manage to differentiate the two by their hair-styles, one having a huge matt of glossy hair brushed back into a crowd-parting quiff, the other short and shaved after a meeting with a set of clippers. After getting over the initial excitement that yes, we go to the same university, and yes we have somehow ended up in the same area of Spain- we make plans. They’re only here for a few days as Quiff dude is very busy, jetting off here and there in between working for some sort of Swedish business that his uncle owns. (I remember at this point the finds of my facebook stalking- where I discovered his boat house to be larger than my mum and dad’s house put together…)
The other one, clippers, has a slightly more interesting history- I mistakenly thought he was also a fellow student as I’ve seen him lolling around campus a fair amount, but actually it turns out that he’d gone to Thailand on a bar-tendering course for three months and slightly over indulged in the culture, managing to fail and wasting a whole lot of money and air fares. Fail a bartender course. In Thailand. Bravo Clippers.
He is very sweet to be fair and his English, although slightly broken is endearing and they make excellent company for the next two days. We sit on the beach the morning after we meet- they’ve come prepared with a cool bag of beer, a parasol but no sun-cream or water, and Quiff dude shows me the leaflet that’s tightly clasped in his hand—which apparently holds the key to the days' master plan…
On the beach next to my town is a Guinness world record attempt to have to most amount of women on a beach, in bikinis. “You think they will be topless?” He asks me hopefully. I tell him I’m not sure, but he can always hope.
Since the bikini shenanigans doesn’t kick off till about 4pm we sit on the beach near my apartment. The boys are suffering from last night’s antics, (Bushwaka, a paddling pool and a lot of mojitos…) and decide to remedy this by ordering screwdrivers; vodka and orange juice, with the belief that the orange juice with all its natural vitamin C goodness will apparently perk them up. Nothing to do with the vodka of course. A few of these and they’re good to go.
The bikini event is being held on the beach in the next town so it seems easier to walk along the coast into Campo Amor rather than getting a taxi. We’ve been walking for about 20minutes when I realize that I’ve slightly miscalculated the distance. By a fair bit. Campo Amor is indeed the next town, but in my mind’s eye when we’ve been wandering home along the beach, the consumption of alcohol may have possibly made this stretch of beach blur together slightly.
We get to the port and have to walk through the boat yard to get to the other side. None of us had the sense to bring shoes or flip flops under my directions of we-don’t-need-shoes-its-only-round-the-corner, so we hop around on the hot tarmac past boats, their suspicious looking owners and a massive dog chained to a jet ski (???) until we get to other side. As we’re coming round the corner I’m not sure what I expect- screaming women in bikinis? Quiff dude and Clipper’s eyes popping out of their heads? The beach overcrowded with over-zealous bikini lovers spilling into the sea?
The reality is somewhat different. Whether we’re early, or whether the screaming women in bikinis are warming up somewhere, we turn the corner to see a beach full of people yes, but not necessarily all women, with a stage at the front with a middle-aged South American women performing some rather peculiar dance moves, bending in all sorts of weird and wonderful ways which is making my lunch not want to stay in my stomach. The danger of advertising a supposedly full beach of scantily clad women, is that there will probably be more men turn up to ogle at this sight than the participants of the record-breaking attempt…
There are all sorts of bouncy castles, bubble machines and activities going on, and we wade through the stalls and people towards another beach bar. I see a strange sight of two small children dressed up (or rather being swallowed by) large inflatable sumo wrestler suits and are happily bashing eachother, loosing their balance and rolling around the sand- the probability of them getting up again unassisted being next to none. I think of the sweat. And gag slightly.
Quiff dude is as generous with his money as Spain is with the sun, and before I can protest I’m handed a bucket of beer. He’s not impressed with the lack of women. We drink beer and jump in and out of the sea, the boys turning to look at the shore repeatedly in hope of the mystery bikini clad women. I’m not quite sure what they’re expecting- a stampede of women to arrive down the hill? Coaches to pull up and oiled up ladies to fall out?
I start work in an hour, and I’m in the wrong town, with a bucket of beer and two Swedish dudes who are getting more drunk by the second. I power walk it back to Mil Palmeras and leave them trailing behind, find a clean t-shirt and shorts somewhere in my apartment, drink a pint of water and skid down to the beach bar. The Swedes are already there and a slacking slightly. This is due to a major lack of sleep and a mahooosive hangover that has been slyly hidden under a fair few pints of beer and glasses of screwdriver today. I give them two large coffees. With a splash of brandy in it.
They disappear off to dinner as I get on and do my mojito-making thing, and return with a new zest for an alcohol-fuelled evening- I have great fun testing cocktails on them.
“Let me be your guinea pig.” Quiff dude tells me. At your own peril my boy…
-La Melodia (the Melody special) honey rum, lemon slush, splash of Cointreau, and splash of grenadine.
