The first time as tragedy, The second time as farce

So here we are again.

When I was 19 I left Ireland to go abroad and see the world a little.
I was sick of my dumpy town where nothing good happened, I was sick of hearing the same voices, the same people, living with the same ghosts.

I was young and clever and confident and I went away for a few years and I completely fucked it up.

I fucked it up because I was inexperienced, lacked any kind of self awareness, had no work ethic, no drive, no discipline: I had a few developmental problems and more than a few character flaws I wasn’t really aware of, poor social skills, and was coming from an environment where I was allowed to comfortably stagnate, where I was allowed to isolate and alienate myself, but not allowed to really fail.

Unsurprisingly, I got myself into one bad situation after another, made poor decisions, did everything except the things I should’ve been doing, and spent a few years whittering about living like an idiot before my bad decisions caught up with me.

When I landed back home, an abject failure, I spent a few months feeling sorry for myself, then a few more months being angry, then a few more months barely being alive. At some point during this first half year, I got a job, a proper one, and then I got a job where I didn’t have to wake up at 5am to go to a building site, then I got a job where I actually got paid over the table, then a job that didn’t want to make me want to die, and so on and so on.

At some point, after 4 or so years of numbly drifting, I grew up a little bit and stopped smoking, then I grew up a little bit more and started exercising, and a little bit more and started trying to find some kind of shell of a life. I got stuck on that one for quite a while, years in fact.

In those years I went up and down, up and down, functional and dysfunctional, sometimes happy, mostly not, I learned a lot about myself, not all of it good. I continued to crawl, excruciatingly slowly, out of the bucket I’d put myself in in my early 20’s.

And eventually life picked up, not by a whole lot, but a bit, enough to feel at least partially human. I have a skill set of some description, I have a little money, I have a few friends, I’m not an alcoholic, I’m not dead, I have hobbies and pursuits that give life a bit of meaning. But I still don’t feel all that good, and I’m still not anywhere near where I want to be.

I am endlessly restless, I can’t bring myself to put down roots, it still feels like I’m just passing through.
I am a stranger in my own hometown, the only thing bringing me back here a bed, I still feel nothing for this place, I’m still sick of hearing the same voices, living with the same ghosts.

I have become a side character in my own life, my movements stereotyped, my words repetitive and meaningless, nothing is changing, nothing is getting better, I’m trying to grow, but forever failing.

Nothing I try in this place provides me a hard enough jolt to break out of the way I am living, I am in a rut, and no little nudge is lifting me, I need a complete kick in the ass.

Recently, I resolved to quit my current job. Its a good job, with two small caveats:

• I am bored to death in it
• I think it may be legitimately evil

This decision has been made, the ball is rolling.
For the first time in years I feel really excited about the future.

But I am also shitting myself.

When I was really in deep, hating every day, I told myself that this was temporary, that I would get out of this place again, live a real life again, choose who I wanted to be again, I have the chance now, and I’m reeling.

I have the money and the skillset and the time to make a real go of it, leave where I am, move abroad, I have friends in other places that will help me set up, and now I’m hesitating.

I didn’t realise what I would be giving up to go until the opportunity was there.
I don’t know if I could bear living anywhere other than Ireland.

I love Ireland, when I was young I didn’t but at some point I fell for it.
I love the quiet hills and mountains, I love the lazy country towns, the lush fields, I love the easy laughter, people that say hello to strangers as they pass, the old and the new, blending together, I love the tiny shitty roads, I love rambling over bogs to find neolithic tombs, I love conversations with old ladies on the coast, the cheek of teenagers, the birds, the cows, the clean air, the freezing cold, the constant humidity, the endless rain, the odd differences from town to town, the change in the people going North to South, the suffusion of everything with history, places full of secret meaning, people keen to talk your head off about them.

There is nowhere else in the world like it, I am privileged to be from it.

But I don’t like my place in it, the meat and potatoes of my life.
And I don’t think those are going to change, or rather, I am not going to change so long as I remain here.
So I have to go, at least for now. I am excited to see what’s next, but I’m also sad to be leaving so much behind.

I don’t know whether to laugh or scream.