On a hard, bright afternoon in the middle of December, I emptied my East Wall apartment of all my belongings. I carried bag upon bag downstairs and loaded them into the car parked outside, readying myself mentally for my departure.
These were not compact suitcases of beautifully folded underwear and organised personal effects; they were bulky, unsightly shopping bags full of cake tins, shoes, poetry anthologies, novels and college notes that I cannot bring myself to throw away, even now. These bags were unwieldy. Travel-friendly, they were not.
My packing effort had begun in an organised fashion a week before, but as my departure date came at me slantwise, taking me unawares, bags were packed pell-mell, balled socks shoved into my teapot, shoes all thrown into a black plastic bin bag. I was surprised by the volume of belongings that had accumulated about me in my 18 months in that apartment.
By the time I had finished bringing down everything, I was stripped down to my T-shirt and sweating, despite the cold, and my belongings filled every inch of space in the back of the car, a fold-up desk chair and the trailing wires of buried speakers crowning the mountain of stacked bags.
Between finishing my degree in May and that day in December, I had waved goodbye to countless friends who were jetting off to France, Korea, Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States, indefinitely for the most part, and now I was leaving too, one of the last to do so. I studied French and English literature, majoring in French in my final year, so perhaps it is not surprising that many of my friends left for France. I, on the other hand, stayed for as long as I could.
As a student I lived in Paris for a year and China for two months and had the good fortune to travel to many other countries besides during my lifetime. I wanted to try to stay in Dublin, for travelling has made me see it is a majestic city that surprises.
And so I applied for jobs and internships and the weeks passed. I kept sending out applications. As the summer wore on, my standards dropped and my panic grew.
In September, I was offered a job in a marketing company and I grasped at it like a drowning man. It was an underpaid, unchallenging position that involved endless, repetitive work on uninspiring topics.
I resigned after two months, and decided to leave Dublin. I had options: friends in Paris, New York, London and Seoul; I speak French; I have taught English in the past... I decided to go home. Not to America, not to France, but home to Kerry.
The car full of bags outside my apartment on that cold, December afternoon was my mother's and I was not heading to the airport, like so many of my peers, but to my family home in the countryside. I did not want to leave Ireland and so I retreated instead to the house I grew up in.
For many years, I have written articles and short stories when I’ve had time. I can imagine no greater achievement than making a career of writing. Soon after my return home, I established a routine of rising at 6am to write each day before the house came to life for the school rush. My time at home would give me the opportunity to hone my writing and build up a portfolio for applying for a master’s degree.
It is a choice I doubt often, a choice that seems like folly sometimes, but I do not regret it.
Where I will be in six months or a year, I do not know. Perhaps I will have to emigrate. For now though, I am in Kerry and I am writing and I am hopeful, cautiously, desperately, necessarily hopeful.
