I AM Maria Gregoriou

Fears, tingles, nettles in the throat and a sea crashing up against the eyes are all emotions that should never be wasted by the writer.

In this state of allowing truths to act it out on a level playing field, I remember all I have been, all I came from, and all the anger bottled up inside and ‘I would be lying if I said I’m fine.’ With no holding back or pretending, here I am — not perfect, not nearly whole as the person I wanted to grow into, but very, very human.

Born in the UK 1978–1989

I was born in Yorkshire, England just a day after New Year’s. Eager to get out I guess — as I should have arrived at the end of the month — but too late for the party.

My mum and dad, immigrants from Cyprus, already had two kids years ago. Then, at 35, my mum fell pregnant again. I came at a time when business was good and my parents had a little more time to spend away from the coffee shop.

I remember my mum telling me I could buy one thing every week when we went to the inside market in Wakefield. That one thing was always a Ladybird book, which mum would try to read me every night and by doing so, learned how to read English better.

I remember we could buy books from school one year and I picked up a poetry book. I remember falling in love with how it looked on the page. How the lines stopped halfway and seemed to curve down. How it was like waves on a page, playing with my eyes, drawing me in and never letting go.

I remember there was a theatre just down the road from our coffee shop, I remember my mum and dad taking me. I remember my sister taking me to the record shop and buying all the latest albums. Madonna, Wham, Culture Club. I remember the last one she bought was Like A Prayer before we moved to Cyprus.

The Big Move 1989–1997

I didn’t know Greek. My mum got me a teacher just before we left home and I hated it. I hated my grandmother’s village where we stayed until we could move to Nicosia. I hated that from one day to the next I had become an only child. My brother hated me, my sister had her own problems and I had to understand this new world, so I turned to the only friend I had at the time, I turned to the empty page.

One year of Greek school, where I felt dumb, and then it was off to private school. During my Year 6 and 7 (1996–1997) was the first time the school offered English Literature and ohhhhh did I run to be part of that class. But hold on, my spelling wasn’t very good, I had strange ideas, I analysed things in other ways, I wanted to change ‘traditional ways’ of saying things into something else for emphasis, to get the reader to stop, to do what writers have always done. “You may pass you’re A’level, maybe.” School advisors should really look at the talent behind the paper and praise them for it instead of deterring them from moving on.

Did I pass? I didn’t only pass, I got the highest grade in the class.

Seems that bringing in other literary works, analysing more than just what you were told to analyse, and actually writing in a way that is not ‘normal’ gets you marks. Who knew????

I am not bitter, even if the theme song for this part of my life was Bitter Sweet Symphony.

Work and Study — 1998–2008

So you guessed it, I didn’t go abroad to study. I played it safe. I studied marketing at a local college. I completed my diploma and decided I had to work to pay for my studies. I started working and a year later, the college offered English Language and Literature BA and again, I was one of the first to take it on.

I worked as a technical writer while studying. I met life-long friends, I won prizes for my poetry, I had professors who praised me and I wrote with that starving artist’s romanticism that I thought was above all — I wrote to songs like Breathe Again by Toni Braxton and I’m Kissing You by Desiree.

Becoming Me — 2008 -2012

I made my way back.

Manchester Metropolitan University, MA in Creative Writing Poetry.

I left Cyprus with such joy to go to a place where no one cared who I was, where I could just be me. I waved goodbye to my mum and I was off. Free at last, free at last!

I got back to me. I wrote and wrote and wrote. I went to the cinema alone, I went to town alone, I went to the theatre, I went to the library, I went to cafes and the swimming pool alone. I loved every, single, minute of it.

I didn’t miss a lecture, a reading, a university get-together. I was home and I loved it. In the words of Michael Jackson, This Is It!

I learned how poets read in public, I learned how to feed off the energy of other writers, and I learned to collaborate with people from other walks of art — three of my poems were put to music. I learned who Maria Gregoriou really was, and she was fierce, but what she would do next was the fiercest thing of all.

The year was up, I came back to Cyprus — which seemed to be softer now, not so rough around the edges, and a place that seemed to need protecting. I had a year to write my poetry collection and submit it to the university, so I wrote, worked as an English teacher, and was on the hunt for love.

I hadn’t had much experience with it but I knew I wanted the whole package — the husband, the kids, the house, the appliances to make the perfect breakfast.

So how does a writer find a husband? She goes online, where she can chat via writing.

And along came Harry.

Harry was in Greece, I was in Cyprus but something drew me to him. Maybe that Greek man charm, maybe the fact that he also wrote verse, or maybe because he was half Cypriot and really wanted to come to the island. Long story short, after six months of chatting I flew to Greece in February and he flew to Cyprus in April. By January 2010 he proposed and in 2012 we got married.

Babies — 2013–2019

I went from being an English teacher to a Journalist. I started working at the Cyprus Mail as a member of the local news department. A few months later I was pregnant and the economy was on fire. I remember waiting for the bus to take me home, holding my belly, and talking to the boy that was growing inside me. I remember practicing the name Ektoras, I remember the anticipation of childbirth and how nothing is how you expect it to be.

I was admitted a week before my due date because they said he was too big. After five days of trying to induce labour, Ektoras Mylonas was born on November 11, 2013, at exactly 5:05 in the afternoon after being pulled out of his nice, warm womb with forceps.