This is my personal invention, sweet and refreshing, and everyone at some point when they’ve been down to see me at the beach bar, has had one.
Being the queen of the mojito with fresh mint plants growing in pots out the back, I dish out a couple of them and then its starts getting silly. I mix gin and blue curaco with lemon slush and a splash of vodka, then bacardi and lime with mojito flavor mixer… and Quiff dude and Clippers are still standing. Quiff dude is wearing a rather trendy brown straw hat and gives it to me to try on, instructing me to keep it in the beach bar. If I know quiff dude, it probably wasn’t cheap and I when I ask him why he wants to abandon such a hat his reply is (as he’s leaning lop-sided on the bar) “I want to think of my hat somewhere on a beach bar in Spain when I’m back in Sweden.” How romantic and bohemian.
(The hat came home with me I’m afraid Quiff dude, its hanging on my coat rack in Essex now. Sorry.)
I finish work at 2am, pop home for a shower and change and meet them in one of the bars up the road from the beach bar. They’re there waiting with 3 fishbowl glasses of a red sticky looking potion.
“Whats that?” I ask suspiciously.
“I don’t know,“ Quiff dude replies quite incredulously, shrugging his shoulders. “I just ask for drinks.”
This is one of Quiff dude’s most interesting qualities- he seems to have a palate for ALL alcohol, or rather, he doesn’t have a palate for a particular taste, or flavour; he’ll drink it all, and then ask for more. After the potions are consumed we get a taxi up to the Bushawaka bar and there is talk of them heading off to a nightclub. Sadly Clippers is DOA when we get out of the taxi and disappears of to his apartment despite Quiff dude’s protesting. He’s done quite well considering he’d actually woken up that morning passed out in the kitchen floor with one sock on… Quiff dude told me his parents thought it was rather amusing taking their breakfast with a young, unconscious, semi-naked person being climbed over.
With Clippers gone, Quiff dude takes on an inexhaustible thirst for partying; there aren’t enough hours of the night for him, he rocks out on the dance floor like nothing you have ever seen- it's stuff made for Youtube, making shapes that Basshunter would be proud of. His only disappointment is that no one has any ecstasy tablets.
“Where you from, the 80s?” is my friends response to his pleads.
When we start heading home about 4.30 Quiff dude disappears. I know he’s flying early next morning and am wondering as we head home whether I should have done more to ensure his safety and well-being when I get a phone call.
“Ahh mel- could u call me a taxi? They don’t understand English- I’m somewhere in La Zenia, near a MacDonalds…”
Now I’m amused/worried for two reasons- firstly there isn’t a MacDonalds in la Zenia. The nearest MacDonalds is hell far away and if he’s there I’m seriously impressed. Or slightly concerned. Secondly, trying to get a taxi at that time of night out there is like hoping that a space man will land and take you off to the moon. I call one for him and hear no response from my friend, good or bad, and so and fall asleep when I finally get back to my apartment...
Now this is the first time in a while that I’ve slept in my apartment on my own, not necessarily out of choice. “Miller’s Villa” as its fondly become known over the years has a reputation of being something of an open house, the number of people that have stayed in it over the years being on par to the population of china. There are always people BBq-ing, passed out on a sofa, making a cup of tea (without a kettle) raiding the fridge or blocking the toilet, regardless of the time of day or night, so to actually be on my own for once, should have been peaceful, but I hate it. This apartment was made for noise and people and so I fall asleep only due to the fact it’s nearly 5am and I have to get up at 7.30 to clean the bar.
-5.30am-
There are two men, in my apartment standing at my bedroom door. It’s still dark out but I can make out two stocky figures in the doorway. I hadn’t locked the front door because it gets jammed and it freaks me out the idea of being locked in. I’m not awake enough to work out whether I need to start screaming when my eyes start adjusting.
“Sorry Mel, sorry, we just thought you’d be up and about, we’ve just been out and thought we’d walk past and see whose around, have a drink or something?”
Miller’s Villa’s reputation precedes me. Its the two guys that run the only English bar in town, perfectly harmless (well, some would say that’s debatable) but harmless to me anyway (again perhaps debatable) so I get out of bed in my PJs, the hostess in me stopping myself from telling the burly bartenders to f*** off –its-5.30am-and-you-scared-the-sh**-out-of-me…
“Anything to drink Mel?“ One them asks me hopefully. He has the lightest blue eyes you’ve ever seen, they look like little torch lights against his tanned, (often slightly red) skin. In the cupboard is superfluous amounts of gin, the fridge a carton of fresh Orange juice- viola! We sit on the patio, me curled up in my PJs, them with their gin and orange juice and they sit and entertain me with their hilarious (although repetitive) drunken talk until 7am. It’s a slight challenge to get them to leave, one of them in particular as he knows he’s in for a bollocking from his wife for being out all night, again. Torch light eyes informs me that he won’t be in trouble if he says he’s been out with me, which I find hilarious- since when am I the sensible one ? (Although I probably am compared to the burly bartenders.) I must have mistakenly given this impression this summer as somehow over the last two months, I’ve been given keys to two beach bars and the English bar and left to run one of the beach bars all by myself. Perhaps responsibility suits me? I literally force them out the gate so I’m not late for work and pull on a t-shirt and shorts to go clean the bar.
