Dreams in a Fridge
(or How to Keep Hope Cold Until You Can Finally Use It)
Places That Pretend to Be Homes
There are places that pretend to be homes.
Four walls, a lock, a rent receipt, and somehow, you’re supposed to call it “living.”
But sometimes what you really have is just a location where your body exists, your things sit, and your soul holds its breath, waiting.
You don't actually live in there, you just exist, you hang on. You know it's temporary, you treat it like a "temporary situation", but no one tells you how exhausting the temporary is when it becomes permament, lasting much longer than you wanted.
I wish there was a success story here but there is not. I guess.
The 30×40 cm Universe
For me, it’s a 1960 Athens apartment with a 30×40 cm available workspace.
A square of table where I stitch leather, answer messages, design, cry, panic, eat, pay bills, fight with reality, and try to dream without letting the dream hear how tired I am.
This tiny space is all I have to work. On this tiny space I put my plate and I eat. Next to my tools.
1500+ completed orders, 4 full years, a shop that tries to survive things that are out of my control: Tariffs and shipping regulations, postal strikes, accidental suspensions by Etsy's bots that have lasted a whole month - and in the meantime, I hade to keep paying bills, feed my kids and pretend that everything is okay.
Yes, it's huge - depending on the perspective you decide to see it. I took nothing and made it something that matters. But from the completely honest angle, it's been too long since it should have changed.
Plus, 1500 orders in 4 years is not that much if you do the math. It's a normal, steady, healthy growth, without any "rapid, instant success", without any glamorous social media worth-sharing story.
It's just that I can't keep up with all the rest out-of-my-control stuff: Living cost that surprises me daily, prices going up that I magically have to adapt with, hits and blows that I have to constantly absorb.
Five Years of a Place That Never Became a Home
It's been almost five years that I'm here. A not-so-unexpected turn in my life, my post-Covid reality after the long, lockdowns pause: Divorce, my "single mom of 2" label, a life into pieces stored in carton boxes, some of them still unopened - because there's not enough space.
Sometimes I forget what's in there. Sometimes I remember, but don't dare to look, because I will also remember that I started this journey with 2 little kids, and now I am with 2 teens and I'm scared to face their childhood remnants sitting in these boxes for so long that they don't remember them anymore.
Five full years of raising kids in a place that never became a home. It was and still is just a pause.
A long, humiliating, frustrating pause.
No Christmas tree.
No birthday dinners around a table.
No table at all.
No “come over, kids, let’s watch a movie” evenings.
No space for friends.
No space for mistakes.
Barely enough space to breathe.
The Grief of the In-Between
There’s a grief in that.
A grief that people don’t talk about because it’s not cinematic.
It’s not the dramatic, heroic “I lost everything and rebuilt my life” story society loves to glorify.
It’s the grief of the in between.
The years that are still happening. The years where you survive in a place that’s too small for your life and too loud for your thoughts.
Some nights I feel late.
Late to save my kids’ best years.
Late to build a home that actually feels like one.
Late to give them the warmth I imagined when I first became a mother.
Late to sit at a real dinner table and say, “We made it", while passing the salt, joking about the day's little things, having some boring, calm fun.
But late doesn’t mean never.
Or at least that's what I tell myself.
Late is still on the way.
Speaking From the Storm, Not After It
And yes, I know most people share their stories after the escape.
After the “transformation,” after the aesthetic kitchen renovations and the glowing Instagram reels and the soft-focus coffee cups on wooden counters.
I don’t have that.
I don’t have a miracle story yet.
Just a fridge full of dreams, wrapped in foil so they don’t expire.
Because the truth is that I am still in the storm.
I’m still stitching bracelets on the very same space I put my plate and eat my dinner alone.
We are still all three of us eating with a plate in front of us, on our desk.
I'm still calculating and try to save enough to move by summer, when my leasing ends.
Still choosing between buying leather or buying cords, still having to wash my dishes with shampoo or my hair with dish soap, when there are still times I can't afford both.
Still seeing a lot of my materials unused because there's no space to put them, see them, work with them.
Still holding on.
The World Needs Stories From the Middle Too
I wasn't sure if I wanted to write this and share it with the world. Who wants to read about darkness?
But maybe there are many of us.
The thing nobody tells us is that you don’t have to wait until after the victory to speak.
Some stories matter because they’re still unfinished.
Maybe someone out there needs to hear from a person who hasn’t reached the mountaintop yet, someone who is still climbing with scraped elbows and a mouth full of dirt, curses and hope.
There is hope, just not the romantic, fluffy kind.
Not the “manifest and it will come” nonsense.
No.
It's the painful, gut-ripping hope that hangs from a hair-thin string, ready to break with a slight breeze, but somehow, miraculously it keeps strong.
Or maybe there's nothing miraculous about it.
Hope as a Gear, Not a Fantasy
Hope as in:
a gear inside the engine of your life.
Hope as in:
“I know this isn’t enough and I won’t pretend it is.”
Hope as in:
“I accept where I am, but I refuse to stay here.”
Hope as in:
“I will get us out of here even if I have to drag us on my elbows.”
Hope as in:
“I deserve a life as I dream it.”
The Fury That Keeps You Moving
There’s fury in it too.
A quiet, stubborn fury that says:
I wasn’t careless.
I didn’t throw money away on handbags and fancy dinners and ego luxuries, I didn’t gamble my life.
I didn’t create this mess.
I am just broken, trying to rebuild from the ruins of a chapter I didn’t choose.
And for that, I allow myself to be angry, I allow myself to be furious, I allow myself to keep crying at nights...
But I still move. Not allowed to give up.
Acceptance, Anger, Uncertainty, Resolve
Anger can burn the path clear.
Acceptance can keep your feet steady.
Uncertainty can keep you awake.
Resolve can keep you walking.
And hope can keep beating inside the cold of that fridge, waiting for the day you finally take it out, warm it up, and live.
Living the “During”
So this is where I am.
Not at the ending, not at the triumph, not at the transformation.
Just here.
In the middle.
With leather scraps, two kids, a tiny workspace, carton boxes that never opened, punching holes on the floor, sleeping next to packaging materials, a deadline circled on a mental calendar, and a dream big enough to suffocate me or save me.
For Anyone Else in the Cramped Middle
Some people have their big “before and after.”
Some of us are living the “during.”
Maybe that’s worth saying out loud.
Because if someone else out there is also stuck in the cramped middle, also trying to build a life in a space too small for their dreams, also ashamed that they’re not “out” yet,
then maybe this reminds them:
You’re not failing.
You’re just not done yet.
