I Came Back

So. First letter.

I made this website right before I left for vacation, which in hindsight was either very smart or a way of making sure I’d actually have to write something when I got back. Future-me’s problem. And now I’m future-me, sitting here, back home, trying to find the words for a week that mostly didn’t need any.

We went to Montenegro. Sutomore was home base – me and my boyfriend, a small place near the water. The kind of place where the sea was right there, where you could hear the waves from inside. I keep coming back to that in my head. I love that sound. I’ve always loved it. There’s something about waves that just lowers the volume on everything else, like the noise in your chest finally has somewhere to go. I’d lie there in the morning and just listen before doing anything at all.

That was the first thing I noticed, actually – that I wasn’t doing anything at all. No alarm. Not once the whole week. I just woke up when the light got bright enough, and then at some point I’d decide, okay, let’s go outside while it’s still day. Such a small thing. But back home the day disappears. You blink and it’s five in the afternoon and you’ve been at a screen the whole time and the sun’s already thinking about leaving. There I just… went out into it. Walked into the daylight like it was the whole point. Maybe it is.

We didn’t stay put the whole week. One day we drove to Budva, had an iced caramel latte that I’m still, embarrassingly, thinking about, and a long lunch with a friend. The good kind of tired afterward. One day in Ulcinj just because we wanted to see it. No list, no plan, no optimizing the trip. I want more of that, honestly. Going somewhere because you’re curious, and that’s enough.

Here’s the part I keep thinking about. We use Teams at work, and I’d open my phone out of pure reflex, and – nothing. No messages. No meetings. No little red number. And instead of feeling like I was missing something, it just felt quiet. Like the world had agreed to leave me alone for a bit and was perfectly fine doing so.

And that’s kind of why I’m starting this, I think. Because I don’t want to keep coming back to that Sunday-night feeling. You know the one. It’s still technically the weekend but your body has already started bracing – tomorrow’s Monday, then the week, then the week again, the same loop you were inside last week and the week before that. I’d just been seven days without it. I didn’t want to hand it back.

I don’t have a grand plan for any of this. No schedule, no aesthetic to maintain, no promises. Just somewhere to keep the soft hours – the slow ones, the quiet ones, the ones that don’t ask anything of me.

This was the first.

More soon, or whenever.