I always walk the long way around to the bar along the promenade- I’ve said before seeing the sunrise is my favourite thing in the world here, and this time of day is so unbelievable bright, but without the intense heat. The sand looks so soft I resist the urge to go and roll around in it: a huge tractor comes along at night with a big sieve-like contraption attached to it and cleans and levels the sand, so it’s perfectly flat and ready for the next day. I love leaving the first footprints on the sand, as if you’re the first person to ever touch the beach.
Tractor dude is actually quite interesting, he stops for a Coca Cola ever now and again in the beach bar- the tractor only comes at night usually between 3 and 6am and he’s seen all sorts on the beach at that time as I’m sure you can imagine. I asked him once if he’s ever run anybody over- since its dark and I see him going a quite a speed. “Not yet,” was the reply.
The beach is empty at this time, just a few people going for a morning walk (nutty ones for a morning run.) The sun hasn’t had time to heat the streets yet so the light leaves this fresh clean feeling on your skin, it’s like an energising shower, always 100% worth the lack sleep just to feel that in the morning. (The other option of course is to actually go to sleep and wake up in time to see this.)
I clean the bar- or rather I dance around with a mop playing the music system full-blast and collapse back into bed until lunch time when I’m awoken by the next friendly face.
I need to learn to lock the door. This particular friend is nicknamed ‘trimmed’ which I presumed was in relation to the fact he is a hairdresser, but I was informed otherwise- apparently the name is attributed to another well-kept area of hair. Nice. His ever-optimistic face pops up at the door nearly every morning and I often find him asleep out on the garden furniture where he’s given up trying to wake me up, given up trying to make a cup of tea, (no kettle) and given up on life in general.
I give him a kick, find a bikini and try and call Quiff dude to find out whether he ever made it back to Sweden…
The other one, clippers, has a slightly more interesting history- I mistakenly thought he was also a fellow student as I’ve seen him lolling around campus a fair amount, but actually it turns out that he’d gone to Thailand on a bar-tendering course for three months and slightly over indulged in the culture, managing to fail and wasting a whole lot of money and air fares. Fail a bartender course. In Thailand. Bravo Clippers.
He is very sweet to be fair and his English, although slightly broken is endearing and they make excellent company for the next two days. We sit on the beach the morning after we meet- they’ve come prepared with a cool bag of beer, a parasol but no sun-cream or water, and Quiff dude shows me the leaflet that’s tightly clasped in his hand—which apparently holds the key to the days' master plan…
On the beach next to my town is a Guinness world record attempt to have to most amount of women on a beach, in bikinis. “You think they will be topless?” He asks me hopefully. I tell him I’m not sure, but he can always hope.
Since the bikini shenanigans doesn’t kick off till about 4pm we sit on the beach near my apartment. The boys are suffering from last night’s antics, (Bushwaka, a paddling pool and a lot of mojitos…) and decide to remedy this by ordering screwdrivers; vodka and orange juice, with the belief that the orange juice with all its natural vitamin C goodness will apparently perk them up. Nothing to do with the vodka of course. A few of these and they’re good to go.
The bikini event is being held on the beach in the next town so it seems easier to walk along the coast into Campo Amor rather than getting a taxi. We’ve been walking for about 20minutes when I realize that I’ve slightly miscalculated the distance. By a fair bit. Campo Amor is indeed the next town, but in my mind’s eye when we’ve been wandering home along the beach, the consumption of alcohol may have possibly made this stretch of beach blur together slightly.
We get to the port and have to walk through the boat yard to get to the other side. None of us had the sense to bring shoes or flip flops under my directions of we-don’t-need-shoes-its-only-round-the-corner, so we hop around on the hot tarmac past boats, their suspicious looking owners and a massive dog chained to a jet ski (???) until we get to other side. As we’re coming round the corner I’m not sure what I expect- screaming women in bikinis? Quiff dude and Clipper’s eyes popping out of their heads? The beach overcrowded with over-zealous bikini lovers spilling into the sea?
The reality is somewhat different. Whether we’re early, or whether the screaming women in bikinis are warming up somewhere, we turn the corner to see a beach full of people yes, but not necessarily all women, with a stage at the front with a middle-aged South American women performing some rather peculiar dance moves, bending in all sorts of weird and wonderful ways which is making my lunch not want to stay in my stomach. The danger of advertising a supposedly full beach of scantily clad women, is that there will probably be more men turn up to ogle at this sight than the participants of the record-breaking attempt…
There are all sorts of bouncy castles, bubble machines and activities going on, and we wade through the stalls and people towards another beach bar. I see a strange sight of two small children dressed up (or rather being swallowed by) large inflatable sumo wrestler suits and are happily bashing eachother, loosing their balance and rolling around the sand- the probability of them getting up again unassisted being next to none. I think of the sweat. And gag slightly.
