30th birthday alone in santorini
I prepared for my own thirtieth birthday — spent alone, on the island of santorini - as if preparing an elaborate labor of love for someone else. this is what I would remind myself, as I felt overwhelmed by the logistics of its planning: reading through ten different cake recipes, and trying to decide how to cook chinese food without soy sauce. those few days, when greek island men tried to chat me up, asking me where I’m from, I’d respond by asking them where I can buy an egg whisk. it confused them. the night before, I walked thirty minutes to two grocery stores - along a winding road of cars - and carried a heavy bag of ingredients (and an electric mixer) home - up the barren hills, along a footpath by the caldera, past tourists taking selfies over the sunset.
and I remembered all the times in which I did this, in new york city, for boyfriends and close friends - when nothing could sway my resolve to pull an elaborate plan together, even if it meant staying up until 2 am, making a complicated cake. I spared no expense, nor allowed myself any excuse for the sake of making someone else feel loved. and so, after a hard year - no, a hard *decade* - I found myself on a greek island, and decided that it was finally my turn to do this for me.
but originally, what I really wanted was to go home - to china - and spend my 30th birthday in my hometown, after twenty-five years away: to eat dinner with my relatives, and walk with my mother along that silver, willow-tree lined lake, as I did when I was a child. there is a photo of me turning five in china - in 1996. my mother is already in the states by then. I had a round watermelon head, with a cropped bowl haircut. I stood with my cousin in front of a birthday cake, beaming.
when I realized, during my month of despair in istanbul, that it’d be impossible to go back to china this year - I grieved for three days. then I considered returning to new york city, to throw a party and invite my old friends; to bake two cakes and cook a huge chinese meal for them - as I did for my twenty-fifth birthday in my tiny williamsburg apartment. but somehow, it didn’t feel right.
so instead, I celebrated my thirtieth birthday alone, during november full moon — on one of the most famous greek islands - left by the eruption of its volcano in 1600 BC, shaped like a crescent moon; an island upon which, I only recently learned, the legend of atlantis was based.
the night before, I made dough for hand pulled noodles and put it in the fridge, simmered a chicken broth for three hours, and made a six inch crepe cake on the stove - fifteen layers, one layer at a time. I rarely drank alcohol alone, but after much indecision, I had bought two kinds of greek alcohol: a bottle of ouzo, and a bottle of santorini wine. at 11pm, I beat the cake cream and assembled the cake, layer by layer; then I garnished it with pomegranate seeds, and went to bed.
the next morning, I woke up into the silence of my own solitude - keenly aware of how there was no one here to give me a hug, to hand me a few flowers, to wish me a happy birthday. I acknowledged that this is the experience I wanted. I kept my phone on airplane mode - as I always did - until the afternoon, so that there would also be silence in my head. instead, I woke up and did the same morning rituals I do everyday: writing, yoga, meditation. workouts to german rap. then I cut my own hair - which I’ve done once before, in berlin - and this had a strangely therapeutic, empowering effect to it. I made sure I felt beautiful in my own skin, and I walked fifteen minutes to the local bakery to buy spinach pie, returning to cook myself breakfast while calling my parents in shanghai, who were cooking dinner. we ate our respective meals together, and my father sang me happy birthday over the phone - loud enough so that the neighbors could hear, and I felt almost sheepish, to be sitting here, eating a decadent birthday brunch alone.
that afternoon, I hiked from one village to the other, around the bend of the crescent moon - along the slender ridge - to the very tip of the island. it was a three hour hike that I did in silence, passing only two other hikers. instead, I absorbed the sun through my skin, let my eyes rest over the silent blue sea, and I thought to myself, out loud.
-
I realized how, though I had seemingly nothing — no house, no job, no relationship, neither small fame nor small fortune - though I had climbed no career ladders, collected no accolades, amassed no monetary wealth nor recognition — how truly *proud* I was of myself; how infinitely rich I felt within. I had inspiration. and possibility. and beauty. and truth. I had the fullness of my *life*.
I had lived a whole decade true to myself, even when I spent much of it in black holes of anxiety, self-doubt, and romantic despair. I quit two jobs, started a business, left multiple relationships, packed my bags, left new york city, and traveled the world for two years during a pandemic. I allowed my heart to be my compass. and at each precipice in which I felt like I was dying, after each cliff, after I jumped and fell flat on my face - I got up again, covered in blood, and kept walking forwards. I kept jumping again. I committed to myself, over and over - with irreverent stubbornness - to what my soul truly wanted, rather than what anyone else told me to want.
and as a result, I feel truly alive. as a result, I am a foreigner in every country. a stranger to every culture. an outsider in every world - often even to my own family and friends - and I felt at peace with it. I had myself. and finally - after all those years of self-torment - I felt enough, for me.
in the middle of all this thinking, an hour or two into my hike, a lone voice called to me — from above the mountain. it took me a while to locate the voice, and when I did, I saw an old greek man looking down at me. he yelled “*do you have time?”*
*time*?
