Woulda Coulda Shoulda

What kills me about being here is that I so easily could not have been here. At any given point during a period where I’m adjusting to change, I find myself thinking about all the things I could have—or should have—done instead of being so stupid as to put myself in the current situation.

The situation being that I have moved to Ireland. It’s completely crazy. It’s even crazier for me to have moved to Dublin, a world capital, especially as I truly believe I am a small-town girl at heart and city living, while exciting and nice to imagine myself doing, is not exactly comfortable. It’s almost psychotic for me to have moved here for a full year, and it’s absolutely barking mad of me to have enrolled in a fairly useless master’s program at one of the world’s toughest universities.

And so, I find myself creating little scenarios for myself that include some of the benefits of my nutty situation and none of the flaws. In Galway, I found myself thinking that the perfect way to still have been “my exotic friend Katie” would have been to take a short trip to Ireland, in which I packed light and lived rough and slept on couches, for all of about two weeks before returning to my home.

It sounds perfect. I’d still get to see Ireland, less pressure, more excitement, no schoolwork, no moving, and infinitely less luggage. It would be so easy, so easy!

But then I think, where is this ‘home’ I’m returning to? I can’t live with my parents in this scenario, as I would have been job-hunting all summer with the intent to move to some flourishing publishing metropolis where I would work in an unlit basement office slaving over unspeakably horrible manuscripts. I wouldn’t have the money to travel anywhere with that kind of job, let alone another country. And most of all, I am certainly not exotic. The premise is totally flawed.

(This line of thinking does, however, ignore the fact that I don’t have the money to be here, not really. I might have money in my bank account, but I am actually $45,000 in debt, thanks to my non-EU status and the lack of fellowships for students in taught programs.)

Then I start to think again (oh boy) and decide that what I could have done was go to school in Boston. I’d still have loans, but they’d probably be less, and I would get to teach and live in an actual flourishing publishing metropolis. I’d have a two-year master’s under my belt from a pretty respected school, and someday, I could get a good job and revisit Ireland as a two-week tourist.

But that’s no good either. Moving to Boston has its advantages, of course, such as being able to load all of my things into a U-Haul and settle down for the long haul in my own apartment, all with the help of my self-sacrificing mother, who had already promised to drive down with me.

I think the flaws of the Boston scenario can best be summed up by saying that I would have to drive the U-Haul into Boston (Jesus, I’m breaking out into a mild panic attack even now, four thousand miles away), but for those of you unfamiliar with the tenth level of Dante’s hell that is the I-95 near Boston, let me give more relevant examples.

The program is longer than the one at Trinity, which means more permanence, but also means more commitment. If there’s one thing I hate in combination with change, it’s commitment (which is possibly why I’m still so glaringly single). Boston is larger than Dublin, and also scarier because of the Red Sox fans (as much as I love them). Rent would be more expensive, and did I really want to live in Boston? I’d have to get a job right away to afford the rent, and the possibility of working a job while trying to learn two languages and master the nuances of critical theory was not at all appealing.

But then I start to wonder why I’m not staying in Galway, and that’s a much harder question to answer. Yes, it would be moving still, but the programs were shorter than Boston’s and rent is somewhat cheaper. I love this city, I have a really super friend here, and I know I’d make more easily with the type of school Galway is.

I suppose the real reason Galway wouldn’t do is because it’s too easy. I could fall right back into life here, no problem—well, with only the tiny, frustrating problems of how to get the dryer to work and how to work the hot water heater. Moving to Galway, in a way, would be like staying in Buffalo, in the way that it would be just settling back into a place that felt like home in between visits to my family in California.

Right now, though, that doesn’t feel like a good enough answer. I guess I’ll have to wait until I get to Dublin and see what kind of perspective that gives me.