I love

I cant sleep tonight.
I am moved and restless. I saw you after nearly 3 years and the sleeping spell I imposed to my heart was broken into million pieces.
I felt your hands on me, your mouth, I remembered physically how it felt to be one with you.

Then I felt shame. For my looks, my age, my longing.
I know you dont feel the same, I am ok with it. Was ok with it. I am ok with the natural course of you needing something other than what I am, I dont feel rejected.
I feel rejected by life.
Squeezed out of it, like toothpaste out of a tube.
Loosing you is the equivalent of loosing my youth, and no matter how much I need and want to be young, pretty and with options again, that will never happen.
You and I will never happen.
And I thought I was ok with it.

But seing you, I realized how much I want to live, how much I want, and that in fact I am not settled to die and let go.
I have been steadily walking towards death for the past 5 years. I put on weight, I cut my hair, I lost my will and power to live.
Not because of you of course.
But because my life had no love. And without love, I stop to thrive.

I became concerned with money, worried, and obsessed about bills... I dont do well alone, I admit it for the first time. I need to be with someone who grounds me, holds me, love me. Then I can carry us both, like a faithful ox, a horse, a loyal dog.

But I need to have that guide, that light in my heart, that sparks my brain with hormones.

You were my one true love, my only love, although I feel in love with many. It was not your character. It was not the best.
It was not your sex drive, but our chemistry. It was your heart, your youth, your talent, your smiling eyes when you would see me coming, your eyebrow going up as you played the guitar, and your mouth breathing as you were on top of me.

I want to lose the weight.
I want to live.
I m not good at paying bills, at taking care of another human being, I only know how to sacrifice. And I have.
But now I want to come back to being me.

I dont know if coming back to Greece will be good for me. I dont like the idea of being in the same land as you, so close. It is easier to be far away, and maybe when I married him, I was running away from the pain that I would inevitably feel when we separated.

I want to live.
I think I woke up from a long period of depression.
I let myself go, and now I want to come back. To me, to feeling like me.

#metoo

I don't like the word "survivor"
I don't like to be defined by something that happened to me, putting aside everything else, I am.
I don't like the word to come to me, if any word should be used after rape or assault.

I don't want the forced respect out of an action that lacked respect.
I don't want pity, as if something was taken from me, but hey, I m still breathing.

I want to be able to chose. Back then and now.
And I chose to call him a predator, an asshole, an entitled narcissist, and put the focus on his sorry ass.
Not on me. I refused to be defined by an encounter he did and took what he needed not out of his merit, his charm or his aura, but by force, by bullying or by drugging.


My first boyfriend was more experienced than I was. He used to pressure me to use my tongue when I was kissing him, he was "teaching" me and I was shy, but also playing the game of a modest girl as my culture had taught me. Soon the teachings escalated to other areas of our sexuality and pretty soon I would get slapped for not engaging in oral sex, while being screamed at, that he was not disgusting.

A colleague took advantage of my hospitality and my sleep after an evening out in the town with the whole crew.

A colleague reached out and grabbed my breasts full of milk, and unapologetic said he had a fetish. In my own home. I was shocked and disgusted at his paw on my baby's food.

An old man tried to finger me at age 9 when I said goodbye and he lifted me in his arms.

A boy of 14 tried to undress me at 7 in the toilets of a Hotel.

9 men put me through "trial" a warm summer night and condemned me to be their toy, but changed their mind last minute, when I was 17. Maybe because they saw the determination in my eyes, to jump of the cliff we were standing on?  They would not have touched me, not just because they had a piece of limp meat between their legs. Not if I had something to say.

I lost my job due to advances at least 8 times. I lost another 4 jobs due to their wives seeing me. I was told by police officers that I must be a lesbian if I get so upset  over a guy "hitting" on me.

I had 3 guys in total that would not take no for an answer and would a) call every day b) try to "kill" themselves, or get physical when they finally got it, that I was not playing "games" but I was truly not interested.

I m a woman. They are garbage. I am not a survivor, I am not the only one, I have 9 friends that were raped or assaulted by a family member at a young age. Others were seduced.
I know more than 5- women that got hired when they lost weight and who had to hide they had children to their bosses.

I am not a survivor, I am not the only one.
The world needs to change. In a world where serial killers become famous and their victims faceless, we tend to put a face on rape victims and make their rapist faceless. Time to switch things around.

Benjamin Button

I am in Greece at the moment and I just saw the love of my life on The voice.  I felt excited, and happy and proud. I know he came to this path also partly due to my presence in his life. I took him places, heard songs with him and the 4 years we were together shaped him as well as they shaped me. I take no credit on his amazing talent, I am happy for him and I am sure he will be a great artist in the years to come.

But I have a pang in my heart.
Our story ended, I made a conscious choice not to see him again, although I never stopped loving him. I do not suffer from the lack of physical contact or the idea he might be with someone else, today or antother day. We met at a crossroad in our lives and we both were important for one another. But we both knew it would be with an expiration date.

Today, I felt a pain. Triggered by the fact I wont be there to take part of all that is ahead of him. Triggered by the fact his life is beginning while mine is ending.

And at the same time I am tremedously happy for him.
What a confusing night..

Here I go again...

Ten years ago, I was blogging my ass off. 
Anonymously, writing about rude taxi drivers, crazy employers, sexual harassment, hate mail, my sex life, my stories, my life, in a city that was not mine and yet it was home.
I lived in Athens back then and clashed a lot with the mentality that keeps women in a second rate citizens position, without their knowledge.
It was easy to blog back then and therapeutic. No one I knew was in the internet, I could vent, rage, cry, and expose my mind to anyone who wanted to read, without making it about me, or the city, but just stories, of a random woman in the city.

It lasted while it lasted, till it was picked up by a publishing company. Then I moved to another city. There is no anonymity now, everything is linked. It is not about a random woman and her stories but about that woman and her opinions. More people are online today than before. I am older, slightly more tired, with a child that can read...everything contributing to my silence the past few years. I did not feel  I had anything of value to add to the plethora of voices in the net, everybody had a story, everyone was the queen of Sheebah in their heads.
And I could not write in my native language, but in English. I was not sure I could.

But now I/m pissed at people again. Regardless of their nationality, it is not an ethnic thing, it is a decency thing, it is a need for me to write what ails me and hurts me and bothers me.
Sometimes I might add old  posts from my time in Greece, or other stories. Just for the hell of it.

This is my telephone line to the unknown, to whomever wants to pick it up and listen.