Since moving to Europe in 2020, my son will spend a majority of the summer back home. That very first summer I fretted because I had no idea how to just be without my kid around. After much encouragement from my colleagues, I booked my first annual solo trip to Colmar, France. Since then, I’ve generally looked forward to my summer solo outings. I’ve spent days roaming the streets of Edinburgh and London before meeting friends there. These trips are a little more extravagant in the sense that I’ll reserve a nicer room and eat more richly (credit card points are beautiful). The summer of 2023, I used those points to book a trip to Malta.

Originally, I had planned this trip for the summer before. I’d gone all out and booked myself two solo trips, each vastly different than the other. But coming home from Edinburgh with a gnarly case of COVID cancelled my Mediterranean vacation.

You may recognize my Maltese adventure from a previous post: depression abroad. I felt so much mixing of emotions while I visited this little Mediterranean gem. I felt relaxation as I settled into my luxurious little hotel room, stepping out onto the North African influenced balcony and peering down the street. I could see a streak of blue sea capping the street in the distance: I couldn’t wait to dip my toes into the Mediterranean for the first time – to feel the salty layer of sea water dried on my skin. Every summer when I was a kid, my dad would say, as we carted boogie boards, chairs, and bags full of toys and sunscreen to the sand in North Carolina: the ocean cures everything. And since then, I’ve associated the summer in PKS, the slamming of waves splashing up my back and the grittiness of the sand stuck to my legs, with cleansing the year away and starting anew. It’d been at least three years since I’d submerged myself in the vastness of the sea. It’d been too long.

There had been only two scheduled activities: a walking tour of Valetta (where I was staying), and the infamous boat tour. The walking tour was schedule for day 2 of 4 – the day my lack of medication began to slowly seep in. I’d awoken early, feeling nauseous, but eager to have breakfast and a cappuccino. I wandered into a garden with an incredible view before waiting at the meeting point for the walking tour. This is when I knew the nausea was related to my SSRI withdrawal.

Something had gone wrong when I’d made the reservation on the app. The money drafted from my bank, but the tour company showed that I’d cancelled my tour. Internally, I had an utter meltdown. People were staring at me as I argued with the tour company over the phone. I was verging on tears when the tour guide said that it was okay, I could still join the tour. At that point, I was already so completely drained: what would have normally been an easy confrontation to manage, suddenly seemed huge. It was such a small thing – a simple mistake. I dismissed him rather irrationally and walked away. I had to remove myself, to get my spiraling emotions and anxiety back into some kind of order before I made even more of a fool of myself.

I sat on the cold stone steps and breathed deep. Head in my hands, tears stubbornly pushing to fall, I felt a tap on my shoulder. Looking up, the petite tour guide motioned for me to join the group.

Something has too be said of empaths. For a long time, I’d heard this word thrown around and thought it was bullshit. People liked to described themselves as empaths, the same way they liked to throw around other fully hyperbolic descriptions of themselves. But the true empath hasn’t the need to announce their talent: they simply act on it.

He said nothing more than “join us”, and I followed him to the head of the large tour group. He took a moment to describe the plan for the tour, then looked to me questioningly. I nodded and we carried on.

We learned much about Malta that day. It’s a wonderful little archipelago that’s had many conquering nations that left behind little bits of themselves. English red mailboxes litter the streets; cars driving on the opposite side of the road. Depending on where you are on the islands, the architecture changes. In Valetta, much of it has a North African influence. The language is closest to Arabic, but the accent when spoken in English sounds very Italian. Sicily resides an easy hour and a half ferry ride away. Ancient neolithic structures populate many of the islands, but I wasn’t able to visit them on this trip.

By the end of the tour, I had fallen to the back of the group, back into an equilibrium. I waited until the other members of the group had dispersed, then approached the guide. He immediately took both of my hands in his and squeezed them. I thanked him profusely for his patience and apologized for my behavior. After I gave him 3x the amount of the tour, I walked back to the hotel for a nap.

It was the following day that my anxiety reached it’s peak.

