You can stop this madness now or how my new life in the sun went horribly wrong

In 2007 the breakup of a long-term relationship forced me to seriously evaluate what I was doing with my life and where I was going, if anywhere. No better place than my home city of Belfast, I thought, to ground myself and take stock, so I packed my bags and walked away from an unhappy existence in Madrid. Finally, I was heading somewhere where I could feel safe and welcome: Ireland.

 I clearly recall that I arrived in Belfast on the first of February, which is also the first day of spring in the Celtic calendar, Saint Brigid’s day. The next day the weather was bitterly cold, but the sun shone brightly, brightly enough to sharpen the silhouettes of trees and branches against the pale blue sky and beaming sun. To me, it felt like nature was celebrating my freedom to be me again. Now, all I had to do was work hard to restore my house, which had been rented out while I was away, to some standard of acceptability.

I had left Belfast eight years previously with a plan to seek new challenges in the final years of my youth. That plan became reality and took me far from my street of terraced houses in Belfast and the nearby cemetery, where I often went for a run. The plan had taken me to Cuba, Spain, and Italy. It was an exciting lifestyle that went on for much longer than I had planned; fortunately, or unfortunately it all ended quite suddenly with the discovery that my partner had been serially cheating on me. The pain of betrayal seemed unbearable at the time and it brought my life to a standstill. Nothing seemed to be what I had believed it to be and there were multiple occasions when I even questioned my own existence. In all, it took me nearly two years to walk away… two wasted years.

Once I started painting and redecorating my home, nothing would stop me, not even a bout of bronchitis. Four rooms needed to be completely redecorated, so with a paintbrush in hand I coughed and spluttered my way from one room to the next, almost killing myself in the process. I met my target within eight days and was finally able to feel that I had reclaimed my little house when the dreadful purple and lime green colours were swallowed up by more subtle, if less imaginative colours. My tenant had obviously not read the part of the contract that forbade redecoration without the owner’s consent.

February gave way to March and by then, I had settled down into my new-old life. I made some new friends and reestablished contact with old ones. I’d applied for jobs and had a couple of interviews, convincing me that there was a chance that I could make a dignified life for myself here, in Belfast. By the summer, I had two jobs: one in the tourism information office and the other teaching a few classes in the university. It was great to be single and I really savoured the freedom of being an independent woman again.

Not everything was great. Restoring the house and maintaining it was expensive, too expensive for me even with my two jobs, so I rented one of the rooms out. Katie, an American post graduate student stayed for about three months while she was doing some research at the university. After her came Patrick, a semi-skilled Czech worker, who had a job in one of the shops in the town centre. From time to time, I got him to do some work around the house in exchange for a reduction in his rent. In the end neither Patrick nor Katie worked out for me for reasons that I won’t discuss here. Suffice to say that as time passed, I was becoming increasingly disappointed with my life in Belfast.

For a start, the weather was getting me down, especially in summer. Even though the calendar moved from April to May and onward to June, July and August, for me the seasons barely changed. It seemed to be cold and chilly almost every day, so it was rare that I ever wore any summer clothes, and certainly not the attire that I had brought back from Cuba and Spain. None of my sandals were worn in the so-called summer months, meaning that they weren’t worn at all. Umbrellas and kagouls were an ongoing precaution against the downpours and ever chilly winds. This was not how I had envisioned spending my twilight years: shivering at home in July and August…

When I look back on those years, I see now that I this was where I took a wrong turning. I regret that I let the weather impact my mood so much. Belfast is not the Costa Brava, but it does have many inviting attractions, cultural, musical, stunning landscapes, and others. In my despair at the lack of sunshine and warmth, I overlooked these attractions and formulated an escape plan. That is when I decided to move back to Spain, to Tarragona this time, where I’d been happy as a twenty something, living in the old quarter of the town learning a new language and going to beach parties. Back then, it was an adventure that I threw myself into wholeheartedly and I loved all of it. The plan I’d drawn up for my new life in Tarragona involved renting a flat in the old quarter and getting a part-time job as an English language teacher in one of the multiple academies dotted throughout the city. In my free time, I would continue writing creatively and brush up on my Spanish.

I set the wheels in motion and I arrived with several suitcases in Barcelona airport in mid-August, where I was picked up by two friends who kindly took me to their home in Tarragona. The following morning, I began searching for a flat. That was when I realised I’d made a significant blunder: all of Spain is on holiday for the month of August. I should have remembered that from the days when I’d lived in the country. As it was, I looked online for flat shares and put my own advertisement on different sites, where I hoped I’d get noticed. At the same time, I interviewed successfully for a part-time teaching position in one of the better language schools. That was when I realised I’d made another mistake: I’d wildly overestimated what a language teacher earns in Spain. Part-time wages would not even cover the cost of basic needs such as rent, electricity, internet, and food, never mind a café con leche or a beer in a land where just about all social contacts take place in cafeterias or bars. This was very sobering, particularly when I found out the cost of renting.

