Hope Dies Last

Overheard

Girl 1: “What? What’s wrong? You don’t like the jacket?”

Girl 2: “No, I love the jacket.  It’s the jacket that doesn’t like me.”

***

This got me thinking. What are some of the things that I love, but sadly they do not reciprocate those feelings? Here’s my list.

1) Apparently, most of the food, in the world, today.

2) Zach Braff.

3) Very high heels. I heart you. Why do you hate my feet and my sense of balance so much?

4) Technology. Like relationships, it all starts out so promising and then BAM! one day you woke up? And DON’T UNDERSTAND A SINGLE THING OF WHY OR HOW OR WHEN IT ALL WENT WRONG. And you sit there with a radio on your shoulders and fire in your eyes chanting over and over and over again, “But, I looooooove you. Please, don’t do this to me.”

5)  Rayban Wayfarers. Because I adore Rachel Bilson’s sense of style and want it for my own. But those damn sunglasses hate me so much they would start their very own Go Fug Yourself type blog solely based on my face.

6) Travelling. I do. I want to see the whole world. But the thing about Travelling is that she really does not like the way I hate her best friend–THE PLANE. I think she just needs to invent a different friend–one of those machines that transports you to Australia in like a second–and then this really could be the beginning of a beautiful love story.

7) Topshop, Anthropologie, Victoria’s Secret. But will they move countries for me? No.

8) Grey. Yet,  it refuses to do absolutely nothing for my complexion.

9) That time of the month. I love it because it reminds me that everything is working properly. The feeling is definitely not mutual though. I can tell because of the pain it inflicts on me.

10) Boys. Seriously? Why don’t you like me?

What is something you like, but that doesn’t like you back?

My restlessness, at the moment, is directly proportionate to the amount of crushed iced I chew.

The glaciers are not melting because of global warming, but because I am slowly and meticulously gnawing my way through them. I apoloigize to my grand-grand children in advance but Giagia Hope is just trying to survive.  You might be hot, but you’re alive because of me, is what I’m saying.

This restlessness has been building up all summer. Egged on by my emotional deterioration I summoned all the patience I had to wait it out. Things eventually get better. And they did. And then, just as I began to feel alive again, they didn’t.

So, I chew ice and drum my fingers on my therapists couch; my hair sticking out in a rather fashionable haphazard bun on my head. Dark circles under my eyes. I almost look like a tortured writer with no words left.

“I don’t think you’re not moving.” she is saying. I snap back to attention.

“What do you mean? Look at me. My life is stagnant. I don’t go out. I’m not working. My fridge is empty and yet my cupboards are all Stepford-like. Everything is changing but nothing has changed.”

“You have been working behind the scenes for months though. Hope, right now it is as if you are on an airplane. You never feel that you’re moving when you’re sitting on the plane. It’s only when you get to the destination and get off the plane that you realize that you’ve actually been moving all along.”

I smile.

She continues.

“You’ll see, two months from now you’ll be somewhere. You’ll have moved on from this place.”

I really hope so.

If only for the poor ice caps.

Dear Nephew,

While I was sitting on the couch today, my therapist asked me, “So how do you feel about the care you recieved?” She was referring to the wee vacation I took last week. In hospital.

I replied that it was all fine and that the doctors were professional and the hospital was fine-”BUT” I said, “I didn’t feel comforable with the nurses.”

“Why ever not?” she asked.

“Because hello? They were MY AGE. How can someone MY AGE TAKE CARE OF ME? I didn’t really trust them.”

“Are you saying you don’t trust yourself?”

“No, off course not.”

“That’s interesting.”

Nephew, because I am your aunt and because you have three uncles that will tell you to be strong and fight, I’m probably going to sugar coat a lot of things in your life. But today I am going to be honest. Life is going to be tough and without meaning to people and situations will take your life and lift it up into a spinning tornado until you can’t feel your feet, until you don’t know which way is up or which way is down. Then as suddenly as it started, you will fall-PLONK!-and left to sort out the mess for yourself. You might, if it suits you, choose to go to therapy instead. And if you do? You will learn that the “That’s interesting” comment of your therapist is ten times more terrifying than that spinning tornado of doom.

