Day 9 - Home Free or Crazy?

Every year, I pack up my life completely, put everything in storage and move country. In Ireland, where I'm from, the idea of doing this is hard for people to wrap their heads around (hard to understand). I get puzzled looks, pregnant pauses that are filled with suspense for all the wrong reasons, and peppered with questions. 

In Spain, where I spend one portion of my year, this is much more typical than you might think, even and actually more so amongst people my age (early 40s, and older). Some own houses or apartments here, many, like me, rent. 

"Don't you want somewhere long term?" I get asked a lot. 

Yes and no is my answer.

Realising A Dream

Since I was 20, I've dreamt of living in Spain. I tried and failed twice. The first time was my during third year at college. I was studying Spanish, coming in top of my class, and already well on the way to a C1 (Advanced) level. In 3rd year, I had the option to take an Erasmus year in Spain - and I had every intention of doing so. My university was organised, I was planning my accommodation and everything else I'd need - I just needed to tell my boyfriend. 

Naively, I thought he'd be really supportive. Foolishly, I told him on a Sunday afternoon while we were in the pub with friends. To say he went ballistic would be an understatement. The fight which ensued resulted in the front light of a car being broken, after a few glasses had been smashed, and the very embarrassing 'woman pursues man through pub, each screaming at the other' moment you see nowadays in reality TV shows like Booze Britain. 

I was 20, in my first long term, (young) adult relationship. We'd been together almost 3 years, and had gone to primary school together. I made a decision that would become the only one I'd ever regret until one day my sister helped me realise it had led to a life of realised opportunities. 

I didn't go to Spain. 

Sure I'll Give It Another Lash 

I want to use this blog to demonstrate natural use of Hiberno English, the English we use in Ireland (ahem, the best English in the world). To "give something a lash" is not to whip it, as you might automatically have thought. It means to try something, to "give it a go." 

In my final year of college, said boyfriend and I broke up. I decided I'd give Spain another go. It was 2005. For my birthday, my best friend gifted me a copy of "The Alchemist." As I lay on the beach in Andalucía, where the book is set and I'd decided to come to explore moving to, I knew I was in the right place. The following month, I came back with my Mum, Aunt and their friends to organise my new life in Spain. 

I got a job, quicky. I almost had my NIE, the Spanish foreigner identity number. All I needed to do was arrange accommodation. Then, I did my first shift at the restaurant. I could barely follow the Spanish the Andalucíans used. They have a special way of pronunciation in Southern Spain. It was almost time for Mum and her friends to go home. I was afraid I'd lose the job and end up stranded.

I didn't stay in Spain. 

When I think about it now, I laugh, surprised almost, at how much I let fear hold me back. 

23 Ad-dresses

Some people move around a lot, others have the same family home from childhood right into adulthood. My parents separated when I was 6. By the time I was 11, I'd moved house three times with Mum and around seven or eight times with Dad. Moving wasn't a big thing for me. As I got older, it became pretty natural. At one point, I realised I'd moved city, county or country, every two years over a period of eight or nine. Dundalk - Australia - Dundalk - China - Dundalk - Dublin - Dundalk - Dublin. Poland came next, but outside that bi-annual block. Other than my teenage home of 10 years, I have never lived anywhere longer than three. Interestingly enough, the years in my teenage home (which were not pleasant for the most part), I emulated in the 3-year home. 

 3rd Time's The Charm (and a content warning) 

In 2021, after six years cycling in and out of a narcissistically abusive relationship, I finally accepted I was slowly dying. Well, if I'm honest, it was less acceptance and more my body screaming at me. I was violently ill, looked nothing like myself (swollen, with scaly skin and a puffy, pale face). It's quite incredible how we repeat not only the behaviours and experiences we've lived in our youth, but also those of our adult lives. In 2019, the relationship had ended. I had held firm, bar one or two encounters, and not gone back. Then COVID hit and I'm not entirely sure how I ended up back there, but I did. There, and soon afterwards, locked down in his hometown, very soon to be more unwell than I had ever been in my life. When I read my diary from 2019, then look back on late 2021 into 2022, after I'd finally finished it fully, de-ja-vú wouldn't even be able to explain it. 

After leaving in late 2021, I decided there was never going to be a better time to do what I'd probably been meant to do since the first time I'd decided to stay in Ireland - I was going to move to Spain. But now I had a new dream - to live between Spain and Ireland. 

Home Free or Crazy? 

You know how they say when things are meant to happen, everything just falls into place? That's exactly what happened with my move. My sister had got married in a town I knew I wanted to live in the moment I hit it back in 2016, so I contacted her wedding planner for advice on places to look. She's Irish. She suggested I look at a little village on the coast a little before that place. The rest, as they say, is history. 

The first Facebook group I went into, I found an agent. Within 7 days, I had found my dream apartment, with the perfect rental fee, and had signed my contract - never having stepped foot in the place. Talk about having overcome my fear from all those years before. When I look out the window of my apartment, I feel home free. I'm not, yet. I'm still cleaning up the economic mess left in the wake of those six years, but my head and heart are recalibrated. To many, it might seem crazy to empty my shelves annually and move countries. To me, it's an indication that I'm finally doing exactly what I was meant to do - it just took me 20 years to get there. 

Regret or Reward?

On the day my sister chose her wedding dress, I told her I regretted not having gone to Spain during and after college. As we drove through a place called The Curragh, in Kildare, Ireland, she slowed the car slightly and looked at me out of the corner of her eye, 

"Yeah, but Christine, can you honestly say you have ever missed an opportunity since?" 

By then, I'd lived and worked on 5 continents, for 20 different companies with thousands of people from over 35 different cultures. No, I had not missed an opportunity since. Sometimes, it takes a person looking at your situation differently for you to realise its reality. 

I'm writing this with my 20-year-old self in mind. If you are reading and in a life position like the one I found myself in, you'll make the decision that's right for you at the time you make it. That may or may not become a regret for some period of your life, but eventually, you'll likely discover its reward. If this post helps you in any way to heed your own instincts and make the decision that's right for you, then it's served its purpose. 

As I sit under the moonrise on the evening before I fly home, shelves empty, heart full, I know I'm home free - free to roam, from home to home until such time as I decide I want to stay in one. 

If I ever do.