A mid life crisis emerged from the deep nearly a year ago.
My mid 30’s was fast approaching and I was simmering in the same job for years – no opportunities for growth or improvement, no relationship and no home to call my own.
Life just didn’t stack up the way I thought it would.
Therapy had been instrumental in showing me how to deal with numerous issues previous to that – moving out and away from my family due to alcoholism and abuse, putting up boundaries with them (had multiple calls from my mother that she was afraid to be alone with my brother), acknowledgement of when I was bullied (essentially) at work, and was passed over regularly on tasks that would have expanded my skillset.
I’d overcome most of my familial problems at that point, they persisted but I had gained enough distance to live a free life.
But there was the final problem.
People at work.
After numerous conversations with my therapist, I realised that I had a choice – to try and fix, or to leave.
I had little faith the situation would change on its own, and so it boiled down to this.
I had been demoted by the introduction of another team member who basically took over parts of my job and meant I’d never grow in the role anyway.
After one particular tear-filled day I decided I’d had enough.
One thing I had always wanted to do again was travel. So I made my plans to go to France and Spain.
Reflecting back, it was a little naive, and I knew at the time that things just wouldn’t fall into my lap, but I clung onto the hope that perhaps new opportunities may present themselves and if not, I could always return to Ireland.
So I took off, I visited Cherbourg, St. Malo, Dol-de-Bretagne, Trouville, Deuville, Lisieux, Paris, Marnay-su-Marne, Avignon, Arles, Sete, Barcelona, Alicante, Grenada and Bilbao.
I gazed at the Mona Lisa, wandered through bookshops in Paris, helped an inventor refurbish a French country house, completed my mindfulness training while I visited Cafe de la Nuit (frequented by Vincent Van Gogh and features in one of his most famous paintings), and visited many spots where Picasso and Vincent Van Gogh wandered. Learned about river jousting in Sete, visited Sagrada la Familia, the Picasso museum, gazed at Andy Warhol art and learned about Yatoi Katsuma, a Japanese artist famous for her use of light in art.
I tasted some of the best tapas. I saw Al Hambre in Grenada and felt I’d wandered into a fairytale, and stood in the Cathedral of St. John of Gods, which was the most incredible, richly decorated, church I’d ever seen. Gothic, baroque style with St. John’s remains, along with many other saints were placed on the first floor and overlooked the church’s interior.
I stayed with a friend in Alicante while I worked online, doing odd jobs for my old agency that I’d left, thinking this level of distance from them felt more comfortable.
However, I struggle to articulate the issues I had staying with my old friend. Emotionally unintelligent, sarcastic and generally negative, terrible driver (he took to roundabouts like it was a Formula One racetrack) and immature. Retired nearly twenty years with no kids or spouse, he’d been living the comfortable life for a long time and would ask me everytime I got lunch or breakfast what I had to eat (he had a food jealousy complex). He had an opinion on everything and once made a pretty inappropriate joke at me. Respect was lacking and I believe he was even less bothered showing it to someone who he saw had no direction, and was therefore vulnerable.
Do I stay and try to make things work? Or return to Ireland?
I’d placed him in too powerful a position between being under his roof, and relying on his driving me around (at times) to get around.
Respect increased after I moved out and got my own place, and managed to create some distance between us.
But I was lonely, and had been dealing with a bed bug infestation I’d picked up while I resided in the countryhouse, (a lot of volunteers had been coming and going, and there was a couch that none sat on due to invisible things moving on their skin everytime they did…).
On top of that I’d twisted my ankle there too when I went on a walk through a dark tunnel (on an old, unused train track) with another volunteer, and it had slowed my trip down and saw me in and out of pharmacies speaking bad French.
Navigating on and off trains with a backpack and a huge infested suitcase got a lot more fun after that.
The ankle took months to heal.
The situation became impossible for me at that point in Torrevieja.
I was in and out of the laundromat putting everything I could into the dryers to burn the things, and their eggs alive. I killed three of them in my apartment and found a dead one when I returned from my trip to Grenada.
To say that I was sick to the stomach would be an understatement.
One night, I cracked up and texted some helpline number in Ireland. I was back and forth with the volunteer for an hour in despair. At that point my suffering had gone beyond my control and suicidal thoughts had begun entering my mind.
What was the point of me? Of this? I’d tried so hard to fix my problems and yet I felt worse than ever.
In the end, my suicidal thoughts on account of suffering alone abroad with an infestation I couldn’t get rid of, despite throwing out all my things and wasting hundreds of euros on stuff I couldn’t retain, made my decision.
I had to go home.
I hadn’t intended to.
I had visions for my trip to France and Spain – I’d meet someone, fall in love and set up a new life abroad. Different job, different career, different family and friends – different life.
A desire to feel hope with life again. For that was the point in in going.
Thirties is that time when you realise you don’t have kids, you’re not engaged let alone married and yep, you’re still renting.
