Tenerife withwith aa Tasmanian

I took a solo trip to Tenerife this summer because all my friends had booked to go away with their boyfriends. They said they felt bad, that we could do something all together later in August, but they were all settled down, happy in relationships, so I knew what sort of holiday they had in mind. It’d be an hour’s trip to the beach everyday, all of them too scared to go into the water because their boyfriends probably told them some horror story about mediterranean sharks, then we’d likely cook food back at the villa, call it a night and by 9PM they’d all be wrapped up in bed facetiming their boyfriends and telling them how much they miss them in this soppy, puppy-speaking voice that, every time I hear it, has me wanting to tear out my ears.

I sound like a bitch saying all of this. I’m not. I love my friends, actually set one of them up with my colleague and now they’ve been dating for two years, but we’re just at very different points in our life right now. They want to spend their nights indoors, nurse one glass of red wine and retire to bed so they can ‘make love’ with their partner. Me? I’m three months single and being reliant on another person makes my skin crawl because, for three years, that’s all I did. It came to a natural end, things with Brett and I. We both mentally and emotionally checked out a couple months prior to the break up. We were loyal to one another, good people, but relied too heavily on one another. It was a hard thing to do, to face the music, but enlightenment was waiting on the other side and now it was time for me to step into it.

So Tenerife. I felt a little sceptical about going alone. I’ve flown solo to cities but that’s different – everybody’s alone there anyway doing their own thing, checking out historical monuments, doing a touch of retail therapy; aimlessly wandering through free art galleries, but at the beach it’s different. Slightly unnerving. People are either with their partners or with their friends.

I booked to stay in a hostel to connect with other solo travellers. It was my first time staying in one.