No Olives (Part 2 of 2)

Matthew John Ellis
Nov 7 · 7 min read

…Just as the beeping became like the countdown of a bomb ready to detonate, my unspoken prayers had finally been answered. Not too far were the lights of a town, a gradient that looked like it was finally sloping down and an unclenched arsehole began its journey back to harmony. I let the car roll down the hill, weaving on both sides of the road to relax on bends and finally about 500m ahead were the pearly gates, maybe a potential late night oasis which stated it was a 24 hour petrol station. I pulled in, switched the car off, sighed a deep breath of relief, got out and realised that the bloody place was only 24 hours up until 11pm. That night I slept at Chateau de’Esso, the honeymoon suite by pump 6.

Car fuelled, I spent my last day travelling to Cape Sounion by the Aegean sea in search of the Temple of Poseidon. I arrived an hour before sunset, preoccupied by the stone that Lord Byron tagged himself on many years before and the innovation of the incredible structure dedicated to the God of the Seas himself, the master of the Trident, the bisexual Merman, Poseidon. The hour was dedicated to ME time. One cannot clearly think whilst driving, especially the way Greeks drive. Nor can one think when their knees are crumpled into a glove compartment whilst trying to repose at night. I needed to figure out my next move, my back up plan, a new modus operandi. London had seemed like a great idea at the time whilst shit was being sprayed from the blades of my fan last year. It seemed like a new beginning from such an awful year, a new habitat of chance and a fresh start from battles with addiction and Arthur Fleck-like anti-social behaviour both physically and mentally. Instead the Big Smoke became the big smoke and mirrors. Hedonism maximised and savings depleted, an over zealous nature was only magnified more once my Nike Airs hit the asphalt of London town. Dick Whittington and his cat proclaimed that the streets down here were paved with gold, but if you looked a little closer you could see that it wasn’t made from precious metal but actually manufactured with cocaine, over-inflated rent prices and the soured moisture of commuters tears and melancholy.

The capital was meant to be a new beginning. I had structured a New Year’s Resolution list of things not to do when leaving on the 14th of January. Mainly drugs, alcohol, find a responsible career and have no communication with any old flames. But within the first week most of that list was a write off. I’ve come to the conclusion that I am a drug magnet and that my motion of electrical charges comes in the form of white powder and late nights. It seems that most friendships I’ve made since I started high school at eleven have had a propensity for whatever recreational substances may be on the menu. The problem is, I can never blame anyone else. I’m normally the over enthusiastic ring-leader that wants to devise the debauchery. The wannabe rockstar with lemonade pockets and another red light, this time on the ‘speedometer of mental health’ ready to burst another valve if no one takes their foot of the gas.

The majority of my time before Greece was literally meaningless jobs which kept firing me because I wasn’t used to some bellend much younger than me telling me what to do and witnessing one of the most distressing things occurring in front of me, which is when some fool is given the opportunity of “power” in some sort of business model and it goes to their head. These little rascals are the people that one day will be the future Hitlers or Simon Cowells if given too much authority on the corporate ladder. Basically, I don’t like being told what to do by someone who dropped out after their first year into an arts degree and had been working at the restaurant for 4 years prior and knew how to do a stock take properly. I had quit stand up comedy the week before I moved down, a career of 7 years tossed into the garbage disposal unit, making sure the silk shirt and flamboyant undergarments weren’t to be recycled. My final gigs had pushed me towards a daily intake of 20mg of Citalopram. It’s rather amusing that comedy may just be the most ironic of all professions, the job that can bring joy to so many yet can’t pull the clown back from the ledge of a 12th floor disused car park. Jokes. All creativity was stifled from the happy pills, so was an incessant amount of perspiration, constant dreams of being sexually assaulted in prison and the inability to ejaculate. Jokes. So I spent most of my time in London keeping busy with small bags of powder from the Albanians and waking up in strange woman’s beds. Did it make me happy at the time? I guess. But did it get me any closer to happiness. I guess not.

