Five years of Ireland

I was originally going to write about my changed attitude and feelings about things that have been happening to me. I was going to write about how indifferent I have become to obstacles and excrements that life has been throwing at me. I was going to write how it seems not to bother me anymore, and how not getting that job that I interviewed for was not the end of the world. But.

Today is the fifth anniversary of my arrival in Ireland.

I had plans.

I was going to go to Dun Laoghaire for a dinner and copious amounts of red wine with a friend.

He cancelled on me few hours ago. Not feeling well or something of the general sort.

So instead of celebrating or at least commiserating with friends I'm just going to have another lonely Friday with some music perhaps, a movie maybe and a perspective of spending the next six weeks on intensive learning for my French exams.

I feel somewhat cheated. I feel like I felt on my 21st birthday - someone copied my debit card and wiped my account clean so I didn't have a penny for a month - cheated out of fun that I planned for and was looking forward to. No fun for the wicked, huh?

While I won't be celebrating much I can't help but to look back in retrospect at the five years that have passed. I have become such a dramatically different person I hardly recognise myself anymore. The person writing this post now is not the same person who had arrived at Dublin Airport in late August of 2005. Me and her have hardly anything in common. Sure I am wiser and more experienced, but without a doubt even more damaged, bitter and cynical. A part of me weeps for the innocence that was lost in the process of morphing from her into me, a part of me wishes I could take it all back, have a do-over. I would definitely do some things differently if I knew what was going to happen back then, I would save myself some of that pain and suffering, maybe rescue a scrap of that innocence and joie de vivre I lost. But there are no do-overs in life.

And so here I am, in a pretty much same spot in which I started, in a pretty similar situation, only changed irreversibly into someone else. And whether I like it or not, just like everybody else, I have no choice but to carry my burdens forward in time, uncomfortably aware of my past screw-ups and downs.

Yup. Keep calm and carry on.