Pre-Ireland: Part 4 - What the Heck Am I Doing?

From the time I first submitted my visa application in November, I've been living a roller coaster of 3pm me, "Oh yes this is a great idea, moving to Ireland - I've always wanted to travel and I can't wait to meet all sorts of new people and see new places!" and 3am me, "What the fuck, Kathryn, you've never even left the US before you're probably going to get there and run out of money and take to the streets and literally be living out of your suitcase with no shelter."

I know it sounds silly, but the latter is definitely a fear of mine.

I have a lot of social anxiety, and it functions in a funny way for me: it's either not there at all, or it's life-cripplingly present. For example, I've slowly moved further and further south since I've moved from my first apartment in Clintonville several years ago. I now live downtown, and I still will go entirely out of my way to go to my favorite Giant Eagle or my favorite Get Go or my favorite Chase Bank branch or my favorite Good Will, all of which are near my first apartment. That's not to say I haven't forced myself to go to other locations of these businesses, but I get anxiety when I do so I just go to these original places since I know them so well. There have been times that I've been out of medication I've needed and I have a hard time getting myself to go to the pharmacy to pick it up for fear that there may not be parking available there. I've declined invites to parties I've really wanted to go to because I would only have known the host, and the thought of being in a room full of people who are friends while I'm in the corner alone terrifies me. I've grown afraid to go to new coffee shops by myself, because what if I get there and there's nowhere to sit and their WiFi is hard to connect to and what if there's a private event going on that I didn't know about and I end up in an awkward situation. That doesn't sound like a good trait to have when you're about to travel the world, right? Well - this quality about me - like so many others - exists only in polar opposite forms. An oxymoron, of sorts. When I'm in a place where I know nothing, and I have no comfort zone to revert back to, this anxiety completely dissipates. When I'm in Ireland, if I need food and my only option of getting it involves me going to a restaurant I've never been to, I will just go by myself and be fine. I know this because I've had similar experiences - like when I moved to Ann Arbor several summers ago and knew absolutely no one. I had no problem going to new places on my own - in fact, I found it incredibly exciting. I even met all sorts of awesome people because I started crashing parties with some guy I met, and some of those people I'm still friends with. Social Anxiety Kathryn DOES NOT CRASH PARTIES. But traveling Kathryn? For some reason, she eats that up. It's funny, now that I think of it, I'm pretty sure I'm one of the only people in the research program I participated in who was interested in meeting the locals. Everyone else preferred to hang out with one another, which was fine and I now wish I had done more of that, but it simply was not even in my periphery at the time.

So anyway, why am I so afraid this anxiety will overcome me in Ireland? I think it's important to keep the possibility in mind, but I think I am worrying myself over nothing. Even when I was down in New Orleans, I met several people at my hostel and a few locals even who I had no anxiety around - simply a sheer curiosity. I will forever be grateful that I just happened to work at a restaurant as my first job; first of all because I've turned it into a mini-career, and second of all because it forces me to interact with strangers. Even when I don't connect with someone at all, I know how to navigate around our differences because my income literally relies on my ability to do just that.

Which brings me to my next point - what if I get there and I run out of money? I literally am terrified that I will be living on the streets because I can't support myself, or that I'll spend all of my savings in the first few months by traveling to other places in Europe. But when I think about it even more - who cares if I blow my savings? This is what I've saved up for - travel. If I run out, I can just come back home early or even find a job there in Ireland. Plus, I'm resourceful when it comes to finding weird ways to make money. Several years ago, I was donating plasma twice a week (I still have the scar on my arm) and participating in random paid studies at OSU when I was low on cash and I had a brief affair with proofreading erotic literature (never again). And even still, if I run out of every penny in my savings, I've accumulated several thousand dollars in available credit that I haven't used - so there's no way I won't be able to buy a ticket back to the US if I find myself in this scenario. And even still further, ever since I was a child I've been frugal as all hell. I would save up every penny I got from babysitting and doing chores and birthday money - and I am still that way. I live a near-hermit lifestyle as is. I don't even order food to be delivered because I scoff at $2 delivery fees. So why am I so terrified? I don't know. I have all of these reasons to not be afraid.

But the final thing I am terrified of, and the one thing in which I can offer no solace to myself, is the prospect that I might just not enjoy traveling. I have literally never done anything like this in my entire life. I was born and raised in Ohio, and I lived in another state (a neighboring state, to boot) for 2 months, one time, in a program for which everything was already set up for me. I've always enjoyed short-term travel, and not being able to be in my home has never bothered me. But again - short-term travel. What if after 4 months I find myself desperately wishing I were in my 1 bedroom apartment in Columbus, OH, snuggled up with my cat and watching X-Files episodes one after another? What if I find myself wishing I were waiting to go into work at my relatively mediocre job that makes me miserable? I am a miserable person who enjoys being miserable - that thing I know for sure. I even have a hard time enjoying my favorite things for some reason - like foods and movies and wines and adventures - if I lack another person to share these things with. I can take no comfort in convincing myself that this won't happen to me, because I have no evidence that it won't.

But what I do know is my current life is not making me happy, and I think I'm ready to start being happy. And if I don't do this for myself, I will absolutely regret it.

I kind of can't wait to be sitting on the plane to Ireland, ready to shit my pants because my stomach is in a soup of butterflies and knots and piss-poor airport coffee, freaking the everloving fuck out. I can't wait to get off of the plane and look around and have absolutely no idea where I'm going.

I'll never forget the first time I had that feeling. I was 15 years old and visiting my sister in New York City. I had only been there twice before - once on a middle school field trip (doesn't count) and once to a conference at Colombia for the newspaper I wrote for in high school (half counts). Both times, the trips had been planned out for me from start to finish. But at the age of 15, I had saved up a few hundred dollars in babysitting money and bought my first ticket for myself ever - a train ticket from Pittsburgh to New York. My dad dropped me off at the station, and at that age I had very little knowledge of how these things worked. I navigated myself around what felt like the labyrinth of a station, to my little seat on the train. It was a long train ride - and I swear to this day that it took 15 hours (although realistically, 15 hours to a 15 year old is like 8 hours in adult time). When I finally got to NYC, I pulled out some directions my sister gave me - this was a time before every teenager had a smart phone - and found my way from Penn Station to Grand Central terminal, bought a metro pass, and navigated my way to my sister's place of work. I was so terrified - I was a young woman from Ohio farm country who had literally never even gone to a store by herself, in the middle of the busiest subway terminal in NYC, trying to figure out why there was two of every train (Uptown vs Downtown).

Little me in NYC eating at
an Ethiopian restaurant

By day 2, I was riding that subway on my own while my sister and brother and law were working, going to stores by myself and restaurants by myself and asking for directions and learning how to use a map. I was in awe, and that trip was one of the most empowering experiences I've ever had in my life. I went to Manhattan, I fell in love with Union Square, I sipped coffee and did a crossword in Central Park, went to some thrift shops in Brooklyn, and I think I even got on the wrong train once and ended up in the Bronx (it took me till day 3 or 4/this experience to figure out the two-of-every-train thing).

Seeing the Chelsea Hotel
was a must to 2008 Kathryn

And I loved every minute of this chaos.

So here's to several more, "WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING, ME?!" experiences that I'll have over these next 9 weeks, and here's to going anyway.