Love comes in different shapes — sometimes it takes the form of an island. Mallorca.

What lies ahead of me is a surprising quick visit to Mallorca, an island in Spain. As an opportunity represented and the price of the back-and-forth flights from Barcelona is nothing more than 30 euros, it would be kinda foolish not to go - right? The carry-on backpack I bought from Amazon is really paying itself back quicker than I thought!

It has been a shame how little I have actually ventured and explored Spain while I’ve been here but to be completely honest, there is so much more to life than running from one place to another like a headless chicken. And in economic times like these, it’s more than wise to remain conscious of how tight to keep the wallet strings.

So far in addition to Barcelona, the only other places I’ve visited in Spain have been Girona, and Costa Brava, a trip of which pictures will be featured in this blog post. Girona, Costa Brava…and Mallorca, in 2016 — the year of my high school graduation.

In addition to finding just THE dress I wanted for my graduation (I mean back then it was exactly what I wanted, would never wear one like it now) and catching a terrible flu on the last day, I found something else as well. Something that was far more memorable and more meaningful to me. Love, that is.

Cala Pola in Costa Brava, Spain.

So, in 2016, just a few weeks before my high school graduation, me and my friend decided to go on an adventure of our own. A little young ladies’ trip to Spain would do so much good after all the hard work, and especially for all the excitement about the future. And we set our minds with Mallorca, Magaluf to be precise. It was a city known for its parties among British and Russian mostly (no, I would not choose this destination anymore). We knew the trip was going to be super fun - which it ended up being, but we never knew we both would make it SUCH a memorable one.

So what did an 18-year-old girls’ trip look like then? On one of the first days we did what any 18-year-old would do in the South: greased ourselves with baby oil to sunbathe all day by the hotel pool. We figured, how harmful could it be since the sky was so cloudy we could barely see the sun. Turned out — very.

We met a bunch of cool people during our trip, one of the guys remained on my Facebook friends list until last year when I randomly realized he was still there and deleted him (harsh, I know). A couple of others still live on in the photos we took. We met an older British man by our hotel one afternoon and went to lunch with him, learned about his life, and got insights that were so valuable from an older person to someone who’s on the verge of adulthood. He had a cat named Phoebe, and that’s all I remember. But these kinds of encounters blow my mind. It is truly amazing how someone you meet briefly can have such an impact, and leave a mark in your memory that doesn’t wear off. I still sometimes find myself having a thought “Hmm, what might this gentleman be doing right now”, just out of pure curiosity.

We visited clubs and bars, a female strip club too - the first and the last time for me. We rode an electrical bull together so long that my wrists and thighs were painted with bruises, and we danced our troubles away every night. It was the summer of Sia’s Cheap Thrills, Enrique Iglesias’ Duele El Corazon, and Rihanna x Calvin Harris’ This Is What You Came For.

We also visited Palma, the island's capital, and took a cool party motorboat ride on our last day. But none of this would have been as remarkable if it weren’t for one special encounter.

So what happened that was SO special?

Pretty much halfway through our trip, we were sitting at one of our favorite bars that night. Each sipping one of our three complimentary drinks, ones that were pure sugar and a teeny tiny bit of alcohol. That night on the bar terrace there was also a group of guys, seemingly our age, sitting at a nearby table. We had been guessing where they might be from because their language, which we could hardly hear, sounded so absolutely bizarre.

After a while, one of them came to our table and we started chatting. He had obviously set his eyes on my beautiful friend so we ended up joining their group and started to get to know them better. Turned out, they were from Iceland. A group of fun, cute, and friendly guys, what more could a couple of young girls ask for on their fun vacation? As naive as we were, we still knew very well that we needed to be careful with a group of strangers. But no one ever warned about how tremendous strange men could be to our hearts.

We continued the night together, and when it ended, my friend and the guy exchanged contacts so that we could meet again. And so we did. The next day we met them with excitement that had been building up the whole day. I had flirted with one of them as well, only to learn later that he was actually in a relationship with a girl back home — not cool you guys… But the next night another one of the guys stole my attention, and he did it well. At this point I wish I could write that theatrical phrase “His name was…” but I don’t want to reveal identities.

After having another fun night of dancing, going to amusement park rides, and having the best time with the group, me and my friend’s roads separated and I remember sitting on a dock by the beach with THE guy, talking about our lives until sunrise. Unfortunately, the next day was going to be their last day and night on the island.

He had given me a shirt he had got as merchandise from a club, and I slept in it that night. He would also give me a rose from one of the street salesmen that upcoming night. And smiles and kisses. Lots of smiles and kisses.

Some might call this a quick holiday romance, but I believed, and still do, that it was a specific form of love. There was a deeper connection between us which made it seem like we had known each other for longer, and that we understood each other just by being in each other’s presence. Love comes in different shapes, sizes, and forms. Some of them take time to develop, some of them last until the end, and some of them wither even quicker than they were formed. Not all of them are more than a figment of our imagination, and sometimes they’re just obsession mistaken for love. But there is also something called love at first sight, which I personally believe happens when two souls get lost in a dance together. And I do believe love at first sight exists. That kind of love is just a seed that has the potential to grow into a garden — or die even before it reaches the surface of the ground.

Our goodbye happened in a rush and it was one of the most emotional goodbyes of my life. But we never intended it to be a goodbye, we planned on meeting again. In fact, in the next month, we would get closer through messages and we even seriously discussed about travelling somewhere together, or even about living somewhere together. And I truly found myself missing him when I was home. I cared for him deeply, but for a young mind, it still seemed impossible.

Just so that life wouldn’t be easy nor our journeys linear, at home, the night of my graduation, I rekindled feelings for someone else back at home. Feelings I had left behind already but that then came back. And that was when I settled my mind to say farewell to my Islandic love (see what I did there?).

Now that 7 years after this story took place, I’m returning to Mallorca and will obviously be thinking about such a memory that I hold dear. The times on that trip were meaningful moments in my adolescent years, and I think stories like these are exactly what I wish to collect.

I don’t live in the past or through my memories, but I live FOR them. To find more, to make life a story that doesn’t fit on a couple of pages of a notebook — I don’t think that would be possible without being brave, and staying open-minded.

With love, Stiina