Writer's block

I have that painful stare-at-the-blank-page-can’t-think-of-anything-good-to-write illness. It’s torturing me.
I have all these thoughts in my head, so many in fact that they are swimming circles around each other. Racing and competing and drowning each other in a competition so fierce none come out on top and the page in front of me remains blank.

One thought rings loudest in my mind, but whispers words so fragile they disappear as soon as I write them down.

What do you do when the one thing you want to write about won’t jump out of your head, crawl down your arm, ignite in your fingertips and tattoo themselves on a page in front of you? What then? How do you make the one idea you have an actuality when you know it’s the one idea that isn’t any good? ‘No one will want to read this’ I keep thinking, ‘that is not a good story.’ Yet it remains, the only idea stronger than all the rest, the only spark of inspiration setting a fire in my mind.
Yet the words are stuck, trapped inside me. They pulse in my brain and leak through the membrane to my blood, flowing through my small body and into my heart where they beat within me like a life force, mocking me, taunting me with their fickle presence. The one thing I want to write won’t come out and nothing else survives.

How do poets find inspiration so willing to be tamed? How do authors write plots so eager to unfold? How do musicians make melodies wanting to be heard? When I can’t write a story because it doesn’t want to be told. It wants to be lived. And life is not an option.

I have that painful illness, that teasing trick, that contemptuous feeling.
I have writer’s block.

The Beach

I love the beach.

I love how the sand gives way to my eager steps towards the water. I love how the hot sand makes the cool water that much more rewarding. I love how the sun hits the waves and reflects off the surface as if the clear water hid crystals just waiting to be found.

I used to believe that I was destined to be a mermaid because I love the beach, and water, and swimming so much. I would have to be dragged out of the surf by my parents as the sun set and my lips turned blue with chill, but I still never wanted to leave.

Water is calm. Water is fresh. Water is relaxing and energizing, loving and teasing.

I love how after a swim the salt sticks to my skin and crystallizes on the light hairs on my arm. I love how if I lick my lips I can taste the sea and all the things I love about it. I love how my hair dries after being tousled by the waves and saturated with salt.

Today I sat at the beach and read. I did not pay attention to the conversation of the people next to me. I did not aimlessly watch as the passers by passed by me. I barely even spoke to my mother who was sitting at my side also immersed in a book. I escaped from my world, from my thoughts, from everything on my mind good and bad happy and sad and I read.

Reading is my great escape, my favourite way to ease my mind and forget my troubles, but reading on the beach is unparalleled. The combination of a good novel, a sunny day, the sand and the sea and the way my hair dries after a swim makes life seem serene.

I love the beach.

Lessons Learned

It has now been over a month since I left Italy. It’s hard to imagine my time in Italy felt so long but my time away from it now is going so quickly. In one more month I’ll be leaving Cyprus, my home away from home, quite possibly for good. One short month after that I’ll be starting college in Boston, living in America for the first time in my life.

It’s taken me this whole month to decide what my big end of Italy post should be. I was going to write a one-month anniversary reflecting on everything I learnt this year but honestly that post would probably take a year in itself to write and read. I’ve learnt so much, seen so much, experienced and loved so much this year. I decided to write not what I learnt most in Italy, but what I learnt most about myself.
This year, amongst many other things, was a test of my independence and my relationships with others. It tested my friendships that were hard to maintain while away from home, tested new friendships formed and sadly lost, and tested romantic relationships. Not just in Italy, but in life I have learnt that all relationships start within oneself.

Recently I read a very good quote: "As you grow older, you'll find the only things you regret are the things you didn't do." If you don’t fight for what you want you won’t get it. If you don’t tell your friend you care about them you will regret it but if you do argue and quarrel and cry you will forget what you were arguing about eventually. This advice applies to all aspects of life, not just relationships. If you don’t travel you will regret not experiencing another culture. If you don’t smile you will regret the sadness you allowed into your heart. And if you don’t love you will regret missing the opportunity. Some things come once in a lifetime, like cooking the perfect soufflé or travelling with friends. Cease the opportunity because it’s better to experience than wonder what you could have learnt.
If someone is important to you let them know. I’ve made many mistakes this year when it comes to relationships with others and I will admit that they were my mistakes and my responsibility, because a friendship cannot fall apart unless you let it. That being said the other person has to accept this attitude as well because one person cannot be entirely responsible for both parts of a relationship. If you both accept your own responsibility instead of blaming each other I believe that even the hardest friendship or relationship can be maintained. Maybe not in the way you had hoped, maybe not even in a way that you want at first. But keeping a friend is better than losing one, no matter how hard it is to keep them.


That is what I learnt this year. Above all I learnt that I will never stop learning, never stop trying and never stop growing.