"Are you even hearing yourself right now? This is why we believe you're fully competent for this initiative. Whatever you've gone through has been training you for these moments. You don't ever stop fighting, there's always another threat. A threat...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
I was confident things were making a rapid turn of the better but perhaps I was being a bit too ambitious. My hopes were definitely far beyond those on the possible spectrum and I, for one, should have realised that. These feelings can't just be turned on and off like a switch so I don't exactly know what I was hoping for.
Despite the rejection that I felt that nothing I did really helped him, I knew that recovery and acceptance was something that you could only really do alone. The most I could do was let him know I was there for him, and that was what I did. Words of affirmation and love became an evermore constant in our lives and I was honestly glad it had because it not only helped him, but me to.
Amazement was something I felt a lot over the last year in Thor's strength to attempt to pick himself back up. Pride was another. When you wallow and sit in those feelings for the length of time that he did, it's almost impossible to pick those pieces back together and in no way has Thor, but he was on the journey, most definitely.
I had left Thor a little note on the counter-top the morning I left for Old Panteleimonas. It was in Greek, something I had been slowly teaching Thor over the last year. Let's be honest, he wasn't the quickest learner but the progresses he had made was fairly substantial. I left the note in a black felt-tip I found in one of the draws and wrote, 'Η μοίρα δεν μπορεί ποτέ να μας χωρίσει, ανεξάρτητα από το πόσο σκληρά προσπαθεί.' (Fate can never tear us apart, no matter how hard it tries). I laughed at the corniness but it was nice, it was something he needed to be reminded of.
It had been a long while since I visited my home town. Ever since my father passed, it was never the most enjoyable visit but the people that still lived there were those that I've known my entire life and I knew it would shatter both me and them to just abandon them. A week ago, I received a call from Cassandra, the little girl from the village, and after just hearing her voice, I knew I needed to go visit.
It was an odd feeling, leaving the car at the bottom of the mountain, something I hadn't done in such a long time yet it was oddly comforting. The many times I had left my father's car in our designated spot was countless but it was almost foreign parking my car in the exact same spot.
The first thing I did was head to greet Mrs Kalista and the girls, Cassandra and Melissa, and drop off my bags. It was refreshing to have the language on my tongue again. I was considering staying at the hostel that my old house had been converted to but as soon as I told Thor my idea he instantly wrote me off it and so Mrs Kalista kindly offered me her sofa-bed.
I wanted to see the village first, before I sat properly with the people in the village that I was closest to.
Old Panteleimonas was lucky. It's a small village, a lot less people than a city so they picked themselves back up fairly quickly whereas I knew all the cities around the world were still struggling.