What was this long white, quiet thing they put on my side? It looked like a baby but it wasn’t moving, it wasn’t crying. They whisked him away to another room and then, as if she was announcing the descent of an airplane into the fires of hell, the doctor came back and said “Your baby has had trouble breathing. We will take him upstairs to the ICU.”

Nothing works out the way you plan.

She showed him to me at a distance and then when she turned around to put him in the incubator I saw the scar on the back of his head.

That night I had a dream I was dancing with him on his wedding night. He was so tall, so much bigger than me, and his smile was so bright.

The next morning I heard birds outside and I held my belly and told it to listen to the chirping. For nine months I always had him with me, and now he wasn’t with me anymore.

I went home without my baby so I could gather my strength to be a better mother for Ektoras. For two weeks we went back and forth from the hospital to our house. We went to visit our son. To feed him, to change him, to handle him with as much care as possible. Back and forth, back and forth, and one day in the car on our way to him the song Hall of Fame came on the radio. Harry turned it up and we heard ‘You can walk straight through hell with a smile, you can be a hero, you can get the gold.’

We had no idea then how this really would be the theme song of his life.

I went back to work four months later as the writer for the What’s On section of the newspaper. I was writing about theatre productions, art exhibitions, poetry readings, you name the cultural event, I was writing about it.

It really was ‘the best of times’ and ‘the worst of times.’

I loved my job but the pay was crap and I was given more and more to do and my article writing had to pay the price. I had less time for the actual writing part so I started to look for another job while being told that Ektoras was showing soft neurological signs.

When Ektoras was about five months old I noticed he was not really talking. All the other kids would play together while he would just be in the corner by himself, obsessed with a block, a bottle, and letters. He knew the English and Greek alphabet before he was two. He could count, he knew the colours and the shapes way before that. He was smart but he was not ‘normal.’

Autism spectrum, on the very end of the spectrum, but still, on the spectrum.

‘The world’s gonna know your name ’cause you burn with the brightest flame and the world’s gonna know your name and you’ll be on the walls of the hall of fame.’

So it was and so it is and so he needed a brother or sister to support him through whatever when we are gone and we wanted another child because that was kind of the plan.

Nothing works out the way you plan.

Second pregnancy, eight weeks later blood and my womb scraped of its content. About a year later, a third pregnancy, nine weeks later lots of blood and my womb was tampered with again.

Third time’s a charm so I said I would give it one more go, but if this one failed I was giving up.

By this time I had changed jobs and was a marketing administrator, which quickly turned into a content writing role. Four months after starting the job and moving into our own home I fell pregnant again. I didn’t bond with this one. I would go to the toilet and keep my eyes shut. The months passed and I was still pregnant. I went for one of the first ultrasounds and I told the doctor he could see the baby but I would look away, I didn’t want to fall in love again just to have it taken away. “Look up,” he said, “there are the legs, the hands, the arms, look at the hair.”

September 2, 2019 was when I was eight months pregnant and when I told myself I could finally enjoy my pregnancy.

Nothing works out the way you plan when your daughter is in charge of your next scene.

My water broke that night and the next day I gave birth to Cassiopi Mylona. She is a constellation all of her own and she reminds me of my stubborn, wanting self every, single day — maybe I sang the ‘daddy’s gonna buy you a diamond ring’ verse too many times to her when she was a baby.

What Now? 2020–2024

Covid, midlife crisis, a new baby and a son who just started elementary school. I also started a freelance job that was teaching me so much but I just wasn’t in the right frame of mind to see it.

Those two years went by very slowly but from this distance, I sometimes wish I had them back.

2023 I decided to up my professional career, change jobs and go to the gym, or go to speaking events, or take up theatre writing lessons — I had planned to do anything and everything to make sure I could pay the mortgage, work as hard as I could, while also having time to do things I wanted to do.

Ha! You know what I will say about planning.

End of the year, no stable income, no being able to do what I want, no clear plan other than now I had time to write. Do you think I wrote? Yes, I did. I wrote blog posts for companies, website content, articles, post after post after post for my LinkedIn profile, and email after email to make contacts and figure out where I belonged now.

I wrote, I studied, I enrolled in a social media and an AI course. I attended workshops and I consumed hours of videos about business.

Some days I feel good, other days I feel lost with those pesky nettles scratching the sides of my throat. Some days I talk to people who understand, other days I feel small when talking to people who seem to have it all together.

But, yes I started a sentence with but, look what I have done. Look what I have dared. Look what I am still pushing towards.

It may not be poetry, it may not even be writing in the way I am used to in the end, but it will be the next part of me and do you know why it could actually work? I have no stable plan anymore. I trust my gut, I see what the world needs and I adjust as much as I can by marrying my talents, knowledge, and drive to fit into this sphere spinning in space which is anything but ‘normal.’

To continue with the lyrics I mentioned in the first part of this long text, ‘courage, don’t you dare fail me now. I need you to keep away the doubts. I’m staring in the face of something new, you’re all I got to hold on to, so courage don’t you dare fail me now.’

I was courageous once, I can be again. It is the needle of the compass of my life and my instrument is my pen, no matter the content it has to write.