Tag Archives: Single

The Importance Of Doing Things Alone

A couple of days ago I visited my parents. Now, I realize that I’ve written a great lot about my mother, mostly criticizing things she’s said, done, or believes and, probably still sentimental from the last visit, I need to make myself clear: I love my mother, and I do so unconditionally, the way I believe parents and children should love each other. Of course terms and conditions apply significantly often and, being a queer kid with queer friends, I’ve seen it lead to toxicity numerous times. But the thing is, I do love my mother, very much, and at the same time I recognize that she can, at times, despite being overly caring in her way, hold views that I find extremely problematic.

After that short disclaimer, I now plan to get to our issue: I told her that my best friend has visited Berlin, and she asked me whether she did on her own. After I replied positively, a prolonged silence was followed by: “is she currently in a relationship?” I replied positively again, and my mother’s disapproving response was: “I don’t understand these things. I really don’t see why anyone who is in a relationship would choose to travel all by themselves”.

Now, this is not really shocking, coming from my mother. In fact I could see many of my peers with more or less different approaches to relationships than mine phrase that concern. I’m not going to discuss relationships here, or the way my mother feels about them. What actually felt more limiting to me, than the idea that I’m supposed – according to some people – to do absolutely everything together with my significant other, was the instant impression that the habit of traveling alone can actually be perceived as wrong. “But there are few things that can be wonderful as traveling alone!” I immediately blurted out, and I deemed traveling with other people one of these few other things, but this is not the point here. “At a completely foreign city?” she asked disbelievingly, and I felt so absurd at the realization that she didn’t understand.

Some of the memories I treasure the most are those of myself discovering new places completely alone. They weren’t always 100% happy at their original moment, but they were all rich, and gave me all those cliché things that are actually great chances to get important shit discussed with yourself. I contemplated on age, generations and growing old, while celebrating my birthday alone on a bench at York, reading Romeo and Juliet, crying over an 1₤ donut, and desperately trying to catch someone from home on the phone. I learned the most about art in these moments I stole roaming around the Louvre alone, and actually appreciated the sun on my skin even while being a person from Greece, for that single time in years, that morning I spent lying on the grass of Regent’s park underneath a cherry tree. That was the part where I asked myself why I wasn’t happy, what else I might want from my life to feel completed. Scribbling pretentious poetry on the tram in Budapest before the months that followed of not having the time or the mindset to write anything, casting passers-by for my fanfiction and scrapbooking the day away.

Not all these moments were happy – in fact I was crying during most of them since crying is one of the things I’m truly good at – nor did I discover the universe’s biggest secrets while walking around famous dead people in Paris. But there is a reason I still remember them today, hoping for many other similar moments to come.

Maybe it’s just that I’m one of those people that romanticize everything, and make a big deal about dressing up like a pumpkin in October and spending that cherished day alone in a cute little coffee shop while sipping pumpkin spiced shit and generally smelling like pumpkin a lot. I’m full of clichés, and at some point I realized that maybe that’s okay. The thing is that I can get the full satisfaction out of such things if I do them fully, and if I do them my way. I want to spend as many hours in the art gallery as I want, and skip things I find little interest in, and then walk around a city searching for the Harry Potter spots or photographing ridiculous details that make me the pretentious person that I’ve accepted I am.

That’s why I remember these solitary trips – or solitary parts of trips I made with company – with such pleasure. It’s because all of my sense were more alerted than they can normally get in any other part of my life. I still remember the scents, I still remember the flowers, the piercing cold or the warmth of the sun on my face. I still remember the journey back to the hostel, as I played these games where I pretended that I was returning to my new home in this city I now lived. What’s more, as an extremely anxious person who wants to get everything done their way, I remember freaking out when I couldn’t see all the museums I wanted in one day of my trip, because I ended up spending it with someone else who had different traveling priorities.

That’s not to say that I don’t adore trips I have with my friends, the studying we do together in coffee shops, or our shared activities. In fact I tend to romanticize most of those as well.

I’m leaving on a trip this weekend with my best friends and my partner, to visit my beloved pen pal in Ireland. It is the first trip I’ll go with my partner as well, and this is getting me excited to no end. I’m not trying to compare company to being alone. But the thing is I’m trying to defend the latter, since enjoying yourself while with company is already a thing that makes sense to most people.

