I read somewhere that when you recreate something in words, you get to live it twice.
And that’s why I’ve started writing again.
Before my move back to Vancouver, I was traveling non stop. I had to quickly pack up my home of 2 years in 2 days into 2 suitcases and then I was on the plane. I never got to say goodbye to my last home, the one that witnessed my most transformative chapter.
Whether it’s because my memories of living in Athens have been most vividly alive or because I’m still feeling that north star pull to move back, my life there feels more recent than the one here in Vancouver.
A lot of people ask me why can’t I make Vancouver feel like home. That question alone speaks volumes. They must be the lucky ones who are already where they want to be. Or, they haven’t felt the contrast of finding where they truly belong.
I truly believe that there are places that call to us. Places that feel like home in an instant, like you’ve lived there in a past life. A place that matches our internal rhythm. Somewhere that you have an internal map to, where your feet know the roads like muscle memory without ever having been there. An inexplicable feeling of belonging. A place that is expansive, like a deep exhale that you’ve been holding.
Not many will resonate with this feeling but I have met a rare few who understand this deep in their core. The restlessness of being in the wrong place and the yearning to return to our heartbeat, our home.
For me, that place is Athens.
… and the yearning to return to our heartbeat, our home.
The Apartment
This was my apartment when I lived in Athens.
It was my cocoon for the new life I was embarking on, when I was becoming the version of me that felt most true and aligned with who I am.
In every sense, physical and metaphorical, this place was my home.
It has seen me in my most vulnerable, a shelter during life’s hard lessons.
It has seen me in my most powerful as well, celebrating pivotal moments, hosting many a dinner party with new fateful connections, many of whom I’m still dear friends with today.
It has been a home to family and friends too, old and new, who came to visit me from all around the world.
It has been there for me after every new adventure, a waiting reprieve from long journeys.
I miss it and all the quirks that come with an old flat. With its scratched wooden floors, dilapidated shutters that lose a slat every time I open and close them, curls of peeling paint fighting back gravity, marble counters warmed and stained from the Grecian sun and coffee, terrazzo floors that make it hopeless to find anything you have dropped and ancient radiators that only turn on with a key to make it gurgle water.
There’s a warm luminescent quality to every surface that the sunlight touches. Golden hour seems to glow endlessly here, until the twilight catches up to it and seeps navy into the sky.
Even the sense of time feels like it’s stretched for you to live more life.
When I close my eyes, this is the place that I go to.
My sanctuary.
A place that is expansive, like a deep exhale that you’ve been holding.
For me, that place is Athens.