As I tramped the hot sticky streets of old Tarragona, the finances of what now seemed to be a poorly planned move exploded again and again in my mind. How could I not have known that in the private sector in Spain, teachers earn about 50 per cent less than in the public sector. Added to that was the cost of renting, which was 550 euros a month for a one-bedroom flat in the old quarter. That took up about 70 per cent of my salary, but before that I had to fork out the initial letting agency fee which was charged at the same rate as one month’s rent; then there was one month’s deposit, plus one month’s rent, equalling 1,650 euros just to move into the flat. Unless I accepted a full-time contract of around 25 to 30 teaching hours a week, I would be relying on my savings all the time. I didn’t dare count the number of months or years it would take before they were fully depleted, but most certainly not up to the date when I was eligible for my UK national insurance pension. Despair was creeping up on me and I began to suspect that my hopes and dreams had been delusions.

Another sickening realisation was in relation to my cat, Thelma, who I had brought out with me. She was an elderly Siamese and had suffered significantly on the journey by road between Belfast and Tarragona. By the time she arrived at my door she had lost all her bearings; all she wanted was to be left alone in a corner to die. In my flat, Thelma kept bumping into furniture and some of the knocks she took were repetitive so I could not understand why this was happening until I realised that she had lost her sight. Why wouldn’t she? Thelma was 19 years old and most likely in the final months of her life. When I realised this, I began to hate myself for putting her through such hell. Why hadn’t I taken any of this into consideration before leaving Belfast?

It was early December, my fourth month in Tarragona, when I took a decision to abandon my plans and return home. Thelma was an important factor in the reckoning because I could see clearly that she was very unhappy in this flat. With tears in my eyes, I whispered that we were going home and prayed that she would survive another long journey. I waited until New Year before informing my tenant that she had two months to move out. I’d initially agreed that she could remain in the house for a year, so I felt bad about this, but tried to compensate by being flexible with the moving out date.

The reality was that when I’d first taken the decision to move to Tarragona, a voice in my head had proclaimed its disagreement. The voice repeatedly insisted that I “stop this madness now” with each step I took toward a new life in Spain. I was so sure that this was the right thing to do that I hastily brushed the wise warning aside in my eagerness to return to a life I once had in Spain. Now, looking back, I wonder whether it was arrogance on my part that refused to heed the warning…

 And it all ended very badly. Two days before the animal courier was due to collect Thelma, she had a fit and died in the veterinary surgery, on the cold stainless steel tabletop frothing at the mouth.  Actually, the reality of her death was sadder and more heart wrenching, but let’s just stick with this clinical version; it’s less painful for me now that she’s dead. Returning home to Belfast without her was soul destroying. Every time I looked at Thelma’s corner in the lounge, the empty space spoke of the immensity of my loss. Other, less painful reminders of my failed attempt to build a new life were a depleted savings account, broken bookshelves, black marks on the walls left behind by my tenants, huge gaps in my wardrobe, because I’d had to dump more than half my clothes because the weight allowance on my flight home was strict.

In retrospect, I understood too late that several key factors should have been taken into account when I was planning “my new life in the sun”. Firstly, age is an important factor. At 24, I found it easy to make friends, but not two decades later when my peers had families and children with all their concomitants. Hence, my colleagues rarely had time for drinks after the last evening class, so almost every night I found myself walking through the old quarter alone in the direction of my flat listening to the echo of my footsteps on the cobblestones. I was very lonely.

A further issue is that any teacher who has worked in Spain for years has usually progressed on to better schools or universities with higher paid jobs. Only the younger inexperienced “newbies” are employed by private language schools… or the failures. Years ago, I’d done this circuit and I no longer had the energy or freshness needed to teach these classes, kids and evening classes. The work was demoralising me.

After teaching in a UK university, surprisingly, I found the loss of status was quite a shock to my system. I hadn’t reckoned on my ego and it protested again and again that this was not acceptable, particularly when my teenage classes rebelled, which began as soon as I walked into the room. It was soul destroying.

I was grieving, lonely, my ego was deflated, I was demoralised, and broke, which all added up to major depression. One lesson of many that I had learned from this disaster was the importance of listening with humility to the voice of wisdom. My plans for “a place in the sun” had gone horribly wrong and I was left with the scars of that.. In those final days in Tarragona, the only goodbye gesture that made me smile was when I threw my Telefonica modem into the municipal waste bin instead of returning it to the company. Broadband charges were outrageous and had I notified them that I was cancelling my contract early, they would have deducted almost 200 euros from my bank account. So, I didn’t say a word except Nunca más señores!