I’ve also started becoming convinced that, for women and fem people, it’s even less acceptable to do things alone. Most of the time I go to the beach, for drink or for a walk alone, there will be that dude – or pack of them – that offers me to join them, or offers to buy me coffee if I don’t have anything to do. Some of them can be entitled, insistant and annoying – I don’t need a knight on a white Prius to buy me coffee. But even those who are really nice don’t seem to get one thing: I’ve chosen to spend this time alone. I don’t doubt that the intentions of some of them can be truly good, but when it’s done repeatedly it really tends to ignore that I’m actually occupied at that moment: occupied spending time avec moi-même.

I also know that, for some people, being alone with themselves can induce much anxiety. Hell, 92% of the times I spend the day on my own, I get filled with bad thoughts and all my fears act up. Especially last year, when it was a hard time for me, I couldn’t possibly stay on my own for more than a couple of hours. I completely lost my mind when staying at home, getting all sorts of depressive thoughts, and felt superbly lonely when doing things outside the house without company. I spent a year seeking friends to be with me about almost everything, and most of the time I needed to sleep with someone as well in order to be able to deal both with the night and with the possibility of not being able to get out of bed the next morning. I was incredibly blessed with wonderful friends who practically saved my life. Seeking company is just as important and healthy for you, and being alone is not suitable for all periods in your life.

Different periods in life work differently. When I went away for five days in the summer, while my relationship was still fresh, and both my partner and I extremely anxious about it, it was actual hell. We spent all day on the phone, trying to deal with a flood of anxious, negative thoughts. A couple of months later he had to go away for four days, and even though I missed him terribly, we had both worked on some issues, so that these days apart gave me some profitable time for myself, and made me yearn for him even more. When the time comes for solitary time to actually work for you, you’ll know. Even if it doesn’t, it’s still important to work on dealing with these moments.

The thing is, you don’t have to do everything alone. What’s important is simply to allow yourself to have this alone thing, if you suddenly feel the need for it, whether it be traveling alone, studying alone, going to the theater without any company, taking time at home to watch movies, stare at the ceiling, binge-watch Orange is the New Black, masturbate or stress-bake, if that’s what you’ve missed doing.

Sometimes doing something aside from groceries on your own is demonized, and you may feel like people are staring at you with pity for eating out with no one but your salad and your thoughts to chit chat. But that’s okay, and you need it. Just in the same way you need to do things with other people in order to bond with them, you also need to bond with yourself. Walk around the city, go have a swim pretending you’re a freaking mermaid, take pictures, sit on a bench and write down your thoughts, take the time to fill that scrapbook. Let your creativity flow, organize thoughts and information that otherwise flood you when you socialize. Get to know your weaknesses, even. Embrace the bad thoughts that come when you’re alone, and then seek company to discuss them and feel better. But get a bit closer to yourself. Recharge.

How to Deal With Negative People

I’m going to let you guys in on a little secret: I have always been a major nerd. Sure, I hid it for a while underneath some really rebellious clothes, but on the inside, I’m still the little girl who brought sci-fi novels and my pet snake to show-and-tell. (Not on the same week, of course – that would just be silly.)

The current group of nerds I identify most with isn’t the alien fanboys or the ophiophilists, though. (That would be snake-lovers, for those not up on their lingo.) These days, I’m a self-identified planner nerd – and it amazes me on a daily basis that there are people who feel the need to critique planner nerds for our love of planning things out.

Let me tell you: I don’t plan for the popularity it will (or, more likely, won’t) bring me. I plan to keep myself sane and organized. And you know what? I can always tell the difference when I tell myself I don’t have the time to plan. Like anyone else with an obsessive love or something, there’s a reason for the things I do – and I don’t care if the haters don’t like it.

If you’re struggling with people who put you down for the things you’re into, screw them! You shouldn’t live your lives to make someone else happy, especially if it means sacrificing the things that make you happy. Here’s my 7-step process for dealing with these negative people. Do you have anything to add? Let us know in the comments!


1. Accept that these people are bullies.

While we usually associate bullies with the people who steal your lunch money, pull your hair, or trash-talk you on social media, it’s important to realize that there are other types of bullies, and if the negative people in your life are trying to rain on your nerd parade, that is their problem.

In this situation, your visibility makes you a target. No, that doesn’t mean you should hide – the closet is a terrible place to live, no matter which closet it is. But you do need to realize that the only reason they’re picking on you is because you’re there. If it wasn’t you, it would be someone else.


2. Understand that it’s not about what you do.

Since we’ve already established that these haters are really just bullies, it gets a little easier to depersonalize the things that they say. Remember, they’re just haters – they’re going to find something to be negative about.

