Ten years

Hubby realised this evening that we're ten years in Galway today. Ten whole years. When I think back, I'm pretty sure I figured we'd give it a go for 6 months, and then move back east. The innocence!! Those first few months were really tough. We'd moved because Hubby, the Boyfriend, had gotten a job here, but I didn't have one. I also had no car, no money, and didn't know a sinner. We were living next to a construction site - in fairness, in 2004 who wasn't??! - and the pile drivers started first thing in the morning and kept going ALL DAY. The mere sound of them now transports me back to that time, to how lonely I was.

Skip forward a couple of years and we're in Oughterard. Not jobless, not carless, but again, not knowing a sinner. Throw in a new baby with reflux. Throw in PND, and family on the wrong side of the country. When I look back, my god was it tough. I think loneliness must be one of the hardest things of all to cope with. Along with depression, it's a great unmentionable. No one wants to admit to being lonely, it feels like such a failing not to have connected with people around you. But we all have to start somewhere. It took me a long, loooong time to break into this town, partly due to the fact that I worked in the city so had little opportunity to meet people, but more due to my own inability to put myself out there. The ice didn't properly break until baby number 2 came along. But slowly, slowly, almost without my noticing, it did break.

Life is so much richer with good people in it. People you can laugh with, people you can cry with (occasionally at the same time), people you can rely on for a drop of milk, or to come to your rescue when there's a baby on the way and a toddler that needs looking after. People you can ring and say - 'I need help'. Those three words are so, so hard to say, but I think a sure sign that the barriers put in place by loneliness and depression are well and truly gone.

I absolutely love where I live, I wouldn't go back east now for love nor money. It's a beautiful area, close enough to Galway for work, but far enough away to be a community in it's own right. I've made some wonderful friends who I'd be lost without. I love that I'm still meeting new people, people I hope will become good friends.

Five minutes walk from my house. Stunning.
Ten years ago, if you'd told me about all the drama that was ahead of us - would I have gone through with it? I'd like to think yes, because all of that drama has brought me to where I am now, and right now, this evening, this feels like a really good place to be.

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