Quiff dude is as generous with his money as Spain is with the sun, and before I can protest I’m handed a bucket of beer. He’s not impressed with the lack of women. We drink beer and jump in and out of the sea, the boys turning to look at the shore repeatedly in hope of the mystery bikini clad women. I’m not quite sure what they’re expecting- a stampede of women to arrive down the hill? Coaches to pull up and oiled up ladies to fall out?
I start work in an hour, and I’m in the wrong town, with a bucket of beer and two Swedish dudes who are getting more drunk by the second. I power walk it back to Mil Palmeras and leave them trailing behind, find a clean t-shirt and shorts somewhere in my apartment, drink a pint of water and skid down to the beach bar. The Swedes are already there and a slacking slightly. This is due to a major lack of sleep and a mahooosive hangover that has been slyly hidden under a fair few pints of beer and glasses of screwdriver today. I give them two large coffees. With a splash of brandy in it.
They disappear off to dinner as I get on and do my mojito-making thing, and return with a new zest for an alcohol-fuelled evening- I have great fun testing cocktails on them.
“Let me be your guinea pig.” Quiff dude tells me. At your own peril my boy…
-La Melodia (the Melody special) honey rum, lemon slush, splash of Cointreau, and splash of grenadine.
This is my personal invention, sweet and refreshing, and everyone at some point when they’ve been down to see me at the beach bar, has had one.
Being the queen of the mojito with fresh mint plants growing in pots out the back, I dish out a couple of them and then its starts getting silly. I mix gin and blue curaco with lemon slush and a splash of vodka, then bacardi and lime with mojito flavor mixer… and Quiff dude and Clippers are still standing. Quiff dude is wearing a rather trendy brown straw hat and gives it to me to try on, instructing me to keep it in the beach bar. If I know quiff dude, it probably wasn’t cheap and I when I ask him why he wants to abandon such a hat his reply is (as he’s leaning lop-sided on the bar) “I want to think of my hat somewhere on a beach bar in Spain when I’m back in Sweden.” How romantic and bohemian.
(The hat came home with me I’m afraid Quiff dude, its hanging on my coat rack in Essex now. Sorry.)
I finish work at 2am, pop home for a shower and change and meet them in one of the bars up the road from the beach bar. They’re there waiting with 3 fishbowl glasses of a red sticky looking potion.
“Whats that?” I ask suspiciously.
“I don’t know,“ Quiff dude replies quite incredulously, shrugging his shoulders. “I just ask for drinks.”
This is one of Quiff dude’s most interesting qualities- he seems to have a palate for ALL alcohol, or rather, he doesn’t have a palate for a particular taste, or flavour; he’ll drink it all, and then ask for more. After the potions are consumed we get a taxi up to the Bushawaka bar and there is talk of them heading off to a nightclub. Sadly Clippers is DOA when we get out of the taxi and disappears of to his apartment despite Quiff dude’s protesting. He’s done quite well considering he’d actually woken up that morning passed out in the kitchen floor with one sock on… Quiff dude told me his parents thought it was rather amusing taking their breakfast with a young, unconscious, semi-naked person being climbed over.
With Clippers gone, Quiff dude takes on an inexhaustible thirst for partying; there aren’t enough hours of the night for him, he rocks out on the dance floor like nothing you have ever seen- it's stuff made for Youtube, making shapes that Basshunter would be proud of. His only disappointment is that no one has any ecstasy tablets.
“Where you from, the 80s?” is my friends response to his pleads.
When we start heading home about 4.30 Quiff dude disappears. I know he’s flying early next morning and am wondering as we head home whether I should have done more to ensure his safety and well-being when I get a phone call.
“Ahh mel- could u call me a taxi? They don’t understand English- I’m somewhere in La Zenia, near a MacDonalds…”
Now I’m amused/worried for two reasons- firstly there isn’t a MacDonalds in la Zenia. The nearest MacDonalds is hell far away and if he’s there I’m seriously impressed. Or slightly concerned. Secondly, trying to get a taxi at that time of night out there is like hoping that a space man will land and take you off to the moon. I call one for him and hear no response from my friend, good or bad, and so and fall asleep when I finally get back to my apartment...
