This is another catch-up post. I’m going to try to do some of these as I spend two months in Europe! Since my partner is working during the day, I might as well split my time into different priorities – catch-up blogging being one!

Shortly before I took 18 months off blogging, I talked about signing up for my first solo cruise/trip. As the date approached, I got really nervous. I’d never traveled alone and I didn’t know how that would be navigating in a country with no language skills. I nearly canceled, but I held strong and went. I’m so glad that I did, because the trip ended up being life-changing. This all started when I met with a group of other solo cruisers the night before our ship sailed. We had set up the tapas dinner through a facebook group, and while my experience with big groups is that they rarely gel well, this one was just perfect. There was over a dozen of us, and meeting them meant that I already had a group of friends at the start of the trip. We all ended up in a WhatsApp group chat and many of us have stayed friends to this day.

Through the next week, I went all out. We started and ended in Barcelona, with stops in southern France, near Florence in Italy, Corsica, and Ibiza (below collage). Virgin Voyages was incredible – high energy, queer-forward, body-positive, no kids, great fun! Highlights of the trip include 1) jumping into the pool with everyone wearing formal evening wear on Scarlet Night; 2) the bet acrobatics show I’ve ever seen on a cruise (and which my group nearly ruined when one friend tried to stop one of the acrobats from participating, not knowing she was an acrobat – the performance was a fight she was going to break up, and my friend was trying to protect her, ha!); 3) actually wearing pajamas to pajama night; 4) getting a tattoo on board, because of course they have tattoo artists and piercers on board; and 5) finding so many people who accepted me as-is, which isn’t the norm in my life.

During the trip, I joked with J on a phone call home that everyone was hooking up, and he told me that I should do the same. Long story short, J and I hadn’t had a romantic-type relationship since 2014, and being mostly celibate for nine years was very difficult for me. I was just starting to come out of the box I’d put myself into in order to survive, and J thought perhaps it would be best if we branched into a poly/open type situation. I was able to accept this, and while I didn’t hook up on the trip, I did make out quite a bit with four different friends. Is that TMI? Meh. I don’t post here to be discreet.

Anyway, it was a cruise that taught me to embrace myself exactly the way I am. I felt so happy, even as I got more and more exhausted throughout as I’d stay up dancing until 2am and then wake up before 9am for shore excursions. Combine that with lots of alcohol and then catching covid toward the end of the trip (ha! consequences of all the kissing – we passed it around between us!), and I was soooooo tired by the time I got home.

A core group of this trip have remained friends to this day, as I said above, and a whole bunch of us are taking a reunion cruise together in October. We’re mostly traveling solo, but our rooms are lined up in a row by a single travel agent, so we can all have one long communal balcony. It’s going to be an amazing time.

As for the tattoo, the artist I chose is illytattoo, who is based in London. I had an inspo photo that was of a snake eating it’s own tail, except the tail had become a sword by the end, with some stars, moons, etc around the main image. The original was in black and gold, but my artist changed it to be a bit more her style and used black and red. It was one of the least painful tattoos I’ve ever gotten, and it still looks beautiful almost two years later. I love this thing and I would love to visit the artist again some time!

PS – Before I quit blogging in 2023, my hair was still long. I cut it short a week after I wrote my end post. The original intent was to keep it short for Halloween, because I went as Crowley that year (obviously!). But afterwards, I just kept it short. I’ve never liked myself in short hair before, but I’ve come to really love it, and especially now that I’m playing with fun colors and I have 18-currently tattoos, it really serves as a strong indicator of being queer. 🤷🏻