Being in a familiar place can be comforting. Being alone in a familiar place can be a lot less comforting. I’ve been here countless times in my life. This has been our home in the sun since before I can remember. I’ve grown up surrounded by the locals. I know my way around the broad, tourist-laden streets. I know the secrets of the village, the local traditions and the native families that live around me. However, I’m still lonely. I’ve discovered a whole new meaning to the phrase ‘love hurts’. I’m not heartbroken. Quite the opposite. I’ve never been so utterly enveloped in affection for another being. When we’re together, his needs are always my first priority. I don’t cringe at the chronically stereotypical gender roles that we adopt. I’m more than happy to cook and clean and do his washing as he lies on the sofa with a beer watching sports. If I were to tell this to myself a year ago, I’m sure I wouldn’t believe it. I’m an independent person. I rarely rely on the kindness of others to guide me through life. I make my own luck, working hard to get what I want without the charity of others where possible.

Bringing him to my sanctuary, the place I feel safe and happy and at peace was a big risk. We’d never spend more than a day or two together and I knew that ten days alone in a foreign country my stretch our relationship. My mother had warned me that ‘you don’t really know someone until you go on holiday with them’ and I was a little dubious that the passion that bubbled between us would soon turn sour and we’d resent each other on day three.

I don’t like talking about my relationship in depth on here in fear of the future. I worry that if we do decide to go our separate ways, either in friendship or on less pleasant terms, these thoughts may serve as a painful reminder of what I had. What I lost. However, this is an exception. I suppose, as an aspiring writer, I see profound emotions as deeply inspirational. I doubt (and hope) I will ever feel the intense adrenaline rush of being held at gunpoint or the heart wrenching sorrow of the loss of a child. But I’ve gained a little insight into the fervent rush of affection for another.  I hope that, in the future when I become a world-famous writer, that I can use the way I feel right now to try and put in to words the way a woman feels when her husband goes off to battle. Or when a girl sees the boy she dreamt of standing on the opposite train platform from her, waving solemnly as he disappears from her.

This place that I call home, the one I dream of curled up in my blankets on stormy winter nights has turned into what I can only describe as a birdcage. When two love birds are together in that cage, they sing joyfully all day, grooming each other and relishing in each other’s company. Now my fellow love-bird is gone, and I won’t see him for almost a month, all I can do is stick my little beak through the bars of this gorgeous, suntrap and listen out for the sweet birdsong that tweets on so far away from me now.