the great dip

Today marks the 2-year anniversary of the day I landed in England, fresh off the boat and newly wed and ready for a big old adventure, feeling invincible, capable of tackling ALL THE THINGS.

I took the bloody bull by the horns, alright, but I was foolish in thinking the bull wouldn’t retaliate. And I especially didn’t expect it to stubbornly fight its corner for two whole years.

When I die, if they make a nice colourful graph of my life, these will be known as the abject years, a great dip where it all went pear-shaped and tits up and everything I thought I knew about myself was turned upside down and examined, like some sort of god damn airport security line; my baggage searched with a fine toothed comb and stuff I thought was innocuous and neatly packed in a transparent and resealable bag turned out to be explosive and suddenly I’m the woman being escorted to airport jail, shouting: “I swear someone else put that there, Mr. Security Man. It’s not my stuff. It wasn’t me. I swear it’s not mine.”

It turns out the shit is mine and mine alone.

Here’s a map to illustrate my amateur Paint skills and my point.

And my point is this.

There comes a time in most people’s’ lives called the “cold, hard look”, when, as the term implies, you stop and have a good think about who you are and what you’ve done, missy. And I’m not talking about the fantasy version of yourself. I’m talking about peeking behind the curtain and seeing a weird-looking Technicolor wizard running the show, pointing fingers at everyone and everything else, protecting you from having to take the “cold, hard look”.

Because the trite truth about the “cold, hard look” is that it comes with “cold, hard work”, which is about as fun as a poke in the eye. Actually, fuck it, I’ll take the poke in the eye, thank you very much.

Now you’re probably thinking, what the hell is she going on about? Don’t worry, kids. It’s not like I’m an addict or anything. Or like I’ve tortured kittens or insulted Mother Theresa.

No, no. Nothing of the sort. I’m just really fucking negative, is all.  And it’s never been so blatantly apparent as it has in the past 2 years, in the land of “Chin up, mustn’t grumble, carry on” and other sickeningly positive idioms.

“One who has a stiff upper lip displays fortitude in the face of adversity, or exercises great self-restraint in the expression of emotion.”

Stiff upper lip, I have not. More like limp upper lip. My whole world is governed by emotions, most of which, I’m afraid to say, are rather negative.

So yes, the past two years have been hard because, well, moving to another country is really fucking hard. But moving to a new country and failing to see anything positive in any given moment is really, really, really fucking hard.

So it’s time for the slow incline (refer to graph). Hark, a shift is coming! It’s barely perceptible on a day-to-day basis but, as you can see, in the long run we are heading for some serious golden years.

In two years, I want to say “Today marks the 2-year anniversary of the day I decided it was time to sort my shit out. And I did.”

Day One. Here we go. I can already feel my upper lip stiffening.