*time for a coffee,* he said.
*how did you get up there?” I said.
*I live here!”* he said
so, when life invites me for coffee on my 30th birthday, I do not decline.
this is how I ended up inside the one-room white cave home of an old greek island mountain hermit — who has been living here, off-the-grid, in the middle of no where, for several years. his cave was hard to reach. I climbed up the mountain and lost myself inside the thorny plants and ashy rocks - and ended up in the rocks above his house. he had a garden where he grew potatoes and onions. he showed me the cactus fruit and figs he collected from the trees, and a bucket of shellfish he collected from the sea. *nature gives me a lot of what I need,* he said. he was a survivor - and good at it. he once had family - a wife who died, a son who lived “very far away” - which I understood meant more than literal distance, because he was unhappy when I asked him about it. *I don’t care… money,* he said, or *people… politic… when I be die, I die.* what he did not know — was that as different as we were — we were living different translations of parallel lives. I have said this too. *when I die, I die.*
I told him I had been traveling the world, alone, for two years, and he patted my back, and said, *hero! strong!* and somehow, this meant a lot, coming from a mountain hermit who lived in a cave house, with no electricity, and no running water.
he made me greek coffee, and poured me water, and white wine, and handed me a plate of grapes, and a persimmon. he invited me to stay for sunset, but I told him I was heading to oia, that other village, to catch the 4:35pm bus, so that I could watch sunset in fira. before I left, I told him it was my birthday, and I thanked him for his gift - a gift of hospitality from santorini, and a gift from greece. he was shocked. he immediately invited me to meet him that evening at the tavern across the post office, but I told him I had plans, and I walked onwards.
because of the greek mountain hermit, I missed the 4:35pm bus by five minutes. instead, I wandered through the empty village of oia - which, even more than fira (the other major village) felt like a white-stoned greek theatre built solely for tourists. I watched an obscured sunset surrounded by too many people (which, by santorini standards, was equivalent to there being *nobody*) and then walked to the bus stop twenty minutes early, sitting there on a bench, shivering in the cold windy darkness, thinking that maybe I’d catch a cold, and perhaps, this was not the most glorious evening of a thirtieth birthday.
and then, I saw it.
the full moon: rising between the olive trees, beyond the hills - a rose gold orb, so luminous it seemed unreal, so big it seemed like a ripe fruit born from trees. I knew the moment that I saw it, that this was the climax of my day — this is the reason I missed my bus, the reason for the mountain hermit. I watched as it was obscured by the shadows of clouds, then I got on the bus and watched it continue to rise in the darkness, as we drove along winding mountain roads, where the lights of villages were like tiny pinpricks, and the dark sea lay beyond, between land and sky. the moon was like a moving compass. it continued to rise as I walked home from the bus stop, until, at the door of my house, it hung high in the sky, chased by the shadows of clouds, moving so fast as if it were a shooting star.
that evening, I listened to the voices of my friends and strangers sending me birthday messages and songs, while I boiled hand-pulled noodles, one by one. I drank santorini wine with a tomato chicken noodle soup, and then I had a three hour tarot reading and video call with an old friend (<3), which left me electric and marveling at the poetry of life, thinking that when I was not in a hole of despair, believing life to be futile and meaningless — I could appreciate that whoever wrote this book of life is clearly a sophisticated, complex storyteller, and now, at age thirty, I finally accept that I will never be able to know the plot of the next chapter - even if, somewhere, deep in my gut, I have an intuition about where it will take place, and which themes will unfold.
close to midnight, I lit the candles of my birthday cake, and sang myself happy birthday, which I recorded, on video, for my archives - to watch again when I’m forty, sixty, or eighty - and to remember how it is that I spent the best birthday of my adult life in solitude, as an exercise in self-love: alone with the sea, and the sky, and the sun, with friends and family - curated on a screen - with a greek mountain hermit who patted my back and fed me afternoon coffee and snacks - and perhaps, most significantly, with the full moon: symbolizing the end of one era, and the beginning of another.
it reminded me of when, this past summer, I biked through hasenheide park in berlin, alone, late at night - and though at first I was scared of the shadows, then I kept going deeper into it, until, inside a valley, I saw the full moon, inviting me in with the cool comfort of my solitude. this is a journey in which I walk in darkness, choosing to trust fully in myself, guided by the light within, illuminating my pathless path - every step of the way.
*