On a lighter note the sunset was unprecedented. The pink and purple hue as the backdrop, the flaming star illuminated as it created a golden stairway across the sea, a truly magnificent sight that allowed me to fixate on life’s beauty and forget all my bullshit for just one moment. I knew that in 2 weeks I would be off these selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors and I knew I could finally stop apologising to woman during sex that something may come out, but that it also may just be medicinal dust. I also knew that tomorrow I had stupidly organised to meet up with the ex. Another tally mark on my list of dumb things I have done since puberty.

Istanbul was never appealing to me the first time I went. It was too big, busy and full of traffic. I grew up in a small village in the North East of Scotland. I understand from that why I wanted to see this big, busy world that’s full of traffic but I was raised in serenity in Aberdeenshire, the type of place where you could hear a mouse fart as I played in the woods with my imaginary friends as a child. Istanbul was just too much.

The essence of this meeting between two former allies was to finally bury the hatchet of what was really a romantic holocaust and both get closure to slam shut the book on this ill-fated relationship. To this day I’ll never understand why she reached out to me. I am a terrible boyfriend. To friends and family I’m pretty solid and try to be as reliable and as honest as I possibly can be, but with girlfriends I lie, I cheat and I act like a brat when I don’t get my way (there weren’t any positive synonyms for when it came to the word psycho, so “brat” shall do for the meantime). I fully believe that some people are just not destined or particularly good at maintaining a satisfactory relationship, “but you haven’t met the right girl yet Matthew”, is a sentence I hear a lot. You see I have, I just decided to throw them too into the garbage disposal as well. It’s a common occurrence for someone who bathes himself in self-destruction. Some people can’t play sports well, some can’t dance and some can’t bake and sorry to break the news to some, but you’re maybe just not that good at relationships and as much as you try, you’ll just never quite get the hang of it and spend most of your life hovering just above the relegation zone, clinging on for dear hope before collapsing to your recurring demise.

From the completely negative passage you may have found yourself reading above you can tell that the meeting didn’t go well. Finished relationships tend to wage a war of who is doing better or who benefited from the termination of love. “I did the breaking up but it turns out YOUR life is greater without me”, “I met someone better than you but I’ll still keep in touch with you because maybe you’re better than THEM, you’re just nuts but I’m a head fuck, LOL” or (for the millennials) “Please have a nosy and find yourself suffering at the hands of my new social media outputs”. Woman are mental and so are men. Technically we’re perfectly made for each other as we have so much in common already. I asked her a question which to an extent was irrelevant but enough for my manly ego to take a huge five finger slap across the face and watch as my skin exploded to the colour green and my denim shorts split as I threw Turkish rickshaws from one side of the road to the other. Marvel’s newest edition: The Incredible Sulk.

The moral of this story is ‘No Olives’. If something didn’t feel right the first time you had it and it left a disgusting taste in your mouth, then sure as hell don’t go back to that restaurant, don’t order the same stupid meal and don’t continue to force yourself into believing that this meal will be okay for you. There are plenty more doner kebabs and Greek salads out there that don’t leave that bitter taste in your mouth like olives have done for me.

The olive metaphor isn’t just about my distaste for bad romances. It’s also about what I consume on a near enough day to day agenda. Hard drugs, strong spirits, cheap tobacco, bad food, minimal sleep and one night stands (sorry if I missed anyone out, 2 many 2 tag LOL!). I keep finding myself on these unrehearsed journeys trying to better myself only to find some excuse to fall back into things that aren’t detrimental to my health, but like the symbol of the olive branch (where olives come from you silly geese) I strive for glory and peace.

To be honest, I cant really find a way to end this macabre travel blog because I don’t know if I’m hear to preach or just want gratification from Facebook likes. So I find myself ending on another metaphor, that of the Ancient Greek story of the ‘Phoenix’. A magical, mystical being that would burn itself out on a daily basis only for it to be reborn the following day and rise through the ashes. Proof that dark, cloudy days can also make way for that flaming star to shine through. All the while disposing of his prescribed medication and blocking head-fuck exes on social media with his tenacious talons assuring himself that he can rise above the cesspit of existence and head forward in the migration of life.

So yeah, I guess I’m preaching a bit.

Matthew John Ellis

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Failed Scottish writer who doesn’t write about cats or 8 things to do with an aubergine.