Life is Beautiful

Mallorca, 'la isla bonita' ... why I wouldn´t want to live anywhere else.

“After all the world is indeed beautiful and if we were any other creature than man we might be continuously happy in it.” Sebastian Barry

If there is one thing in the world that I would thank my first serious boyfriend for, it would be for introducing me to Mallorca, and for broadening my horizons both metaphorically and literally, more than my teenage self would ever have imagined. Yet, when I first moved across here, as a very young twenty-one year old girl, I had not a clue, how much my decision to accompany him in his move to this stunningly beautiful island would impact on my life. Indeed, my first couple of years here were incredibly lonely. I missed my life and friends back in England so much, and felt trapped, almost like a prisoner here, but my love for that man at the time was so strong that I would have lived in a cardboard box if it meant I could be with him.

Just shy of seven years later, shortly after we broke up, I returned back to England. I regretted that decision within just a few months, and made it my goal to return back here as soon as I possibly could.

I´ve been back here now for just over seven years, and I can honestly say that I never want to live anywhere else. Because Mallorca converted from my prison to my paradise. Despite the fact that I was twenty-one when I initially moved here, I was a very young and naïve twenty-one, so much so that I consider myself to have grown up here, rather than back in England.

Here is where I was forced to step out of my comfort zone, where my personality developed and gradually became a kaleidoscope of colour, where my opinions and beliefs and outlook grew and developed and flourished and bloomed.

[Photo credit @caroixyz]

I have grown and learned and discovered so much about myself through living here, and my life has taken on an opposing trajectory to that which it would have taken otherwise. I feel as if, had I never moved to Mallorca, I might never have even met myself. I might never have glimpsed the depth of my emotions or my capacity for determination, I would never have know the strength that I can pull out of my heart and wrap around me when I really need it.

It´s not purely the stronger daylight, the warm glow of the more often than not present sunshine, the almost always blue sky … Nor is it simply the palm trees standing tall and proud, their giant ever-green `parasols´ lining the promenades, silhouetted against the translucent aquamarine sea and golden sands. It´s not just the oranges and lemons hanging like baubles from trees of deep green in the orchards each winter, filling the air with their sweet scent … There are a whole multitude of reasons why I love it here so much. It is such an astonishingly colourful place, both physically and metaphorically, that England seems so very dull and grey in comparison.

It´s not that I dislike England entirely, I love the rolling green countryside, woodlands and old country pubs. Yet, I never truly felt like myself when I lived there. I was like a watered down version of who I really am, lacking in confidence, struggling to fit in, always feeling slightly out of place. ‘Un bicho raro’', an oddity …

Returning back to England feels like being a tourist, and stepping off of English soil feels like breathing out a sigh of relief. Maybe it´s the challenge of living somewhere in which every single day I learn something new. It could be the feeling of strength and pride it gives me that I am able to live and belong in a place where everything doesn´t always come easily or naturally, living a life which constantly tests me and pushes me out of my comfort zone and yet feels so instinctively where I am meant to be.

Because of Spain, I signed up to The Open University and spent six hard years fitting in my studies whilst working full time, in order to gain my degree in Modern Language Studies. Because of Mallorca, and its multicultural and diverse population, I have been introduced to people from so many contrasting walks of life. I have made friends with people I would never have otherwise met; people whose mother tongue is not the same as mine, occasionally without even one common language in which to converse, yet we connect and communicate often more clearly than if we had grown up speaking the same vernacular. I have developed a big passion for languages and a huge interest in learning as much as I can about other cultures and traditions as a consequence.

It´s true that it Mallorca is a place with a somewhat transient population. Oftentimes I have grown very fond of people who have then moved away, either onto somewhere new or back to their hometown, but I have also been lucky enough to find friends who I will hold onto forever, however near or far we might be. And what is life if not a series of stepping stones? What is life if not a constant state of impermanence? Even when we think we´ve got it all figured out, the best laid plans can still get waylaid … sometimes slipping just a little bit off track, but still leading somewhere familiar, other times diverting us so far from the path we thought we were meant to be following that we find ourselves utterly lost.

In that kind of situation, there´s really only one option. To keep stepping from stone to stone until we reach the other side. We´ll wobble, we´ll certainly slip, sometimes we might even fall right into that swirling river of life and feel as if we are drowning. But there will always be a branch to hold onto, a way to pull ourselves back up onto that slippery stone, and if we keep on hopping from one to the next, eventually we´ll find our feet on solid ground, and someone, or something, will be waiting there with a big, warm blanket to wrap around our shoulders and mop up all the blood, sweat and tears that we shed in order to get there.

So as I myself tiptoe tentatively from rock to rock, I stop occasionally, take a deep breath and look around me. There´s nowhere else in the world I would rather be.