Coping

When I got accepted for this trip to Ireland, I think I felt my blood pressure palpably rise.  It's very exciting, but I immediately turned my brain over to high-speed insanity whenever the trip or any related issues were mentioned.  (I can further support this with the fact that I was up until 1 am working on the presentation I gave with a partner about the Irish sheep farm on the Ring of Kerry, when most other people didn't seem bothered to do a decent job at all for their topics.  One girl spent her entire speech about Jameson whiskey talking about a spring break trip to Boston that she took, and related her tour of a beer manufacturer to the (vastly different) distillation of Irish whiskey.  Excuse me, but please stop bragging about your vacations, and just talk about the topic to which you were assigned.)

Anyway, several pre-departure sessions were scheduled during the school year.  After each of these meetings I was simultaneously invigorated and terrified.  I became increasingly sure that I would love Ireland and the people and the climate and the environment.

I also became increasingly confident that I would not fit in with my fellow groupmates.  I think I've started to single out a few people with whom I can have a decent time, but the vast majority of our group is Greek, and if they are not actually living together in a fraternity right now, most of them are at least friends, or well-acquainted.  It's concerning to me that I will have no one to talk to, and the mandate that we must always travel in pairs may result in my spending a lot of time in the hostel.  To all of you who know me well, you'll know how shocking it is for me to have difficulty finding someone with whom to converse.  I was built to talk to adults or children, but people my own age are mystifying.  There are moments when I speak words out loud, and no one hears me.  My sense of humor (which I acknowledge is rather sharp sometimes) falls on completely deaf ears.  I've never experienced anything like it.  I was spared the heartbreak of high school ostracization while I was in high school, but it's all catching up with me for this brief trip to Ireland.

(Interestingly, at a completely unrelated family barbecue on Saturday, I was introduced by my host to a very nice Irish couple, and spent much of the evening talking to the wife, Siobhan.  All of my expectations about the friendliness and kindness of the Irish was completely confirmed, and she assured me that I would find more people like her upon my arrival.  We talked about Penny's -- a fabulously cheap department store, -- about putting a little black currant juice in my Guinness to cut the bitterness, about taking the hokey bus tour of Dublin because it really is pretty interesting, and about how Ireland has had a very hot summer so the weather will probably still be warm and comfortable when I'm traveling.  She completely set my mind at ease that my trip will be fantastic.)

The last official meeting of the crew was a barbecue at Leta's (director's) house in Edmonds.  So on Sunday I trooped dutifully out into the admittedly gorgeous, if very distant, hinterlands north of Seattle but south of Bellingham.  Approximately half of our group was in attendance, 11 of 26, and we discussed the final schedule, packing lists, credit unions, and other sundry topics.  From the mood of my peers, my anxiety is completely and wildly abnormal.  Most of them confessed to not having thought about packing yet at all, and several had yet to call their banks, or had confirmed with the State Department and the Embassy.  I left the barbecue feeling as though all the anxiety that I had let out the night before had all rolled itself right back up inside me.  I called home to let my parents know that I was headed back, and dad gave me a bit of an extra dig (he is somehow surprised and offended that I am so anxious.  It's as though he forgot the nightmare that was me before leaving for Alaska last year.).

Thank God for my mother, who is just as anxious as I am, and who is also not coping well.  She's opted for serious and complete denial.  The apple doesn't fall far from the tree, as it were.