Toxic people are really good at seeing the negative in everything and sucking the joy out of everything. They’re going to do whatever they can to cut others down, because they’re not happy with the way their life is going. Maybe they’re jealous of your talents and habits, or maybe they just don’t understand what you’re doing, but one thing is for sure: They’re doing it because of them, not because of you.


3. Distance yourself from shitty people.

This is probably the most clichéd piece of advice I give out, but it’s still just as true as the first time it was said: You can’t live a positive life with a negative attitude. Being around people who have a negative attitude about things will eventually wear down your shine – so don’t give them the satisfaction! Avoid spending any more time with negative people than you absolutely have to.

Understandably, sometimes you can’t avoid the negative people. Maybe they’re your family members, or your coworkers, or some other affiliation that’s not so easy to get out of. In these cases, it’s best to stay busy doing your own thing. Don’t give them the time to break you down, no matter how they try. It’s completely appropriate to ignore the people who are passing judgment on things that have nothing to do with them.


4. Hang onto your own happiness.

It’s most important to remember that these negative people are trying to suck the happiness out of you, so if you get visibly upset about it or let it change who you are, the bullies are winning. We don’t like it when the bullies win, because they’re jerks. Keep doing the things that bring you joy, and don’t let them take the fun out of it!

In some cases, I find that a witty or sarcastic response works, but take caution: Some people are completely inept to sarcasm and will not get it. Others might be a little too sensitive to sarcasm, and lash back out at you. When in doubt, though, just smile and continue on with your day. The more positive you can be in your forced interactions, the better – maybe it’ll even rub off on them eventually.


5. Don’t be a victim.

Remember how I said that you’re a target because you’re visible? Remember that – and make sure that what they do is visible, too. If you show these hurtful people that their words and actions won’t be tolerated, they’re less likely to happen again. Confront your toxic person in a public place, and let it be known that you are being harassed (if applicable).

If their targeting of you actually does constitute harassment, and/or if confronting them didn’t change anything, you might need to go higher up. If the harassment occurs at work, bring it up to your supervisor. If it happens at school, speak with a teacher or staff member. And, if it’s happening at home, speak with another trusted family member. Don’t let them pick on you for something that isn’t hurting anyone.


6. Find your tribe, and stick with them.

One of the most overlooked tools in our arsenal is our social circle – so use it to your advantage! When you find friends and colleagues who share in your “unconventional” interests, you’re building up your own personal support network. These people understand the struggles you face with your interests, and they will help comfort you when things get bad.

If you can’t find people who share the same interests you have, make sure you’re reaching out to people who are positive and supportive. These people are all around you, but they might be a little harder to find – they don’t always step up in defense of a stranger, but once you have them as friends, they’re a lot more likely to stick up for you. Negativity is louder than positivity, so you’ll need a bigger team if you want to beat it.


7. Keep on rocking it.

Lastly, you need to remind yourself that you do not live to please the negative people. Follow your passions, and be unapologetically yourself. Those other people don’t matter, and they never will. They’ll never really be successful in life, because the biggest success of all is finding something you love, and doing it well. The haters can’t love anything – so they’ll never be very good at anything, either.

There’s a reason you’re interested in the things you’re interested in, and the haters don’t have to understand your reasons – or even respect them, if I’m being totally honest. As long as you are comfortable with yourself (and your personal safeties aren’t being compromised), you can effectively forget about the people who focus their negative attention on you.

Growing Up And Carrying Your Home With You

Home is where the cats are, or where the heart is, or, according to the great popular philosophers, Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros, home is wherever I’m with you.

Despite the limiting, for people who decide they’re better on their own, nature of a song of an otherwise high artistic and sentimental value – with the bonus brownie points of making you feel like the queer protagonist of a domestic fanfiction in a brightly lit kitchen in a New York apartment, with kittens purring around your ankles – this song succeeds in making one thing perfectly clear: the sense of home is many things, and stable is not one of them.

The word ‘home’ is largely overused, posing in inspirational quotes written in aesthetically pleasing fonts on doormats, coffee mugs and phone power-banks.

It is a passe-partout, referring to origins, culture, family, a cottage with ditsy floral curtains, afternoon naps and jasmines, company and isolation and all the feelings of peace and quiet and lack thereof. It is bricks and cement and steady incomes, and struggling and panting after bills and self-discovery and just clouds.

At least that was where I had always found my sense of home: in a frozen airplane descending in various pretentious stages of the sky, sunrises and sunsets where pastel watercolors melted into solid ground, a new city with tiny ants that turned to cooler people than those I knew, with legos that turned to prettier houses than those of my hometown. Home for me was partly, until recently, where my dog was, and other than that, anywhere but here.

