I left Ireland because of, and in spite of, love.
There was no grim necessity to provide for loved ones or a pursuit of faraway streets paved with gold. Rather, there was a wonderful man with whom I had pledged to spend the rest of my life. He was from Texas and we agreed we should live there for a while.
Any time I thought about leaving my (albeit battered and bruised) country and my family and friends in Dublin, the tears would flow endlessly. As my departure time approached, I felt like a spectator watching the life I had built be rented, sold, stored and dispersed for a new life in a place to which I didn’t want to move.
The reasons we leave are varied and many, but the result is often the same. To go, whether forcibly or of your own volition, is a wrench. Adrift in a strange land, I immediately decided everything in Texas was wrong - the food, the climate, the television, the insects, the attitude to guns - all collectively appalling.
Fractured from all that was familiar and reassuring, instead of soaring, I felt like my wings were broken. And all the while, people wished me a good day, with all the sincerity of a pageant queen.
The tinted glasses with which I wistfully gazed at Ireland were more crimson than rose. I yearned for the soft, inoffensive weather. My mum’s cooking. My dad’s special sandwiches. Glasses of Guinness and blackcurrant by the crackle and smell of a real peat fire. The glorious vividness of a rapeseed field in May. Pointless nights spent laughing with dear friends. Fish and chips.
But, in time, each trip home brought an unperceivable shift in perspective. I slowly started to miss the neighbourliness of our Texan friends. Nobody said hello on the streets of Dublin. Instead, they averted their eyes.
Typical Irish idiosyncrasies, once natural, were starting to feel strange. While I knew that I would never belong to Texas, I felt like my Irishness was dissolving as the months and years passed. It upset me.
Whether we like it or not, we all crave a sense of belonging and a move across the globe can have a seismic impact on that. It’s not so much about settling in a new home in a new country - well, it is, but it’s also about settling into the new person that is created by that move.
You don’t come from where you live and you don’t live where you come from. Just as I start to worry about losing everything that makes me Irish, I hear that familiar accent and I know. These creative, gregarious, soulful, emotional lunatics - these are my people. I belong with them. We will return, of this I am sure. But in the meantime, what’s so wrong about wishing someone a good day, even if I don’t mean it?
This article was received as an entry into the Generation Emgiration “Ireland and Me” competition. For a chance to win a hamper of Irish goodies, email your piece about your relationship with the old country in under 500 words, with a pic, before this Friday December 5th to emigration@irishtimes.com.
