On Running Away, In Two Acts
Act 1: When I was very young, I believe under 10, I decided I was going to run away. I didn’t like my life, and I knew there had to be more out there than what I was experiencing at home. I needed to become the next Britney Spears, and that wasn’t going to happen in my basement. This story actually has nothing to do with my dad, as it was my mom who talked me out of it. Rather, she budgeted me out of it. Mom works in finance and is brilliant with crunching numbers and maintaining budgets. When I told her that I was going to run away, my first mistake, she sat me down. It’s OK if I run away if that’s what I feel is best, she told me, but she was just concerned about my budget. Had I thought through the cost of running away? She asked me how much money I had, where I was thinking of going, how much it would cost to get there, and so on. Needless to say, I quickly learned that my $20 was not going to get me very far, and I gave up on my plan and stayed home. Mom doesn’t remember this story, but it’s one of the few from my childhood that my weird memory hasn’t forgotten or distorted.
Act 2: When I was 25, I moved to Ireland. I had decided to go back to school to pursue a Master’s degree, and as I was choosing schools, I knew I wanted two things. First, I wanted to be in a new place. I needed something completely new to me. That urge to get out and experience the world differently did not go away when I didn’t run away as a child. Second, I wanted a degree that would allow me to pursue similar research to that which I had done in my undergrad, mainly focusing on underrepresented artist groups and challenging who gets to determine which artwork has value and why. I ended up with 4 schools to choose from, one in New York City, one in Boulder, Colorado, one in Paris, France and one in Dublin, Ireland. It was a really difficult decision for me. The program at Boulder probably would have allowed for the most Ivory tower approved effort to my second goal. But when I went for a visit, many of the students I met with, though incredibly kind, were also incredibly stressed, and when I asked them a question as simple as if there were groups that would take me for hikes in the mountains, their answer was something along the lines of, “I’m sure there are, but I don’t have time for any extracurriculars, so I’ve never done it.” Here they were, at the foot of the Rocky Mountains, and they’d never gone for a hike because they were so stressed with school? The program was great, the professors were great, the financial aid would have been great; there was a clear path to greatness in a traditional academic sense there, but at what expense to my mental health? Despite there being one person in that student group who pulled me aside and assured me life didn’t have to be as stressful as the others were making it out to be, I decided it wasn’t for me.
The school in New York was actually a fashion business school, and I had picked it more as a backup. I had worked in retail for some time, and I figured I could study visual merchandising as something tangentially related to my aforementioned goals.
The next school was in Paris, my absolute favorite place. The first time I was ever on a plane, it was to go to Paris at the age of 16, and it was where I studied abroad in college. Why wouldn’t I want to return there, brush up on my French, build the life I had gotten a taste of all those years ago? I used to say in high school that my ultimate dream was to live on a park bench in Paris and just make art because nothing in my life at that time seemed to matter more than being in Paris and painting. Unfortunately, the program wasn’t quite what I was looking for, as I was concerned the program would pigeonhole me into a career I wasn’t certain I would be passionate about.
That left Ireland. I remember the day I found the program I would eventually complete at Trinity. I had long been ignoring a voice inside of me saying to go to Ireland, and when I happened across the program as I began researching schools abroad, that voice became a shout. I went through the entire school selection process with that voice screaming at me to go to Ireland, and in the end, the voice won. Here I am almost 4 years later, trying once again to figure out ways to stay longer (marriage anyone?). I commissioned a piece of art from my friend in 2021 to celebrate wanting to stay a bit longer and build a life in Dublin. She gave me a few questions to consider, and I turned it into a journal prompt. Here is my response to her third question, why do you love living in Ireland:
Honestly, this is complex. On the surface, I enjoy the people, and even though the city isn’t the most beautiful I’ve lived in, I do find it has everything I need. Ireland as a country is a really interesting place to live because the history is so complex and fascinating, and I feel the country presently is going through so much that it feels like a significant time to be here.
Going deeper, I don’t know if I love being here so much as I love who I am being here. Dublin has given me a chance to step into myself and build a future for myself. I’ve done a lot of excavating during Covid and just facing fears and addressing habits and behaviors that no longer serve me. I think I kind of ran away to Ireland because I thought it’d be light and easy and fun, and it would help me get away from pain and baggage I’d been avoiding. But my baggage safely made the flight, and I think Covid was the wall I hit that meant everything I’d run away from caught up with me.
I picked Dublin for many reasons, but one of them I’ve never said aloud is I came here for my dad. He was so proud of his Irish heritage (misguided as most Irish Americans are), but he had never traveled here, and I know it had been on his bucket list. I think, if I’m being honest with myself, a big part of coming here was to feel connected to him in some way. The problem was, I was also actively avoiding the pain I felt over losing him. In the past year, as I’ve finally let myself feel the full weight of my loss, I actually also finally feel the connection I’ve wanted. And that comes from the emotional work I’ve done, not the place itself, yet in doing the work I can actually allow myself to imagine what it’d be like to share this experience with him, if that makes sense. There’s a presence in his absence, and I’ve finally let that in. And I love all of the circumstances that have led me to this moment, including Dublin.
So I don’t know if Dublin will be forever, and I don’t know if Ireland will be either. But this season of stepping into myself will forever be linked to Dublin, and I love the city for it. It makes me want to build lasting relationships, find new restaurants to try, work in a fulfilling career, do all of that and more, here. And I’m fortunate enough to have all of those experiences possible/already existing.
That little girl who wanted to run away because she dreamed of something different got her wish but learned that she didn’t have to give up everything for her adventure. And the scared young woman who was struggling to navigate adulthood when she first moved to Dublin discovered that running away can only get you so far, and it’s not so bad to feel your pain as you move through new seasons of your life. My journey to Dublin will always be linked to the pain of losing my dad and a quest to feel connected to him through a dream he never got to live out for himself. My future, wherever I may go next, will be rooted in the knowledge that I can always begin again, but that doesn’t have to mean forsaking who I was before.