Now this is the first time in a while that I’ve slept in my apartment on my own, not necessarily out of choice. “Miller’s Villa” as its fondly become known over the years has a reputation of being something of an open house, the number of people that have stayed in it over the years being on par to the population of china. There are always people BBq-ing, passed out on a sofa, making a cup of tea (without a kettle) raiding the fridge or blocking the toilet, regardless of the time of day or night, so to actually be on my own for once, should have been peaceful, but I hate it. This apartment was made for noise and people and so I fall asleep only due to the fact it’s nearly 5am and I have to get up at 7.30 to clean the bar.
-5.30am-
There are two men, in my apartment standing at my bedroom door. It’s still dark out but I can make out two stocky figures in the doorway. I hadn’t locked the front door because it gets jammed and it freaks me out the idea of being locked in. I’m not awake enough to work out whether I need to start screaming when my eyes start adjusting.
“Sorry Mel, sorry, we just thought you’d be up and about, we’ve just been out and thought we’d walk past and see whose around, have a drink or something?”
Miller’s Villa’s reputation precedes me. Its the two guys that run the only English bar in town, perfectly harmless (well, some would say that’s debatable) but harmless to me anyway (again perhaps debatable) so I get out of bed in my PJs, the hostess in me stopping myself from telling the burly bartenders to f*** off –its-5.30am-and-you-scared-the-sh**-out-of-me…
“Anything to drink Mel?“ One them asks me hopefully. He has the lightest blue eyes you’ve ever seen, they look like little torch lights against his tanned, (often slightly red) skin. In the cupboard is superfluous amounts of gin, the fridge a carton of fresh Orange juice- viola! We sit on the patio, me curled up in my PJs, them with their gin and orange juice and they sit and entertain me with their hilarious (although repetitive) drunken talk until 7am. It’s a slight challenge to get them to leave, one of them in particular as he knows he’s in for a bollocking from his wife for being out all night, again. Torch light eyes informs me that he won’t be in trouble if he says he’s been out with me, which I find hilarious- since when am I the sensible one ? (Although I probably am compared to the burly bartenders.) I must have mistakenly given this impression this summer as somehow over the last two months, I’ve been given keys to two beach bars and the English bar and left to run one of the beach bars all by myself. Perhaps responsibility suits me? I literally force them out the gate so I’m not late for work and pull on a t-shirt and shorts to go clean the bar.
I always walk the long way around to the bar along the promenade- I’ve said before seeing the sunrise is my favourite thing in the world here, and this time of day is so unbelievable bright, but without the intense heat. The sand looks so soft I resist the urge to go and roll around in it: a huge tractor comes along at night with a big sieve-like contraption attached to it and cleans and levels the sand, so it’s perfectly flat and ready for the next day. I love leaving the first footprints on the sand, as if you’re the first person to ever touch the beach.
Tractor dude is actually quite interesting, he stops for a Coca Cola ever now and again in the beach bar- the tractor only comes at night usually between 3 and 6am and he’s seen all sorts on the beach at that time as I’m sure you can imagine. I asked him once if he’s ever run anybody over- since its dark and I see him going a quite a speed. “Not yet,” was the reply.
The beach is empty at this time, just a few people going for a morning walk (nutty ones for a morning run.) The sun hasn’t had time to heat the streets yet so the light leaves this fresh clean feeling on your skin, it’s like an energising shower, always 100% worth the lack sleep just to feel that in the morning. (The other option of course is to actually go to sleep and wake up in time to see this.)
I clean the bar- or rather I dance around with a mop playing the music system full-blast and collapse back into bed until lunch time when I’m awoken by the next friendly face.
I need to learn to lock the door. This particular friend is nicknamed ‘trimmed’ which I presumed was in relation to the fact he is a hairdresser, but I was informed otherwise- apparently the name is attributed to another well-kept area of hair. Nice. His ever-optimistic face pops up at the door nearly every morning and I often find him asleep out on the garden furniture where he’s given up trying to wake me up, given up trying to make a cup of tea, (no kettle) and given up on life in general.
I give him a kick, find a bikini and try and call Quiff dude to find out whether he ever made it back to Sweden…
Wednesday, 8 September 2010
It's not Sink or Swim
(Written 5 days ago.)
I read over the blog post titled ‘post uni blues’ from a couple of months ago, and sometimes struggle rather than to think ‘hay, I have come a long way’, I think- I don’t want to write about it all again that until I’m better, until I’m writing about an episode in my life that is over. But it’s not really working like that.
I thought that getting on the plane was the hard bit- and to some extent it was- I hadn’t physically thought about when I got here because I couldn’t see myself getting on the plane in the first place. I kind of just thought I’d be better- sitting on white sand, working in a beach bar, with all my friends, what would I have to feel depressed or nervous about? Now I’m getting on the plane again next week to go back after an amazing summer, I thought I'd reflect on how it's been because I look at my blog, and its not a lie or a front, I really am having this wonderful moments- great times and experiences, but I have struggled in between; its just taken a bit of time to realize that it doesn’t take away from the fun I’ve had at beach parties, Bushwaka, nights with my friends and days on the beach.
