Black Dogs

For a while, I’ve wanted to write a little on this subject.

The past 8 years, since we moved to Spain in 2016, has exceeded all our expectations. Our original plan had been to have a year of adventure in Spain, with no further ideas beyond those first 12 months. Spain, unexpectedly, opened up opportunities that brought with them a whole new lease of life. The country and its people have been generous to a fault, kind, warm-hearted, optimistic, encouraging and we feel part of this enormous yet intimate family. Connection and that feeling of belonging are intangibles, but they exist and they bring a rich and deep dimension to life.

So, it is surprising that both Andrew and I still have periods where we are visited by the black dogs (of depression and anxiety). Well, I say it is surprising but why should it be? Life, wherever it may be, has challenges and it would be both naive and foolish to believe that, simply because we live in a stunningly beautiful place, the toll of life doesn’t sometimes get the better of us. We work hard, and we still have to pay taxes and fees associated with being self-employed in Spain; we miss family; we have to pay bills and deal with problems that might arise in the house. These everyday things can be triggers, but more often than not the dark clouds appear out of nowhere and for no reason. Andrew and I are well attuned to each others moods, given that we live and work with each other all day, every day. I barely have to mention that I have a gloom, as Andrew is usually one step ahead of me and he can sense that I am not having a good day. I, too, can tell when Andrew is anxious or stressed about something and in many cases it is best for us to have a few hours of peace and quiet until we feel ready to say what it is that is causing this momentary lapse.

It often feels self-indulgent to be miserable when we live in such a gorgeous place and we often write frequently in this blog about our adventures, the places we visit, the enviable life we lead, but I think it is equally important to stress that no life is perfect. We are lucky that our time is our own, more or less. I shudder when I consider how much time in my life was spent in soul-destroying jobs that required the daily commute to sit in characterless offices doing something that was a means to an end and far from fulfilling. How many of us spend so much our lives doing something out of necessity, to pay bills and keep a roof over our heads, without realising that there are so many other opportunities out there to be enjoyed if we can only afford to take a risk.

I always found it a paradox that we spend the first 18 years of our lives going through an education system to prepare us for adult life, yet during the years from 16 - 18 we start to limit our options, narrowing down the subjects we study with a view to focusing on one topic at degree level and yet many of us have no idea what we might want to do when we ‘grow up’! The choices we make through a series of exams forge a path for an unknown future. At school, our ‘careers’ room was lined with posters advertising a life in Law, Surveying, Medicine, Engineering….Looking back, I wanted to be an actor, director or set designer but there was no-one who could sensibly advise on the best route into these careers. When I was aged around 13 or 14, I decided that I might like to be an architect and our careers advisor told me that I would need to have Physics ‘O’ level in order to be accepted onto an architecture degree course. Try as I might, I could not pass Physics ‘O’ level; in fact, over 3 attempts my grade got worse and I ended up with a ‘U’ mark - ungraded because it was SO bad. As a result, my dreams of becoming an architect were, at that moment, dashed on the rocks of incomprehensible physics, a subject I still loathe to this day. It later transpired that physics was not needed at all; an ‘O’ level exam pass in Maths was sufficient. That didn’t help me, as I had to reassess my entire career path based on shitty physics and my inability to give a toss about forces, motion and balances and other ghastliness. Mind you, I did eventually get my degree in Architecture, but it’s probably a good thing that I was never trusted with structural engineering.

I am digressing a lot here, but sometimes it helps to understand how and why we find ourselves in places that we did not choose. I recently read Charles Spencer’s book, ‘A Very Private School’, in which he recounts his horrific experiences of childhood at a private prep school. Andrew and I both went to prep schools, Andrew when we has aged only 6 and I when I was 9. We had no say in where we went to school, as this decision is nearly always taken by our parents; I suppose our only protest when we are that age is to be demonstrably unhappy, but that doesn’t work as well when you are shunted off for 12 weeks at a time with little exposure to your own family. In his book, Charles Spencer hits the nail on the head when he talks about the sense of abandonment associated with being sent to boarding school. His reasoning was that he must have been very bad to have been sent away, so rather than make things worse by telling his family he was having a torrid time, he just kept quiet. I still can’t quite believe that in the five years I spent at senior boarding school in Northern Ireland, my parents never visited the school; not once. They didn’t come to Speech Day (the annual showing-off of the school for parents), my performances in plays, any prize-givings or even to collect me at the end of term. I flew back and forth between Belfast and London Heathrow. Neither Andrew nor I are looking for sympathy; we are just explaining that we had little choice and these decisions made for us resulted in our finding ourselves on paths in life not always of our own making.

Where am I going with this? It is obvious that our life experiences can have a huge impact on our mental health. My father would have held no truck with talk about mental health, given that he forged his own path as a pilot in the RAF through sheer determination. However, he was a man with a lot of his own baggage! He left home as soon as he could, barely contacted any member of his family at all throughout his life and had nothing whatsoever to do with his father. When my father died, I discovered that one of his brothers (he had two brothers and 2 sisters) was still alive and this brother, my uncle, had not seen me since I was 2 years old! To cut the story short, Andrew and I had a similar educational upbringing, and we both ended up doing jobs to pay bills. It was when we were both reaching the end of our tethers in career cul-de-sacs that we took the steps to head off for an adventure before it was too late. It was this that lead to us moving to Spain for a new life and a new lease of life.

However, you can pack up your belongings in a van and leave behind that dead-end job and the hefty bills and head to a new country, new language, new culture and new opportunities but you can’t so easily eliminate your own history and the endless good and bad ingredients that have been thrown into the recipe that produces you.

Our move to Spain was, and remains, the best thing we have done. It is no exaggeration to say that it changed our lives for the better in every possible way. It has brought us new opportunities, new friends, an extended family, excitement, adventure, experiences we can share and memories we can build on. We love life here and we cannot see us ever returning to the lives we led before; in fact, I am not sure that former life even exists for us any more. Spain has given us something unexpected and thrilling: chances to take the positives from our often drudge-filled past lives and turn them into something positive and immensely fulfilling. But, despite our immense good fortune, we can’t always escape the indelible marks left by a previous life: feelings of lack of self-worth; worries surrounding financial security; the helpless frustrations of being trapped in a soulless job; wrong decisions made. Spain makes our lives far better and more complete and gradually past travails become less significant but there is that old adage that you can’t run away from your problems. Life presents challenges wherever you are but finally we are following a route that we have chosen and continue to choose, and one that was not determined by other people or circumstances. We all bear signs of damage created by the past, to a lesser or greater extent, and even when you take such a positive step as we took, there are times when you can’t avoid the old voice in your head still telling you that you will never pass Physics ‘O’ level.