I’m writing this to you from the metro platform at Syntagma, waiting for the train to Athens airport.
It’s rush hour. The last week before the holidays. Most people are swaddled in jackets and coats despite the brilliant 18 degree sunshine today. They carry totes, a paper bag from the bakery, a bunch of flowers.
The tannoy reads descriptions of missing persons. Nobody smiles.
I’m on my way home from my third solo trip to Greece this year. When I think of 2023, I’ll think of scents of thyme and sunbeams on the wall; of the foaming sea and a plume of smoke set against the Acropolis; of the quiet joy of crooked pavements and a greasy fingerprint (or two) on a napkin. Privilege, to sit in peaceful contemplation on the steps of the ancient city.
You might say I’ve been running away. There’s a lot to run from, isn’t there? Not just the endless chokehold of decline, nor the looming inevitability of the end of everything. But, in my own life, the length of each day, spent squarely, solidly alone. Or in brief connection, severed by the tube station farewell.
“Get home safely, text me!”
At the start of 2021, I didn’t think I’d still be single three years later. To be single in one’s late 30s often feels terminal. Interminable. As the world has felt, finally, normal again, the sensation has been particularly fierce.
“You’re too picky,” comes the refrain, over and over, as I wonder why everyone is so keen for me to jump on just anyone.
But then, that’s what people think of single women at my age. Already gathering dust. Perpetrators of such a litany of sins including “spent too much time working”, “thinks she can find a guy who matches her”, “too easy”, “too opinionated”, “too miserable” and the best, “doesn’t love herself”, a standard to which the rest of the world is never held.
“I live in the moment,” I’ve heard from so many men in the last couple of years. “I don’t make plans. I don’t think about the future. I don’t want to be tied down…”
My wonderful friend Jodie bought me Amy Key’s Arrangements in Blue for my birthday. It’s a remarkable work that speaks on this very theme with a candour I’ve never seen before. The challenges of desperately wanting, but knowing that the perception of this is toxic to desire; trying hard to replace those traditional pillars of life and home, sometimes successfully, sometimes not; the paradox of caring for those to whom you are merely trivial.
Key’s life is a little different to my own, but some of her words were so painfully relatable that I realised I wasn’t breathing as I read them.
To navigate the world alone is difficult. And yet, as much as we invest in friendships and other non-romantic connections, inevitably, this is what it comes down to.
I do not want to be defeated. I do not want to be the person who waits for things to come to her.
So, I wanted to face this year boldly. I wanted to embrace the things I love. I wanted to step through fear. And, although I don’t always succeed on that last point, I’m proud that I’ve had a damn good go.
I’m proud that I chose to come to Greece three times and fulfilled my wish to spend time more time here. If one is to be in a long-term relationship with a country, it might as well be one that is so beautiful and so chaotic at the same time.
At the start of the year, I was feeling the financial pinch of moving, but I couldn’t deny the pull to return. “I’ll just book and something will work out,” I told myself. I pulled a card: three of cups. Community. Well, duh. Don’t I have an existing circle of Greek friends, both inside and outside the country?
I remembered that I’ve followed a yoga teacher in Santorini for some years, and that she runs a small hostel. I wasn’t in a particular rush to return to this particular destination, which I last visited in 2010, oversaturated as it is. But the lure of an incredible off-season deal was too much to resist. So, I pitched up at the little hostel outside Fira, and picked my bunkbed in the dorm full of achingly beautiful Australians.
I don’t want to write here about the details of that week. They’re too precious to squander, a jewel I’ve described in another space, for the select few. But, in brief, I received so much abundance: of beauty, of care, of joy. True expansion. It was worth all the money, and more.
Then, I took a ferry to Sifnos, a wild place in comparison. My Sifnian friends in London had given me the name of their neighbour, who owned rooms overhanging the valley that runs down to the Bronze Age port. I woke on May morning to the sound of goats bleating and clanking their bells, punctuated by the soft bray of a donkey. Everywhere, the slopes were dotted with white beehives. I walked down the steps, fringed with wildflowers, to the church that sits in the waves. Everything was rough magic, here.