Once I settled in I really was ok, for the first time in about a month and had a great weeks holiday with the girls, my brother and all his friends. But as they say, two steps forward, 1 step back. I had a week after before the next lot of people arrived and hadn’t released how much I had needed to be surrounded by people, noise, activities and plans. When I fall off the bandwagon, it’s so dark, I can’t remember there ever being light, and the more I torture myself saying ‘fuck sake why can’t I appreciate the beach, the good weather?’ The worse I get. It makes me numb. My mum says she can see when I’m bad because I’m not there, that the light is switched off and that’s how I feel. It’s so all-consuming I function on automatic; talk, walk but its not me. I’ve lost the fun-loving girl and am so terrified I’ll never find her again I just try and function minute to minute until it fades. Which it does. It may fade for ten minutes, or ten hours or ten days, but I always forget that I’ve been fine in between episodes.
I had a bad a attack the day my mum arrived- I think I’d been trying so hard to keep myself together, that when I knew she was coming that evening somewhere in my head I had just given up. My close friend out here had been brutally attacked a few days previous and we were all badly shaken. He’s very lucky and is fine now, but I felt the tone of everything change- this place has always been a safe haven to me, my friend like a sibling, and they both had been damaged. I couldn’t bear the thought of him hurt, they had stamped on his face and kicked in him the head, my friend- the most gorgeous and warm person I know, and I was frightened to see him because at the time his face was so bad: his dad had walked past his hospital bed when he got there and not recognized his son. I felt it was unfair of me to be freaking out and falling apart when it was him and his family that should be upset -I couldn’t say that I was struggling again- I came here to get better so thought I was failing.
I got so nervous I couldn’t eat- the smell of food made me gag, but the less I ate, the more I panicked that I’d faint so I tried to eat something, then throw up. The anxiety attacks choked me, made me too hot and so nervous, I didn’t know whether to run of cry or what. So usually I try and just plough through. It’s like I’m in a muddy swamp and as long as I keep walking and wading through I won’t sink. Then the big black veil covers my eyes and mouth and slowly filters nothing but black into my lungs. It sits on my shoulders, covers my eyes and I see nothing. I see nothing but endless fields of battle after battle with myself, and its so heavy and so grey it’s a field I don’t want to cross. I can’t move and I come to a complete standstill in every way. Its like a darkness that infects every part of me and sucks out any energy left, and worst- any hope. I think that’s worse than the anxiety attack, because the feeling of depression makes me believe that it will always, always be like this. Its blinding, and I can never remember letalone believe that I’ll be fine.
I walked to work that evening with my a friend of mine- I had forced the poor boy to stay in the house with me all day, in forty degree heat, beautiful sunshine outside, and will never forget his patience considering I he didn’t really understand what was wrong. I remember walking and thinking I was going to pass out- everything was too loud and bright, I was walking a different way to work-along the sea- because I thought the breeze and the sea might calm me. Then I saw a group of my mum’s friends from back in England that happened to be holidaying in a nearby town. Now you’re talking to someone who is a believer in fate and higher purposes, and when I saw those familiar faces I immediately burst into tears- I was so happy to see them. I was chaperoned to work where they told the owner I wasn’t fit to work (I was standing there like a pale, slightly green shaking statue literally unable to speak by this point) and they took me back to the apartment. I am eternally grateful to them.
It took about a 5 days before I felt ok again. My mum would do the 10minute rule; only thinking about the day in 10minute blocks. I’d wake up and she’s say- ok for the next 10minutes were going to have breakfast. I really struggled to eat, food makes be gag when I’m nervous, and then she’d say, ok what do you want to do for the next 10minutes? And that’s how I’d play the day.
I struggled between using the knowledge I had learnt and rejecting it all, thinking- Christ I am so sick of holding myself together, I want to go back to the days so so so so badly where I had never even heard of an anxiety attack or depression. The rejection doesn’t help. Because its there. It doesn’t have to rule my life, but its there. And coming to terms with that is the single most difficult thing.
That really is the key thing here I think- acceptance. If I stop fighting it and focus, I stop being blind and can remember all the things I’ve learnt on the process how to control it when I’m falling. I can remember that I won’t always feel like this, that it will get better, in a few hours, or a few minutes even.
Writing seems to be my saviour. When I can’t distract myself long enough to pull myself together, I write, because when I’m writing I’m completely in control, of the pen, the flow of words. I may not be able to control my brain from flipping out, but writing diverts the attention. I found that if I wrote exactly how I was feeling I could write it out of me as it were. Then I would draw a line underneath and then wrote positively; I couldn’t talk myself into felling ok- but I could write it until I believed it.
This is from my journal that I’d take to work, scribbling until I felt ok-
I know I feel bad now- but I HAVE TO believe that one day I’ll get better. This is something I’ll look back on and go, wow, I got through that, I can get through anything. I HAVE TO believe that everyday won’t be like this one because otherwise, I don’t think I manage a single second more.
