Maybe Things Will Improve
Maybe Things Will Improve
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I wrote this a few months after moving to Barcelona. And I’m moving away from it now so it feels nice to reflect. Things are different now, but I the points I Was making here still ring through. I hope you enjoy it, and if you’ve been part of my life in Barcelona, it’s been a pleasure, my treasure.
I thought, hoped, that moving would fix everything. That being away from home would lessen the weight of these problems, the pieces of my life suddenly slotting into place. I thought it would be easy to fall in love with a place, a feeling, a person, once I was away from a place that I’ve always felt restricted, judged, trapped.
I can breathe here. That’s new and good. I can fucking breathe. I don’t have to worry about what the people I care about think about me, because most of them aren’t here. Some of them are, of course, but the ones that are don’t look at me through a lens that’s exclusive to Ireland.
It’s funny. No matter where you are, no matter what you’re doing, the same patterns tend to repeat. It’s strange but it’s not surprising either. It’s happened before and it will happen again. Build a new one. It’ll take weeks, but you know you can do it. You’ve done it before, sure. This is the pattern.
And the worst part is, you know this. You can intellectually understand. But it doesn’t prevent the behaviour, this knowledge. The urge to act is almost genetic, beyond control, really. So you know what you’re doing will end in failure and yet you can’t stop yourself from doing it. A compulsion, genetic or divine, who knows. It’s a dance, and despite its inevitable decline to disappointment, it’s quite sweet. Being like this, unable to be another way. Being yourself despite the heartache that comes with it. There’s poetry in that. And that isn’t nothing.
Maybe things will improve. Maybe the real issue is that you expect your life to change overnight, with immediate effect, as if it’s some sort of utility you can switch on and off. Really, and I know you know this, you have to wait. There’s a reason patience is a virtue. Because it’s easy to want results now. It’s much harder to wait for them. To trust the process, to trust yourself. To take losses again and again until the losses pile up enough to resemble something akin to success.
That’s harder than overnight brilliance, it’s decade-long disappointment with a satisfying conclusion. Immediate results take away the risk of long-term failure. And so, when it comes to happiness in your life, you hope for overnight results because you don’t really have patience. You can’t wait your turn while you see everyone else around you getting on and being happy. It kills you. You see them on the horizon, so far ahead that you can almost no longer see them. And you wonder; why do I have to wait? Why must I be patient? Why can’t it just happen now, like it has for them?
I moved here because I was impatient. I know that. Being happy at home was taking too long. So, I figured that if I moved somewhere new it might jumpstart my life. Happiness might come more willingly. It might not recognise me here and therefore be more forthcoming, more willing to give me a try. See me in this new light, light that bends differently at home.
But it doesn’t work this way. I repeat the same patterns here as anywhere. I work sometimes, and am lazy other times, spending more time promoting the work than I do doing the work. And then I get frustrated when things don’t go my way. I drink, I smoke, I fuck, I self-pity. And then, at the bottom of this spiral, I resolve, I harden over, I vow to continue.
In a sense, the patterns are more defined because they aren’t inhibited by a fear of judgement. There’s nobody here who I feel I need to answer to, to explain myself to. I have become more myself here, and that’s good in ways, but it also highlights the parts of me that need work. The neediness, desperation, fragility. These characteristics are far more prominent, jutting out of my life like a great rocks from the surface of the ocean. Seeing them clearly is good. We can’t aim at things we can’t see. So at least there’s that. At least I can see the parts that need work, that need time.
But I need patience. Time demands patience. And so, while I’m here, away from the pressure of being the person I should be, I can be the person I am. And as I am more me, I can chip away at the work. Not looking at the mountain of work ahead of me, but standing here and taking it piece by piece until there’s no longer a mound. It might take weeks, months, years, decades. I know this, and I have the time, and I want to be better. So I have all the time in the world to do this. I have all the time I need to be who I am.