It was stormy that week, uncharacteristically for May. I ate an incredible dinner on the beach at the island’s finest restaurant, Cantina, while a gale snatched at my food. The owners apologised; I reminded them that, as a Brit, I have eaten in worse weather conditions in my life!
The storm frightened me off getting the ferry, so I stayed an extra day, compulsively checking the wave heights online, before taking the big, slow Solomos to Athens.
Athens has changed a lot since I lived in the mountains all those years ago. I spent a week in a hostel on Kolokotroni, in between Monastiraki and Psyrri, working on my laptop in the hostel kitchen during the day and going on a series of terrible dates in the evening. I managed to meet some wonderful locals (not as dates) and felt closer to the city than ever.
I even found time to watch Eurovision at a hotel bar, sat next to a guy who switched frantically between Grindr and googling “gay venues Athens”. The drag presenter overlapped Loreen’s intro, to the vocal dismay of the crowd.
I returned to Athens in October, this time renting a room in Pangrati, the hipster yet adorable neighbourhood next to the Kallimarmaro stadium. I’d previously visited with an American travel writer I’d met on Instagram, and dragged her to the area to check out the vibes.
Working in my room by day and exploring the area’s café culture by night was pretty much ideal. Midweek, I celebrated my birthday at the ancient cemetery before gathering friends at a rooftop bar for a drink.
I danced for hours at a traditional music festival, drunk on the euphoria of sharing my passion with hundreds of people. Two of my fellow dancers from London were there and spotted me in the crowd, remarkably.
Jodie and I then journeyed to the island of Paros, where we sunbathed and swam and programmed relaxing memories for years to come. The light and the water were perfect in this season of winding down. We took a boat trip with a lot of Canadians and jumped into the sea; we watched the sunset across the bay with drinks in hand. A last glimmer of summertime.
And now this long weekend, using up my holiday for the year. I went back to Pangrati, of course, with no laptop this time. Spent an evening in Kypseli, another new neighbourhood for me, an afternoon at the freshly opened Maria Callas museum, and a morning strolling the First Cemetery where I found some well known graves. Ate melomakarona and watched the Christmas lights dance.
People ask if I would like to move to Greece. If life and the universe were different, yes. I think I could be ever so happy living in Pangrati. But the world and my life sit on certain axes and right now, I’m not sure I can have absolutely everything, everywhere, all at once. More time in Greece (legally as well as chronologically speaking). Financial stability. Solid healthcare and better health. A relationship. A baby. A home.
Let’s see.
With that said, I think I did my best, given all the circumstances, to honour what makes me happy within realistic limits this year.
And I was better at being alone than I have been for a long time. More confident in exploring by myself; more sure of what I wanted from each day. And that gives me pride, too. That I did not wait for anyone to arrange my perfect moments for me. I went to find them.
I had weeks and even months of remission from chronic pain, which was a blessing. Days and days where I have felt comfortable in my body. I’m still vigilant, often too much so, but I’m so, so thankful for the stretches of time when I don’t need to think about my internal organs.
I also travelled to Germany and Madrid this year, although I had company for both. There was a lot of pleasure in opening new vistas. I feel so privileged to have been able to do so. I made more new friends this year, some of the most incredible people I’ve been blessed to encounter. And I’ve made moves to secure my long-term future. I’m making yet another big life change, and I’m not sure how it will all shake out, but right now I’m happy that I took the plunge.
Sometimes, it’s true, I’ve tried to do too much. Sometimes, I’ve approached burnout. I want next year to be smoother and simpler and slower. I don’t know if that’s possible given the aforementioned changes, and again I mourn the fact that I can’t have or do everything.
But I can at least look back at 2023 and say, “I did that.” No matter what comes next, I’m holding onto this. And holding on in general.
Hangin’ round the ceiling half the time.
Catherine Queen 
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