I have the strength to dissolve the black cloud, I can and I WILL rise above it. I am strong. I came to Spain, I run a bar by myself, speak a foreign language, have many friends out here. When I feel bad, I don’t collapse, I plough through, even if I’m battling every single second to keep my head above water, I’ve never stopped swimming. It’s not a question of sink or swim, because I’m going to swim through the sinking.
I KNOW things happen for reason. That things happen the way they’re supposed to happen. I refuse to believe that I’m suffering for nothing. I’m on the right path in my life- I just don’t know where it leads to right now, and right now the path is bloody rocky.
Just keep walking, even when it’s so bad I cant speak, I cant think, just walk through it, write through it. If I keep walking, maybe in an hour it will grip my throat less, in a week less, in a year a distant dark memory. I’m never going to give up- I’m just going to believe that I WILL NOT feel like this my whole life. It doesn’t define me.
IT MAY BE RELENTLESS, BUT SO AM I.
This is my mantra, I say it over and over and really believe it. Yep, it’s probably a bit American happy clappy style but it works.
Something else that I realized through writing, is that when I’m bad- it completely and utterly blocks out any memory of feeling good or feeling normal. When I stop and think I realize that actually, the majority isn’t suffering, it’s the other way around- I’m fine out here- I have terrible bad patches yes, but they’re bad patches. I only realized this about three weeks ago, and when I did it was like the little light at the end of the tunnel that was almost extinguished came back into view.
I was told to keep dairy of anxiety and depression- and I was only then I began to really see- that the majority of the time I’m ok, the bad patches are small, its just the weight of them, the volume of darkness that’s makes it feel its lasted forever. I feel that every time I fall, that I’m back to square one and I’m not better, nowhere near getting better and ill never get better, but that’s bollocks; I’ve had good days and good weeks and then bad hours, bad mornings, nights, afternoons, bad days at my worst but since I’ve been here in Spain it hasn’t been like it was before, its just the weight of the darkness blocks out any memory of light.
When I really saw this- hope came back- if I fall, I will get up because I’ve been getting up over and over and over again these last months. Two steps forward one step back is still going forwards, however impossibly slow it may feel…
I had a lovely time with my mum and brother once I started feeling better and another family arrived in the town that we’ve known for many years out here. We were sitting by the pool and my blog was mentioned- the mother in this family- the most happy, energetic and confident person I have ever met, turned round and said- “I’ve been through the same thing.”
As she was talking, I cannot describe the relief to hear someone putting your own feelings into words, the feeling that someone knows exactly what you are going through and it made me want to write this blog post. Not only that, she had suffered a lot lot worse, and now is absolutely fine. She has four children, is studying to be a paramedic, gets on planes and trains, and even the tube. I went to sleep that night and little voice of doom that sneaks up on me saying I’m gong to be like this for ever, could not touch me after speaking to that wonderful woman.
It was easier to be ok when everyone was here, but when I’m on my own my brain works itself into over-drive. After two weeks, the family and mine where heading home.
Its when its comes for me in the night- the first three nights after my mum went home it woke me up, I woke up sweating with fear, a feeling of a belt around my chest and throat, that little voice of panic telling me that I won’t be able to stop it now, mum's not here, I’m on my own in a foreign country, what the hell am I doing? I cant manange this, I won't make it through the night... I slept next to a friend who held my hand as I literally shook and tried with all my might to calm my breathing. She said she had pins and needles in her fingers from where I squeezed so tightly. And then she went home too. That’s the one thing about this beautiful place- everybody goes homes, and I was busy trying to cling on to something, anyone, when really I knew that it's only me that can fix this, only me that can keep my self calm.
And so I was on my own. But in a beautiful place, sitting on a beach, in a job I love and I couldn’t see any of it again. Three days of feeling like I was holding myself together, clutching at an arm or a leg trying to keep all the pieces of me together.
I had friends from my university that happened to be staying in the next town and wanted to meet up and so I made myself go meet them in the busy town- I hadn’t been up there for three weeks because I wanted to be somewhere close, although I’m not really sure close to what. I made myself get in that taxi thinking of an escape route; I had money enough to flee if I wanted. I got out the cab and could see them sitting outside a busy bar and fought the impulse to run back to the cab, because really, I cant run from it. It gets me if I’m at home, on the beach, asleep, so I thought I might aswell keep walking towards my two friends, one foot in front of the other. I don’t really remember the first part of the conversation- but then one of them made me laugh and I breathed out sticky tension and breathed in air rather than fear. So I kept at it, we walked to the next bar, met up with my other group of friends and I walked into the bar- this might sound pretty dull, but the thought of walking into a hot stuffy bar with crowds made me sick to my stomach. There was a song we loved. I went in and danced. Danced in a crowd and smiled. Really smiled rather than a pretend one. I stayed a a friends house in the next town- a new place, and slept (although I made a baffled friend sleep next to me) and although I woke up in the middle of the night in a bed that wasn’t my own, in a town I didn't know, I controlled my breathing, I calmed myself and fell asleep again.
