Calm Before the Season

I go out to the balcony around midnight to hang some clothes and the salty smell of the sea engulfs me. The cool breeze of an ocean town. No matter how hot it gets in the daytime, the nights in Zadar are redeeming.
I sit down, content to stare at the half moon, high above me, for a while. Slowly my eyes adjust and stars reveal themselves to me. Shy, but proud. My eyes search automatically for constellations I might know, and it's not until this moment that I realize... every single thing in my current world is foreign to me. Is new. Is different. Not even the sky is the same.

My bus to Zadar is crowded, every seat full. I ask to sit next to someone and they welcome me.
"Crap," I mumble, "It's so busy..."
"Yup, it's season now," he responds.
Wow. Having started my travels in the winter, I didn't really consider how much things would change in high season. This is the first full bus I've been on this whole trip. I make a mental note to start planning in advance more, since hostels fill up quickly. Damn.
We talk for about an hour before both of us pass out, and when I wake we're getting close to our destination.
Typically, if the walk to my accommodation is an hour and a half or less, I'll do it with my pack. I feel like this helps me learn new cities I'm in, and makes sure I get some sort of exercise on travel days. However, my hosts have already told me it's not walkable from the bus station, and I start to wonder if I'll be able to find a taxi easily.
My bus mate is up with his earphones in and I tap him to ask.
"Yeah, there should be taxis, but if you use Uber there is no chance of getting ripped off."
"I know, but I don't have data on my phone, so I can't use the app."
"You can use my hotspot when we get there to order an Uber, if you need," a third voice pipes up from beside me.
I turn to the woman across the aisle and she smiles. Dread locks, rings on every finger, skulls in her ears, adorned in all black.
"I know how it is traveling with no phone. I got lucky and they just changed the plans in the UK to work all over Europe." Her Scottish accent adds to her overall appearance beautifully and I like her immediately.
"That would be amazing, thank you so much!"
When the bus stops we collect our packs and her and her partner, matching in appearance, except he has a huge beard, walk with me a bit away from the bus station where we sit down and call our Ubers. They arrive quickly, plenty circling the area. I thank the couple for their help, we all wish each other safe travels, wave, and we're separate again. We never even exchanged names.
It's a small thing, right? To share your hotspot on your phone with someone else? It doesn't affect them in any negative way or take up their time, considering they were doing the same thing as me. Yet this small action offered by strangers, without my asking, saved me all the stress of wondering how I would find a way to my accommodation, or haggling with taxi drivers, or being unsure how to give them directions, since I don't know where I'm going.
It's a small thing. But it meant so much to me. To be extended a hand by someone I hadn't exchanged two words with previously.
The world is what we make it. I want to make it a welcoming place, and strangers like these are my inspiration.

My route to the ocean from my apartment. There are wild fruit trees and vines everywhere in Croatia. I'm not sure why it surprises me so much, but it does, and I am constantly stopping on my walks to inspect plants and green fruits. Some I know. Some I can't identify. The locals smile, and ask me if they are any good. "They are still green," I respond. "I know," they laugh at me. I like it here.

I float weightlessly in the Adriatic sea. Listen to the crackling of the salt water in my ears. With each breathe out, I begin to sink. Each breathe in, my body floats back to the surface. The calm, quiet, crystal clear waters of Zadar helping me to dismiss my fears of the ocean, though my mind still conjures images of god knows what creeping around below me. I keep my eyes closed and float calmly. If something is actually below, seeing it won't do me any good. I know it's all in my head, anyway.
My plan this week was to hole away in my Airbnb and write. And write, and dig, and write some more. I've got a lot of stuff in this head that needs to be worked out and dismissed once and for all, and getting it down on paper, or through a key board, has always seemed like the best way to me. Once it's out, it stops swirling about in my head, taking up space.
And I am following this plan.
Aside from my 10 minute runs to the small market on my street, and my hour at the beach my first day, I have done nothing but write. Yesterday I didn't leave the apartment once. I wrote for hours before breakfast, and hours before lunch, eventually exhausting myself before bed. Because it is...it's exhausting to dig inside yourself to pull out all the crap you don't want to think about. But it's gotta go. It's been clogging the drain for too long.
But that exhaustion is why I'm here now. Floating in the sea. Soaking in the sun through the water. Allowing my mind to be blank.
Well, mostly blank... Except, of course, for the monsters below me.
Yes, they are monsters.
I am still a child.

