My friend and I have been planning the sea for weeks. More precisely, two weeks of sea. Two of us, three dogs and one cat. Air-conditioned apartment. The sea on a spit. Everything as it should be. And instead of counting down the days until departure, we obsessively follow the weather forecast. Not because of the rain. But because of the heat. We welcome every new degree above thirty as bad news. We’ve been sending each other screenshots of the forecast for weeks. Morning, afternoon, evening.
“It’s down to 29.”
“It’s back to 33.”
“They say a storm is coming.”
“He’s not coming.”
“Now it says 31.”
“Yesterday it said 28.”
At some point, we realized that we are not planning an annual vacation, but negotiating with the weather conditions. We are seriously considering canceling everything at the last minute. Or to leave and come back after a few days if it doesn’t work out. Or to escape to some hill where the temperature will be ten degrees lower and where no one will blame us for sitting in the shade like two bats. Because no matter how unbearably hot it can be in Zagreb, you are home. You know where you are. You can shut yourself up, turn on the air conditioner, shower five times a day and survive.
You wait a whole year
It’s different at sea. There you are additionally haunted by the feeling that you should enjoy yourself. If you paid for it. If you waited a whole year. That he should be happy. And there is nothing worse than a vacation that turns into an obligation.
And then we started to list. Psoriasis. Arthritis. Perimenopause. Anxiety. Panic attacks. Medicines that do not like the sun. Bodies that no longer tolerate what they did ten or fifteen years ago. And we realized something a bit unpleasant. Maybe we no longer love the sea the way we used to love it.
In truth, I have never been the kind of person who will bake in the sun from ten in the morning to five in the afternoon. I never liked crowded city beaches or crowds. I always ran away to wild beaches. The further away from people, the closer to peace. I loved places that had to be walked to. Beaches without cafés, music and blokes. Places where you can read a book, listen to crickets and not hear other people’s conversations. I also liked to take off the bra. Not because I’m a nudist. I’ve never been. I’m not interested in looking at other people naked, nor am I interested in them looking at me. I just love that feeling of total freedom. Salt on the skin. Sun. Sea. A body with nothing in between. No tight elastic, no wet swimsuit sticking to the skin, no feeling like I have to hide something.
That was always a luxury for me. But even that isn’t enough to make me look forward to summer anymore.
Today I dream of shade. That thick, dense shade under the tree. The book. Silence. Naps without remorse and a dog snoring somewhere nearby. Maybe a pool. Maybe the forest. Maybe a meadow. And the more we talked about it, the clearer it became that we were not tired of the sea. We are tired of the idea that we should enjoy something just because we have always enjoyed it.
The kind of summer I need
As if there is some unwritten rule that summer must look a certain way. That you must want the beach. That you have to wait for the sun. That you have to be outside all day. That you have to be tanned. That you have to love what everyone else loves.
And what if you don’t love anymore? What if the best part of summer is the moment you get away from it all? When you turn off your cell phone. When you don’t have to talk. When nobody asks you for anything. When you don’t have to be available, productive, fun or social.
Maybe we’re getting old. Maybe we are tired. Maybe we just finally stopped acting. For years I thought that a vacation must look like a postcard. As a photo for social networks. Like something that others will look at and think, “She’s doing really well.”
Today, I’m much more interested in how I feel than how something looks. If I need shade, then I need shade. If I need peace, then I need peace. If I need a forest instead of a beach, then the forest is my vacation.
And perhaps this is precisely the biggest change that happens to us over the years. Not that we mind the heat. Rather, we finally stop doing things just because we’re supposed to love them.
The sea has become a must.
And maybe that’s exactly why the time has come for me to start choosing vacations according to myself, and not according to expectations. Maybe it’s not a sign that I’m getting old. Maybe it’s just a sign that I’m finally getting to know each other.
Until next time, I wish you the rest you really need. Not the one that looks good in photos.
Hug,
AND.