Because ‘That’s interesting” actually means that you have just revealed an important truth, that only SHE CAN SEE, and you know that you have to see it too, but it is like a blind spot in a car and you JUST CAN’T MOVE YOUR HEAD IN THAT DIRECTION.

“But I survived so I guess they were fine!” I said dramatically and swiftly changed the subject.

But then later, much later, I went over the conversation in my head and it was as if a light went on in some part of my brain. My head turned and I could see straight through into the blind spot.

I didn’t trust the nurses because they were my age. Ergo, I don’t trust myself. But I am fine! They did their job remarkably.

Cue head turning and light flooding.

THAT MEANS SO CAN I.

Nephew, today you are two years old. In the last month you have grown so confident. You climb and you run and you throw yourself off the couch onto pillows shouting with an uncanny DiCaprio-like roar  “I’m the king of the world.” Every time you do it I want to tell you to be careful. I want to protect you. I want to very nearly stop you.

But I promise from now on when I look at that smile and when I look at that unadulterated joy and excitement in your eyes every time you achieve something new, I will stop cringing. I will smile.

Because even though, you are 25 years younger than me you already trust yourself.

And that makes you pretty damn special in my eyes.

I love you.

Mama Yo

On the surface, Athens is a large, urban city.

We don’t have skyscrapers like New York or the abundance of people of London or the ferocious vitality of Hong Kong. But, all in all, we’re a city.

Except, if you dig a little deeper, you will notice that Athens is just a very large village.

There is always someone who knows someone who knows someone who happens to be the person sitting next to you on the bus. The doctor you just met could be from your mother’s actual village and when they were children his brother’s best friend had a huge crush on your mother’s sister. Your new boss knows your best friend’s husband’s cousin’s wife and well, you get the picture.

A village masquerading in city clothing.

As for the villagers?

They DO love their gossip. So much so that anywhere you go you will always have this sense that you are being watched. When I first moved here, I thought I was being paranoid. I was not.There is this great iconic figure that some of you may have seen portrayed in any film that has ever been shot in Greece. The grandmother dressed all in black sitting on a rackety stool watching the world go by with beady eyes and a scowl on her face. You know the one I am talking about, right?

I’ll tell you a secret. That’s just a quaint stereotype we’ve dug out for the tourists. Because the grandmother is actually a woman in her late twenties with the Longchamp handbag, or the fourty year old hairdresser who looks gay but really isn’t. Or the ten year old child playing happily in his concrete haven.

Everyone is in on it.

Much credit is given to Greece about inventing democracy and stuff, but really I believe we haven’t been acknowledged at all for the role our little country and its ancestors have played in this centuries most important, most defining aspect.

THE TABLOID MAGAZINE.

I am just saying that I am certain that if someone were to dig deep under the ancient ruins of the Parthenon they are sure to find some stone with etchings of Plato leaving the Symposium heading to the Gymnasium (Hey! That’s a Greek word!) with a pair of Nike’s on his feet and his gym bag. Well, not really. Because in those days they exercised naked and thus he would not need to change his robes.

He would just need to take them off.

***

Last week, I went over to a friend who is renting a flat in a house in an affluent area. My mother came to pick me up with some of her friends and when I got into the car one of them asked me,

“Whose house is that?”

“Erm…I don’t know.” I answered.

“What’s your friend’s last name?”

“No, she’s just renting. It’s not her house.”

“Well, what is the name of her landlord then?’

“Erm…I really don’t know.”

“Do they have a pool? How many bedrooms is it? How long have they lived here?”

See what I’m saying.

Each and every time a person stops in front of our shop window to look at the display, my trainee asks me the same question,

“Who is that?”

And each and every time I answer,

“A potential customer.”

And she asks,

“Do you know them? Why do you think they’re talking on their phone? She’s fat. Her skirts too tight.”

See?

Totally, insane, inappropriate gossips.

That reminds me, I haven’t checked out Perez today.