I was that kid in the indie movie who wanted to run away. I hated school and everyone in it – with a few bright exceptions. I hated the opportunities my city seemed to give me and the lack of understanding I seemed to receive. Its appearance, its architecture, how mean people could get, how the streets were not clean and the bookshops not old enough, how we didn’t have a river, or cherry blossoms in the spring.

I thought that, somehow, all this was interconnected with the fact that I didn’t exactly have a community, a sense of belonging. I surely did have friends, wonderful ones at that, but the narrow-mindedness of other people I knew suffocated me and made me feel as an outsider in the very streets I had grown up. One thing was sure: I needed to leave. It felt as if I had nothing to hold me back. Well, except from the puppy, but I would figure that out.

I found home at an Airbnb flat in Belleville, the neighborhood with the uncountable florist shops, and bookshops, and sometimes both of them.

As much as I loved my own family, I found another one in Ireland: an Internet penpal who became my diary and then my therapist and, to this day, sister-by-choice, as well as her wonderful Molly Weasley kind of mother with a supportive attitude towards all things LGBT. I was adopted by their little cottage and their genderfluid cats.

Then I found myself lost in London, wondered how I had never appreciated this noise before, how one could have grown up without all that theater. I left my heart in John Keats’ house at Hampstead Heath, wondering how anyone could have ever wanted to live anywhere else. Then I came back.

With my head desperately stuck somewhere between the West End and the Lion King lyrics, the marvel of Glendalough, the LGBT bookshop, and Fanny Brawne’s lines, I wandered in the subway dizzy and lost, with my eyes shut in dangerous denial.

That was how that day started.

Back in Athens last September, I visited our local LGBT youth organization and became a member. Suddenly those streets I had deemed so ugly grew dear to me when embellished with steps of new friends and loved-ones. Drunk nights out, a community, things to do, places to go, a sense of purpose, people like me, jokes like those I cherished the most, holding oblivious hands at 2AM and running between the cars like children.

It wasn’t only one of them: being active, having something I was interested in that made me want to work for, the new friends, the new places I discovered or the love I happened to fall in.

It was a combination of all of them, and the gut-punching shock that life can be good even outside the dream I had built to keep it going. It was tears, regret, disarray, dirty alleys and always almost throwing up, and it was horrible, and it made me never want to leave again. It was growing up; and it was messy and exactly how I had dreamt it and it was finally happening to me.

After that change took place, I also moved out of my parents’ house. Having a place which I could call /my/ home, with records on walls I would have painted the colour of Squidward from Spongebob, my friends able to come over whenever, and my cat uninterrupted in a kingdom without anyone to give a shit about scratches in the sheets, had been my hugest dream, and continues to be while I’m sitting amongst unpacked boxes that are soon to become cat forts.

Yet, I still completely freaked out the first night I stayed there, just because I realized the change that was about to happen. Me, the person who wanted to live all over the world, freaking out at the idea of change, even when this change is desirable and towards better circumstances, even though I wouldn’t even move away from the city and would be just 40′ by car away from my dog.

I also keep freaking out (because that’s what I do) when I take a step back and inspect the work I’m putting in this tiny home that means so much to me, and then I realize that I might leave again soon, to continue my studies abroad, or for whichever reason.

Is my home – THE home – going to stop being such? And what is the point in printing posters and putting fairy lights everywhere and colour coding my books all over again, if it’s to be for a limited period of time? Doesn’t it go a bit like relationships? Don’t get too invested when you know that something is going to end?

At that point, with the quarter life crisis starting a bit early, I stumbled upon an article that reflected my feelings and was written, as I found out with pleasant surprise, by a school classmate of mine, a wonderfully kind and talented person who I was always fond of. It made me incredibly happy to find out that she wrote, to read something that was hers, and to realize her thoughts were echoing mine.

And that made me think of all the places I’ve called home at different points: the house where my mother grew up in an island much more than the actual house I grew up in. That (the family) house, but after our dog came. That hotel room when I visited Crete with my dad. Parks and bookshops around Europe. Some places I had stayed at for less than five days, and that made me want to  agree and, as the person who stayed back, after all, rephrase: it’s important to lose your very rigid sense of home as you grow up, because change happens, but it’s also important to carry the fluidity of home with you, to transfer and convert it. So be a turtle. You can have multiple homes, all serving a different purpose, all creating different memories that make you you.

Somewhere in the process, the only certainty is that some places will fail to make a home. Some people will, too. But some others won’t.

