Sorry I'm Late.

I apologize to Smythe for my tardiness. And an existential crisis.

July 17, 2023

Dear Smythe,

I’m sorry it has been so long since my last letter. I’ve tried to sit down and write a dozen times. I haven’t even managed to get to my desk, much less pen a word to you.

It’s been one of the harder weeks. A heaviness sits on me and makes it difficult to breathe; anxiety forces me to move restlessly, though all I can bear to do is lie down. I’ve cancelled calls and meet-ups with friends because even speaking feels too exhausting. The symptoms of an old friend called Melancholy seem to be crawling back in despite my best efforts. I’ve been hunting for a reason for this, and I can’t find one. I have wondered if it is the dreary, chilly summer – I feel I have been cheated of the sun I lusted after through a long Irish winter.

I have everything I need – and want. I have found my true home here. I have my passion, my writing. I have real and reliable friends. I feel like I’ve cracked the code in Dublin, and I can properly settle down. I wonder if that’s the problem. Recently I have caught myself looking out the window when I write and thinking: is this it?

It feels too simple. When Dublin was a dream, I had to work for it. When I finally moved here, it was a shock. I didn’t know how to get around; I didn’t understand the social norms much less have any friends. I didn’t even own a raincoat and this is one of the wettest places in the world. All I possessed were a couple of (heavy) suitcases and tremendous excitement about the unknown. Now I’ve settled down, and it feels easy to be here, and it doesn’t feel like enough.

I can’t bear the feeling of stagnancy. Or of commitment. Wherever I am, I want more. Recently, I haven’t been able to get Australia out of my mind; it’s warm and sunny and about as far away from everything I’ve ever known as I could possibly get. Very appealing. But I know after a year or two there, I’d tire of it too. I’d get a job, make friends, go surfing, regain my normal skin tone, think my life was just about perfect, and then one day I’d wake up and say again: is this it? I have wondered if what might keep me the happiest the longest would be getting kidnapped and blindfolded and dropped without a single possession somewhere in the middle of Asia and figuring out how to survive. I wouldn’t be bored.

But it’s not really about boredom. I have this terror – recently it’s been keeping me up at night – that I’ll die without having seen everything in the world I want to. My grandparents went on safari in Kenya, and I want to retrace their steps. My father has always wanted to go to the beaches in Normandy, and I want to go for him. For myself, I want to dance in the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg; I want to see Uluru in the Northern Territory; I want to touch the South Pole and be awed by the Northern Lights at the other end of the globe. Each moment I spend at home – yes, Ireland is home – is a moment I lose before my death. It’s a moment I won’t get back. I’m so afraid of wasting time.

I can’t shake this urgency. But I also I can’t shake my worry that the urgency isn’t the real problem, that in fact I am trying to run away from something inside of myself and I don’t know what that is.

I was born with a hole in my heart. The doctor told my parents if they didn’t operate on me immediately, I would die. My mother was beside herself. My father took me to a second doctor who told them something completely different. “She’ll be fine,” he said. “It will heal on its own.” So I never had the operation, didn’t drop dead, and ended up living a normal, healthy life. Still, I’m not so sure the hole healed. I wonder if that’s what I’ve been trying to fill all this time.

The fact is matter how far I go, what language I speak, how hot the temperature is, or what the food is made of – every morning, I’ll still have to wake up and face myself. I know I need to see the world, but I know also that the farthest ends of the earth won’t answer the question that burns the aperture into my chest.

Leonard Cohen said, “There is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.” I think for now, I’ll let the hole be. I’ll let that light get in. That might be all the sunshine I need for my Irish summer.

It’s good to be home.

Love,

Marguerite