Boats aren’t really my thing. If I can avoid them, I usually do… but there are occasions where I chew a children’s Dramamine and hope for the best. I tried to book a “family friendly” tour boat thinking it would be mostly that: families. I prefer to steer clear of the younger groups – their volume of excitement triggers my auditory overstimulation. The boat ended up with mostly families, but there were a couple of rowdy young adult groups – one of them being a bachelorette party. My arrival to the dock was early enough that I needn’t worry about a prime chair on the top deck, and families mostly sat in the chairs surrounding me, since it seemed the rowdier groups were the later arrivals. They were mostly splayed across the rest of the deck, their towels covering the artificial grass, and making it near impossible to maneuver between them without stepping on them.

There were two additional add-on options for the boat: disembark on Gozo for a bus tour, or remain on the boat to hang out in the Blue Lagoon off of Comino where you could have a speed boat tour around the caves. I wavered back and forth, but ultimately chose to stay on the boat for the cave tours. We were given slips of paper with our time to be ready and waiting to board one of two speed boats. At my call time, I tripped down to the first level and stood in a place out of the way of traffic and away from the rowdy bachelorette group. But as people were taken out and brought back, the group moved towards where I was standing. There was some confusion about who was next in line and which side of the boat people were getting on and off, so the group moved from one side to the other, pushing against people and falling into others as the boat rocked and they became more unsteady with each fruity drink they consumed. By this point, I had been pushed back into a corner, unable to move past a couple of people from the group. My heart was racing, tears in my eyes – I could feel the panic rising from my gut like a flame bursting from a window, eager to lick the oxygen from the air. I held onto the walls, my toes gripped the bottom of my sandals. I was regretting my decision to not just remain in my chair.

I tried slowly my breathing down, focusing on counting in and out like I’d coached so many laboring mama’s. I tried to focus on each individual sound, one at a time, scanning my surroundings and allowing to noise to just be (just as my therapist taught me). It was all so much – the knocking into me, the loud barrage of many languages, the hair whipping my face. I opened my mouth to excuse myself and reached for the railing of the stairs when they called for a single rider for the next boat. I surprised myself as I yelled “me!” and pushed through the crowd. I settled myself at the head of the speed boat, smiled at the father and young son next to me, and breathed deep.

Pine Knoll Shores, North Carolina is one of many little towns along the island my grandmother lived on. One of the others was Emerald Isle; named for the green of the ocean. But for all the summers spent in that deep green water, I’d never seen a sea so clear; so turquoise. The bed of the sea seemed deceptively close to the surface. Photo’s do the beauty little justice. I’m glad I got on that little speed boat.

Back at the big boat, I floated in the Mediterranean for the first time: closing my eyes and breathing in the heat of the sun as the chill of the water lapped around me. I thought about how absolutely lucky I was to be in this moment; thankful for the muffled silence as my ears were covered by the water. And while a majority of the tourist were not on the boat, I was able to sneak down to the little cafe area for fries and drink.

When the boat left the Lagoon, many had lost their places in the chairs because they had taken the tour at Gozo, so a new younger couple sat to one side of me and a Hungarian family sat to the other. The younger couple were triathletes, one of them being Maltese, and the other from the UK. We got to chatting about growing up in Malta and the market for American nurses. I settled back into “normality” as we talked. She’ll never know how grateful I was for that.

Once again, I made my way back to the hotel for a nap and recharge. Originally, I had intended to take an Uber to one of the neolithic sites, but I just didn’t have it in me. When I made my way out to find dinner, I was still reeling near meltdown on the boat. It made me anxious to think about sitting amongst crowds of people, but the desire to experience the food and culture pushed me back out into the sun. I’d decided to try for dinner earlier in the evening to avoid some of the crowds, and it was successful. I found a lovely little restaurant owned by a local that sat down at the table and shared a glass of wine with me.

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I’ll never forget the kindness of the Maltese people; the way the easily fell into conversation; their confidence in the every day. I have such a desire… need to return to it – not only finish seeing all I wasn’t able to see, but to experience the beauty of the archipelago and culture once again.