Three

Some mornings, I wake up with a monster on my chest. The monster’s name is Despair, and it enjoys cutting off my breath and making my brain foggy. It’s the kind of monster whose favourite game is seeing how long it can keep me in bed, making my blood sluggish and dragging me back into the oblivion of sleep, then giving me anxious dreams.

I have taken to texting my friends updates about Despair. “Despair nowhere in sight today.” “Despair is back, let’s meet at the library because I need to get out of my house.”

The thing that no one told me about leaving my home country is that, even if it’s all you’ve ever wanted, it’s a hard process. When I moved to Santa Fe, I was lonely and questioned everything for several months after the move. This move, I am so much further from home and therefore it is much more difficult to retreat back to family for a quiet and love-filled weekend. I am also discovering numerous unexpected cultural nuances which are taking much longer to adjust to than I thought they would. I am not quite as lonely as I once was. I don’t feel as isolated. I have friends to hike with, or meet for a pint, or study with at the library, or visit in Dublin and take quiet beach trips with. Thank goodness for that.

Now Despair surfaces sometimes in the mornings when I remember how quickly my money is draining away, and how much difficulty I am having finding employment (even part-time, no qualifications, entry-level employment). If I could simply find something to do, somewhere to spend a few days of every week, knowing something was flowing in instead of everything flowing outward, I feel certain I could relax and Despair might lose its hold on me. It has been over two months of searching, and despite all of my experience in a variety of areas, no one wants me. It is extraordinarily dispiriting, and finding something to do would help me feel much more established here, with a firmer foothold. As it stands, if I can’t find something by October, I will have to leave Ireland. And the thought of that already, and how quickly it will get here, breaks my heart utterly.

I know that if I keep the faith and stick it out, I will be rewarded. But right now everything feels very bleak, and some days Despair looks like it’s winning. For right now, I’m still here, and Despair is a very small monster in the back of my brain. Hopefully it stays there, and I hear something encouraging soon enough.