Every person has a dream. It keeps us going during difficult moments and makes us keep on fighting and working toward manifesting it. Sometimes, sooner or later, our dream comes true. But other times, reality turns out to be very different from what we had imagined. According to the latest research, about 40% of the entire population on Earth live on the seaside and usually, these people are happier than others.

I want to explain to Bright Side readers why I dreamed about living in a house on the beach and how reality changed my plans.

I had a really nice dream: a shiny white house, hidden in the shade of old trees, on the edge of a wide deserted beach. A wooden path goes along the sand and leads right to the sea. The waves are making a quiet noise, and in the sky, you can see beautiful sea birds.

Next to the house, there are 2 squeaky chairs and an old wooden table. My husband and I are drinking coffee and enjoying the scenery and the breeze. The sea is warm and you can go swimming any time you’d like.

For the first 30 years of my life, I lived near the Baltic Sea. Our Northern nature looked impressive and beautiful, but only from a distance. When you get too close, you don’t want to swim — the water is dirty and it’s really cold 10 months out of the year. I wanted to live near the sea where you could swim any time you wanted.

When we had a chance, we moved to a warmer climate with a tropical sea. We chose a small town and were hoping for a life in paradise, in the house of our dreams.

The cost of our dream

Our first house was big, but it was pretty far from the beach. Then we decided that if we moved here, we had to find something close to the sea. So, we found a house 100 meters away from the water. And I finally had a veranda. In the morning, we drank coffee and enjoyed the view. We had to cut down on our expenses and pay a high rent.

Working or resting

To pay for the house, we had to work but it was really hard to do anything in this place. Our laptops were collecting dust and we would spend every day in the sea. We realized that our surroundings were really relaxing and it was hard to make our brains work.

All my fantasies about creating masterpieces while watching the sea were fading. And the house was becoming harder and harder to pay for, so we needed to start working.

I was still hopeful that I would be able to go for a swim in the sea early, have my coffee, and start working. But my laziness was stronger than my hopes. Why run to the sea if I could go for a swim after lunch? Or in the evening. Maybe, tomorrow — we’re here for a long time and the sea is not going anywhere.

As a result, after several months we were only on the beach maybe once a week. When my friends asked me how often I swam in the sea, I just replied, “What do you think?” Because when I told the truth, everybody got confused.

Terrible hair

I came here with really good hair. And I had several packs of my favorite hair dye. I never used half of them. Several failed experiments proved that hair color doesn’t last for more than 2 weeks here. The color fades due to the sunlight and salty air. Besides, my wavy hair turned into little irritating curls that looked like a washcloth. Because of the humidity, my hair wouldn’t get dry and was really hard to comb.

All our clothes lost their color too. After every wash, it took our clothes forever to dry in the humid air. And to boot, there was always some white residue on them. My favorite swimsuit lost color and shape after one month of swimming every day. The sea was merciless with our clothes.

,

If you live in a resort town, you get used to crowds of tourists pretty fast. In the middle of the high season, there are several times more tourists than there are locals.

I was totally okay with the tourists, but it was because I didn’t spend that much time on the beach. You could only see me walking there in the low season. And of course, the scenery didn’t look as fantastic with all these crowds of people.

Another important thing about the town we lived in was that everything in it was made for tourists. So, the quality of things to buy was worse and the prices were higher. There were not a lot of grocery stores and the food was vacation food: chips, chocolate bars, nuts, and other snacks. Also, there were many shops with souvenirs, swimming equipment, and stuff like that. To buy something useful, we had to drive to a nearby town.

Restaurant food was pretty bad too. Again, it was for tourists, so the quality wasn’t very good. Tourists leave in 2 weeks and are replaced with new people.

There were lots of bars, clubs, and cafes. Once, a theater group came to give a performance and the tourists weren’t interested, so they never returned.

“Plastic” waves

In general, living by the sea is good for your health, but we all get ill from time to time. And finding a good doctor in this kind of town is not an easy task. There are usually, like, 2 doctors that are supposed to treat hotel visitors. It all depends on your insurance. The more procedures and meds a doctor prescribes, the more they earn. The 2 doctors we knew were nice people, but we didn’t want them to be our doctors. You can’t say this about every small town, but it was true for us.

Other things about civilized life were also hard to find. Good classes for kids, kindergartens, and schools were also hard to come by. Almost anyone could open this kind of facility. There were a lot of kids in our town, so these facilities would appear and disappear very fast.

And the strangest thing of all, we got tired of the endless summer. We were used to having 4 seasons, and when it was warm all the time, it seemed unnatural. As a result, we decided to change our climate. Not a lot, though, because we wouldn’t be able to survive a real winter after so many years of living in a hot place.

We moved to Tbilisi, 200 km away from snowy mountains and 400 km away from the sea. When we saw snow, we were ecstatic. Our course, our excitement (and the snow) didn’t last for more than 20 minutes.

I don’t regret having lived for several years in the house of our dreams. It was anything but boring. I can still hear the sound of the sea and remember the look of the stars.

Where would you love to live?