I woke up so pleased with myself- I walked and met my friends and went to the beach for the day- I had 20minutes of feeling so nervous I was nearly sick and jumped in the sea so they could see me cry. But the tears never came. I was ok, I was doing all these things I was ok, I hadn’t passed out, freaked out. I got out that sea and enjoyed the rest of the day and evening, rather than plough through it.
The further the gap between each bad patch, the more I believe I’m ok. So 5 days of feeling fine and I really am ok. it might not be forever, I might feel bad next week, I might feel bad at the airport- but each time I get my heart to go back to normal, I believe a little more that I can do this, I can enjoy my last week here in the sun, last weekend at work, and finally- get on that plane home and be ready and excited for the next thing.
I’m aware that I’m not very good at taking my own advice, I struggle to accept what I feel, I want to be me again, and I want it now. It’s because I get impatient. I want to be better forever, not for ten minutes or a couple of days or a couple of weeks. I’m frustrated.
Just to keep at it is what I think- I’m doing ok, actually, I’m doing more than ok, I really am having fun - I still have so many funny stories to tell about this place, and only 5more day here!! I’m going to go home thinking- I did a summer abroad, ran a bar by myself, made new friends and reunited with old ones, danced, sang, swam, laughed, cried- the dark doesn’t keep me down for long. It never will.
Ode to the 'My Size Crew'
They wait all year for summer
And when it does arrive
The blues they do a runner
And you hear the call “Hay My Size!”
Don ‘t be fooled by silly names,
Murkle, Slippery, Sky,
Double D aint playing games
Turkish smile’s no lie.
But how to spot the My Size crew?
Men of the rarest breed-
Look out for armbands, goggles too
“Oi you, come here” is all they need.
The girls they fall but boys fall harder
They wear big hearts out on their sleeve
Loyalty’s their trait mas que nada
An unexpected gift to please.
Kings of kingdom Cabo Roig
The town’s their coastal playground
Bushwaka girls their favourite toys
The summer’s heaving fairground.
Don’t get me wrong these boys are charmers
Sparkling eyes and smiles to match
But never will the hands of karma
Strike them down- they have no catch.
To find a group of men so loyal
(to eachother rather than the girls)
Across the seas and lands you’d toil
This ‘mandom’ love will make you hurl.
But ladies this is all in jest
These boys are worth your time and love.
My summers with them have been the best
Saying goodbye for me is tough.
When slippery lay in hospital
The ‘My Size’ stood beside his bed
Those smiling eyes not lost at all
They soothed his beaten, broken head.
A star that bright cannot be damaged
His humour and his strength withheld
Without that boy I could not have managed
He picks me up when I feel I’ve failed.
They all in turn have made me laugh
And so these words are for the girls:
In summer land the times aren’t tough
But this advice is wisdom’s pearls:
If you hear the call “Hay my size”
Stop right there and turn your head
Coz’ if you really are a ‘their size’
You should be flattered that’s what they said.
And when it does arrive
The blues they do a runner
And you hear the call “Hay My Size!”
Don ‘t be fooled by silly names,
Murkle, Slippery, Sky,
Double D aint playing games
Turkish smile’s no lie.
But how to spot the My Size crew?
Men of the rarest breed-
Look out for armbands, goggles too
“Oi you, come here” is all they need.
The girls they fall but boys fall harder
They wear big hearts out on their sleeve
Loyalty’s their trait mas que nada
An unexpected gift to please.
Kings of kingdom Cabo Roig
The town’s their coastal playground
Bushwaka girls their favourite toys
The summer’s heaving fairground.
Don’t get me wrong these boys are charmers
Sparkling eyes and smiles to match
But never will the hands of karma
Strike them down- they have no catch.
To find a group of men so loyal
(to eachother rather than the girls)
Across the seas and lands you’d toil
This ‘mandom’ love will make you hurl.
But ladies this is all in jest
These boys are worth your time and love.
My summers with them have been the best
Saying goodbye for me is tough.
When slippery lay in hospital
The ‘My Size’ stood beside his bed
Those smiling eyes not lost at all
They soothed his beaten, broken head.
A star that bright cannot be damaged
His humour and his strength withheld
Without that boy I could not have managed
He picks me up when I feel I’ve failed.
They all in turn have made me laugh
And so these words are for the girls:
In summer land the times aren’t tough
But this advice is wisdom’s pearls:
If you hear the call “Hay my size”
Stop right there and turn your head
Coz’ if you really are a ‘their size’
You should be flattered that’s what they said.
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