When I went recently to a remote part of west Cork for a week, I expected to return at one with myself and the world in general, writes Róisín Ingle
I thought I'd be floating home on a tide of well-being, the kind that swells after serious self-nurturing and creative expression. Silly, silly me. I ended the seven days pretty much sick of the sight of myself and in the clutches of the biggest, baddest hangover this side of Skibbereen.
Nothing beats time spent alone in a rural retreat, the sea and mountains so close you can touch them, the sky an ever-changing oil painting. There is time to reflect. Time to write. Time to turn into even more of a slob than usual, not bothering to get dressed some days, and one memorable day not even getting out of bed except to use the bathroom. But I digress.
In the past I sat through two 10-day silent Vipassana retreats, rising at four a.m. to meditate. The difference with those spiritual holidays is that your activities are tightly scheduled, so you know what you are supposed to be doing every second. There are people serving you vegetarian feasts at meal-times, so not a minute is wasted thinking about what or when to eat. There are no diversions such as television or books or bottles of wine. You can't sneak out every five minutes to have conversations with friends about what they plan to have for lunch, just to avoid the real task at hand. With someone else in charge of my time - me - the rules were a little more ambiguous. That is, there weren't any rules. Not really.
My first mistake was not making a list before doing my week's shopping in Cork city centre. I had only 20 minutes before catching the bus to my remote destination and ran around like a contestant on Supermarket Sweep, grabbing random items - pink Cava, boil-in-the-bag salmon, Pot Noodle - as though the world was about to end. It meant that by day three I had run out of appropriate supplies and was forced to seek help from Mary, who was in charge of the magnificent house I was staying in. She kindly picked me up and drove me into Schull, which, it turns out, has the best convenience store in the whole of Ireland. They stock varieties of organic rice cakes I didn't even know existed. Their wine selection was impressive too. Which brings me to my second mistake.
Before departing Dublin I had asked a friend how many bottles of wine he thought I should pack to get the creative juices flowing. "Well," he pondered, "as it's you, I'd say one a day and three extra just in case." I was mortally offended. This was a week for clear thinking and clean writing, not getting sloshed and maudlin and wandering around in my pyjamas, feeling sorry for myself. Although, in the end, a teensy bit of my time was spent doing exactly that. OK, a hefty chunk. Oh OK, maybe half my time there was spent in this mode.
There were breakthrough moments even so, thanks to my understanding that in the sticks no-one can hear you scream. Following a fraught mobile phone conversation with the ex-husband wherein he told me a few home truths about the end of our relationship, I cracked open another bottle and found myself engaging in a spot of primal scream therapy. I hadn't let go like that since the day he told me he was going to leave. This was when the middle-of-nowhere nature of my location really came into its own. I screamed at the dark clouds. I yelled at the valley. I roared at the still waters.
Naturally I felt better after unleashing all that rage, at least until later when I spotted a rogue Post-it note stuck to the door alerting me to the fact that someone had called while I'd been in mid-primal episode. Oops.
When you are alone for a week in four-channel land, strange things happen. You start to think it's OK to have a drink at noon. You start to nod sagely at the contributors to Liveline. You look forward to the jaunty theme tune of The Afternoon Show. You sing sad songs loudly and have conversations with yourself, such as the following. Me: "Isn't that hilarious that some of that laundered money was found in a box of Daz." Me: "Oh my God! That IS hilarious. It's washing powder and the money is going to be LAUNDERED. Oh my God!" Scintillating stuff.
After a week alone with only Joe Duffy, The Afternoon Show crew and their psychic dog-healer-type person for company, I was thoroughly sick and tired of me. I was irritated by my all-consuming need to make up for the lack of company with constant grazing on yoghurt-covered rice cakes. I was sick of the way I woke in the middle of the night at the slightest noise, convinced that someone with evil intentions - I, psycho? - was lurking outside the bedroom window.
On the up side, I somehow managed to get all the work that I was trying to do done. On the down side, I need another week to recover. How does it go again? All by myself. Don't wanna be. Anymore.