Our life is made up from hundreds of tiny lives, defined by huge and by smaller things, such as the fandoms you change. Don’t beat yourself up for being reborn. Carry your photos with you, visit but don’t lament, change the wallpaper into constellations, even if you had once sworn faith to florals.

18 Indications Your Fashion Style Is Low Maintenance

If you can identify with some of these statements below then your fashion style is low maintenance.


Your hair is only ever down, in a ponytail or in a bun.


You wear your favourite pair of shoes with nearly all your outfits.


Your favourite outfit is jeans and a tee.


You don’t think about what you are going to wear in the morning. You just grab what you see.


You own a few casual dresses such as sundresses as you can put one on and off you go.


You tell your hairdresser that ‘wash and go’ is your kind of style.


You keep make up to a minimum or don’t wear it at all.


If you are forced to wear a pair of heeled shoes to an event, you might even consider not attending.


You appreciate though that heels do make your legs look longer. If you could only bear the pain…..


After around an hour of being in above mentioned heels you would rather cut your feet off than endure another hour wearing them.


You feel jealous that men can wear a suit with a pair of converse. If only, you think…


Your idea of dressing up for a night out is your coolest jacket with your smartest looking jeans.


Your friends beg you to let them give you a ‘makeover.’


If you are ever caught in a different outfit everyone does a double take because they don’t recognise you.


You do own a few items of clothing, but they are shoved in your wardrobe behind your favourite tees and only see daylight when there is a wedding or a funeral.


You sobbed in horror when you realised your new job went with a dress code of ‘professional businesswoman.’


However, after a few weeks of practise, you tweaked ‘professional businesswoman’ to mean ‘business casual’ and you’ve mastered the look perfectly.


Your favourite part of exercising is being able to wear comfortable and loose gym clothes and have an excuse for wearing them.

9 Reasons Summer Is The Best Time Of Year To Be Single

Are you flying solo this summer? Whether you like it or night, there are a bunch of great reasons to stay single this summer. Here are a few of our favorites:


You don’t have any extra body heat in your bed.

I mean, have you ever tried cuddling in the humid months? No thank you! Give me my air conditioner and a nice soft sheet, please. Hot, sweaty cuddles are not really for me.


There are tons of fun “first date” options.

You could go skydiving, hiking, or even swimming in the ocean (if you live close enough to one). Sure, you could do these things with a long-term girlfriend, too, but they don’t have the same excitement once you’ve reached peak comfort zone…


There are tons of options to meet new people.

People are more inclined to spend their time out in public when the weather is warmer – as long as it’s not super hot and miserable. Then they just stay inside and check all the dating apps for someone who wants to go swimming or skydiving together.


People look more attractive in the summertime.

The combination of the sun’s rays and the wonderful effects they have on our mood means that everyone is going to look hot, fun, and just a bit more toned than they were the rest of the year. Just make sure you’re using proper sun protection – too much sun exposure can cause serious damage.


You’ll have more time to spend with your friends.

I know, I know – hanging with your girlfriend is great. But if you’re spending all your time wrapped around the person you’re sleeping with, you’re probably neglecting your friends – take some time to work on your friendships, too!


You have more time to be alone, too.

Maybe not everyone is as into alone time as I am, but when you’re single, you have more time to be your own person and work on your own stuff. Take advantage of it!


You don’t have to explain anything to anyone.

We all know the best relationships don’t require you to check in with anyone – but the truth is, most relationships require just a little bit of explanation to keep things clear. When you’re single, you don’t have to think of a reason why you were in a selfie with some hot chicks at that beach party. You just live your own life, without worrying about how it affects your girlfriend.


You can travel without an anchor.

For those who enjoy traveling, having a road trip co-pilot can be great… But only if your co-pilot has the same interests as you. Traveling by yourself removes any of the complications that come along with it, without having to worry about how you’ll keep a long distance relationship together.


You’re free to pursue a summer fling or two.

Have you ever wanted to have that crazy, lawless romance that only seems to happen during those warm summer nights? You can’t chase that type of romance when you’re in a relationship – so use your singledom as an excuse to check this one off your bucket list.


Do you have any reasons to add? Are you spending this summer single? Drop us a comment below and let us know!


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Nipple Piercings, Dice, & Lots Of Rolling Around; We Give You Rihanna’s Latest Single ‘Kiss It Better’

The full video for Rihanna’s latest single Kiss It Better is here and it’s hot, hot, HOT. Like hotter and sexier than you could have imagined.

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From exposed nipple piercings to some strategically placed dice and lots of skin showing, she once again reminds us all how she got that ‘Bad Gal’ nickname.