Two years ago three men and I carried my most emotionally essential belongings in huge brown boxes wrapped with red letters fragile tape to Eleftherios Venizelos. My father, my childhood friend’s father and my beloved uncle, were my very personal fragile tape keeping me safe to the beginning of one of the most significant transitions of my life, my good bye to Athens and everything I lived there. Good bye to 30 years of memories and dreams. I kissed my dad, said “see you later” as if I was leaving to work and returning the same afternoon to have dinner together, and moved forward. I had no idea what was waiting for me. I was surprisingly ready for one of the toughest but sincerest roles in a play with unknown plot, yet so genuine, desirable, so challenging, and utterly mine.
It took me almost thirty years and a four hours flight to grow up. It was a silent and private trip. Memories were rewinded at the back seats, as if all of my staff got out of the brown boxes, or I had been carrying them with me all along. It did not feel dramatic or painful at all. It felt warm and peaceful inside me. It was reassuring that I was doing what was right. For me.
My ex boyfriend was waiting for me at Heathrow, however, I was alone, the only one waiting for me, was me. I did not know back then. It did not matter. The hallucination of having someone next to me when everything was changing created feelings of belonging and mutual visualising of common future. Togetherness in the present. Away from the secrets and the travelling between Athens and London, between two lives, two illusionary lies.
Dreaming of something is the beginning of creating something. I ended up creating me not us.
Ironically it seems that my most well hidden insecurities came out of the closet, not to weaken me and put me down but to make me stronger. In two years time, I realised that I was too strong to stay the same, too determined to just keep looking behind me to find his hand and drag him out of his well disguised hell. Things changed completely, people and dreams too fake to stay true and fight were vanished, replaced by pure reality. Truth and honesty. For all of us. I was not only strong to leave my past in order to change my future, but I proved to be even stronger to change both of our lives. During those two years, I fell in love, kissed a lot, made love a lot, laughed a lot, dreamt like child looking at the stars in daytime, cried out loud of pain and loneliness, emotional loneliness and uncomfortable settling with a man who was crying naked on me, yet never stood by me, for me. I fell and came up again. I stood by me and protected me. I realised that we are truly alone and that is both tough and powerful. I questioned almost everything I had believed in so far and abandoned the past. It felt like separating me from my body, leaving me skinless but it was only the pain of removing your hungry, greedy mouth sucking my heart out of me. It still hurts sometimes, it is still frightening, but it is okay. It is the most mind blowing sense of personal freedom. Despite the anger, I send out love every time I am thinking of all the good times, and yes they were a lot and fantastic, surreal. Like a dream.
2 years after, I am still gazing at London’s pink spring sky, enjoying sudden storm and rain, closing my right eye at what is out there waiting for me to become mine. I am solo travelling with Maria Callas’ voice, feeling myself again. Reborn. Mortal. Free. Thank you.
N.
nassia kapa 