So I thought a trip abroad would fix it right somehow.
I’d fall into the life I was meant to live. I would give the universe full reins and be inspired.
Instead, I returned to Ireland seasick (threw up seven times) after a twenty nine hour sail from Bilbao, paranoid and on the verge of emotional breakdown over the bed bugs (later, my doctor would tell me some of his patients needed psychiatric attention after dealing with them also).
My bag was light – I had to throw everything away, including all the souvenirs and presents I’d bought, all my clothes, my journal, books I’d bought in Paris. Two suitcases. Hundreds if not thousands of euros wasted on items I couldn’t keep.
So much I’d lost.
My identity was in some way decimated that I even now struggle to understand.
The trip was an adventurous new beginning, but in the end chewed me up and spat me out. I believe I came back half the woman I was when I left. And it’s not something I tell many people.
I feel wrapped in a mute depression now, something invisible that others don’t see when they ask me ‘how was your trip?’, with some level of excitement. As if I’m a cauldron bubbling with all kinds of crazy tales.
Yes, some crazy tales indeed.
I feel disembodied when someone asks me. Like, how the fuck do I answer? How do you answer three and a half months of trialling life alone abroad? Injured? Language barrier? Bugs that bit you so bad you get a bullseye look on your skin? The bites haven’t fully disappeared and I still believe I have them, despite constant washing, spraying everything with dettol and using diatomaceous earth.
I’ve been having nightmares about them since I’ve returned.
I wasn’t lying, reader, when I said half the woman I was.
Not only disembodied though, but angry. Angry at people’s ignorance even though it’s not their fault, angry over what happened and still is, happening to me.
The trip became survival, staying sane while taking photos and posting them on Facebook.
I wanted to post to social media to prevent what had happened from making it to be the entire trip, cause it wasn’t. I did have moments of beauty and I wanted to share that, to remind myself it wasn’t all bad, but I cringed internally when I saw the comments on the ‘great time I was having’.
Living a lie much?
Most of the photos I had taken were gone anyway, after I transferred them to an external harddrive to free up space on my phone. The drive got damaged somehow, rendering the files inaccessible.
After returning though the fun wasn’t over.
I deal with the turmoil while also being back with my family. My brother, as alcoholic and abusive as ever. My mother, trying hard to move herself and my brother to a better social housing project, outside of the inner city of Dublin where junkies and other undesirables roam.
I’ve been job searching while also looking for a car, a therapist – some way to help get my head straight while I help pay for bills and rent on little funds.Threatening my brother with calling the guards if he gets out of line.
I convey this story not for sympathy, but for my own closure and maybe to give the message to people that travelling abroad and ‘going at it alone’ is not all it’s cracked up to be.
Remember the saying, ‘not all that glitters is gold’?
Unfortunately this applies in my case.
I know I don’t paint a pretty picture, but I also don’t want to lie.
My brain feels deadened, on low battery and fragmented. Social interaction is difficult since all that’s transpired and continues to now.
Now jobless, dealing with family abuse, feeling trapped and broke, with none really knowing what’s going on, as I sit and write my story.
Because it’s one of the few things I have right now.
Because I have my work cut out for me.
Because I feel like I’m being grinded and crushed into the ground.
It’s been a few years since I’ve been this low in life, and it’s embarrassing because of the age of me – when will I learn?
This story has been aching in the back of my mind like a dark ghost, watching through half-closed shutters, waiting for me to express.
This story is a kaleidoscope; travel, family, trials while leaving trails across Europe. It’s not a story for inspiration but a dose of reality – it’s the best representation of my experience that I hope will add some benefit to someone.
Diatomaceous Earth is dusted across the floor in my mam’s new apartment cause I’m afraid I’ve brought the bugs there too. Clothes and cushion covers are drying now after I put them on three washes, it had to be enough times before exposing the articles to the apartment and hanging them up.
I’m sleeping on the couch again tonight with no beds yet, my clothes, personal items – everything I’ve accumulated over the years – scattered across two or three households in Dublin.
I know it’s going to take me months to get back to where I was before. I’m convinced I made the wrong decision but perhaps next year I’ll think differently.
I hope to.
One thing I noticed was the view of the Dublin mountains from my mother’s new place. You can trace the moon’s path across the sky over their tops.
I went to a breakfast morning in a local community centre and watched people sing karaoke. I did a canal walk the other day and felt some of my wholeness creeping back in.
I still aim to teach mindfulness – eventually.
I get the odd whiff of hope in these moments sometimes, I feed off those tidbits as I push with progression of the move and finding a job.
Each week that goes by I get stronger, from seeing friends, from feeling hope that maybe I’ve got a blank slate in my career and can choose what direction I want to go in.
For the first time in a long time, I’m free.
I can’t see the moon and stars tonight over the Dublin mountains from the window tonight, but I know they’re there.
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