It's not terribly long before I can feel my skin burning, and I pack up my things. As I start to walk back, I notice an older guy ahead staring at me. He calls something out in Croatian, and my knee jerk reaction is to glare him down or simply look away without responding. Too many assholes catcalling people back home. I've become programmed.
But I push my defenses down, remembering all the talk of openness and being welcoming  I keep spouting. If I want that, it's time to let my guard down a bit.
All of this goes through my head in a split second, and I respond, "Sorry..?" So he knows I don't speak his language.
"Where's your hula hoop?" He repeats in English, smiling, and I laugh.
"Ha! I left it at home today."
"Oh well, it looked fun!" And he's on his way, and I'm smiling.
I guess he saw me playing on my first day in town.
And I think that was the world telling me to quit being so defensive all the time. What a jerk I would have been with my first instinct. But it is possible to reprogram your thoughts and reactions. It's possible to be the change you want to see. No matter how small that starts. Thanks for the reminder, World.

I started today by making myself cry. Yup.
And it was really nice.
I was washing my hands in the bathroom sink and I glanced in the mirror, preparing to leave, and I thought, "hey, you look alright today! Sweet!" And it hit me, in this tiny insignificant moment on this random day...that maybe...just maybe...all the people who have told me I was beautiful through my life, the people I have never believed, weren't totally full of crap. Maybe they meant that.
And I looked at myself again, stripped of all the things that are supposed to make us more attractive...makeup, jewelry, hair, nice clothes...and I allowed myself something I haven't allowed...well...maybe ever. I allowed myself to believe all those people throughout my life. I allowed myself to believe they were telling the truth. That to them, I was beautiful.
And I was overwhelmed by this thought. And I cried. And laughed. And cried some more.
Come to think of it, I probably looked insane.
But it seems I'm succeeding in killing off this negative view of myself. Poisonous and all encompassing as it was. You just never know when an insignificant moment can alter your entire perception of yourself.
If you're reading this and you were one of those people, allow me to thank you...now that I can accept the compliment. I appreciate you. 

It's raining. Pouring. I woke to huge crashes of thunder. It's beautiful. It takes your choices away. It runs in rivers down the roofs of red terracotta. I missed the rain.

The insistent fall of rain has beaten the smell of pine into the air. Science says smell is our longest lasting memory. I inhale as deeply as possible, pulling the cool air into my lungs. It brings me to the mountains. To Colorado. To Virgina. To places I've left little pieces of my soul. Not really a memory, just a feeling. I inhale as deeply as possible. I want the pine to consume me. And  I smile.

Fishermen at dusk, after the storm has passed.

My hoop broke last week. I was packing to leave Zagreb, and I went to collapse it like always, and it bent really badly in two spots. It will snap soon. Though the devastation wasn't long lived, I think it may have been the lowest I've felt in my trip thus far. My baby...I had it specifically made for this trip. Only three months old.
Mostly I was feeling panicked because the World Body Paint Competition I'm competing in is right around the corner, and I will need my hoop for both days.
I honestly wanted to cry...but, I made myself finish packing and put it out of my mind. Just trust. Things will work out as they're supposed to.
And they did!
I posted on Facebook what happened, simply wanted an outlet for my discontent, and immediately people were there, ready to help. Lots of friends from the states offered to send me hoops (thanks guys!), but unfortunately, I didn't trust the mail to get it here in time, so I turned to other options. That's when hoopers I have met in my travels started reaching out!
Jasmine, my flowmie from Vienna, offered to have one made for me and keep it til I return, but I need it before then. Hmm...
I ask Isi, one of the hoopers I saw in the park one day in Austria, if she can make me one, and send her the specifics. I ask Lukas, the guy we met at the street festival who will be coming to Croatia in July, if he's willing to pick it up and bring it to me, and both people said yes!
Both of them have text me this morning and let me know that my hoop is complete and in the hands of Lukas now.

I'm elated.
Thanks to the kindness of these two (practically) strangers, I will have my new baby in my hands in time for the competition.
I felt like I was asking such a big favor...to go collect a hoop from a stranger, bring it all the way to a different country, and agree to meet in that country with a girl you only met once in order to give her a hula hoop. Like...would you do that for someone you don't know?
But he didn't even hesitate. He said, "Of course. It sounds like the most reasonable option."
Ha. That sounds reasonable?
Sometimes I feel like I've stepped into another world.
Are the people in Europe really that different from the people back home? Are we selfish in the States? Or have I just been so focused on the grind, and closed to new experience that I have missed the kindness around me?
I feel like everyday here my life is made easier, in big or small ways, by the unsolicited (except for the case of the hoop) kindness of strangers.
Maybe I sound like a broken record already. Maybe I should have already learned this lesson. But each time someone else is kind, it still surprises me. And I think that's probably a good thing. I don't want to take kindness for granted. I want to enjoy and fully appreciate every single moment of it. Because people don't have to be that way. But when they are...it's pretty damn amazing.
Shout out to all the selfless people out there.