On the other side of nowhere

For the past three years now, I have entertained the idea of escaping half way around the world. Whether it be Los Angeles or Thailand, I have been perturbed and distracted by the notion that I could be living a better life elsewhere - miles away. Reading books like ‘The 4-hour work week’ by Tim Ferriss fed my hunger and it grew to an almost insatiable desperation to get away from London. Alex (the boy) has put up with this mild discontentment of mine for a long time. And now that we are half way around the world, in Vietnam in fact, I am reflecting on what has driven me to where I am now. I know I am now here for the right reasons.

The convenient thing with writers is that they have very liberal freedom to portray themselves via prose as they wish. I do not say this to imply the truth above is elaborated, but the reverse - that it is difficult to confess via print what seems like a selfish, ungrateful side of me when in actual fact, I am very lucky. 

My mum, to an extent, would describe me as a wanderer - perhaps even flatteringly ‘always in pursuit of adventure’. I certainly never wanted to follow paths worn and trod. I was always the one that was going to leave the nest and not relocate nearby. During my later teenage years, I was a difficult, self-serving and rebellious child - not necessarily in the ways one would imagine - tattoo imprinting, drug taking, car-racing but in the vilest of ways - tormenting, taunting, apathetic and entirely uncompromising with my family. I would take the car into the nearest town, party the night through and then sleep all day or if interrupted, scowl from the sofa. I was merciless in my bad treatment of my family and it got so bad that at one point, I left home and stayed with some guy I had recently hooked up with. The agonising and worrying I must have put them through. Once I had emerged from this black haze, I concentrated all my efforts into forgetting that I had ever behaved this way. Going to Edinburgh University and subsequently moving to London gave me a taste of that ‘long desired freedom’ I had been chasing in my teens. I would visit home desperate to demonstrate that I was no longer that girl that they knew. That I was now better. 

I like puzzles. I like the methodical motion of putting jigsaw pieces together - from the corners, to the edges and gradually into the middle. I like to separate the greys from the blues from the browns, then separate the ‘two bits sticking out’ from the ‘three bits sticking out’ until it is entirely provable that every jigsaw piece fit somewhere, even if I was yet to know where. For the past few years, a long while, I have felt a bit like a jigsaw piece with my family. Not quite sure where I fit in, not understanding familiar jokes, the twins being too big to beat up. In particular, my middle sister and I have been strained, struggling to find a balance in our relationship that means we can both truly relax with each other. I loved coming home, but felt a little lost and almost desperate to just quickly fit myself into a square I did not belong in, but could resemble close enough - like a jigsaw piece - out of place. This caused me to deliberately set myself slightly ajar from my family - both emotionally and physically, to avoid this frustration and panic of not fitting in.

So staying away became a modus operandi when feeling discontent.  

In 2012, a year after the success of ‘The Silence’ which had thrown me into an acting role - a roller coaster ride, taken me away to Dublin and back, plucked my hopes and dreams and threw them into the open to be seized by anyone as they wished, I was struggling. ‘The Silence’ had not, despite my hopes and dreams, sent me whirling straight into another acting role or off to glamorous places overseas. A routine, which I would get very used to, was to go to two or three auditions a year, more if I was lucky. I was plugging effort and money away with my speech therapist, desperate to throw off this issue of sounding deaf without being ashamed or frustrated by my deaf identity. I was also working two days a week for a non-for-profit organisation which did little to preoccupy my time. I became restless but weary, sleeping little. My unhappiness was secret because I knew I was lucky. My unhappiness was secret because I knew it was part of the game plan - actors have to wait it out. My unhappiness was secret because I didn’t want other people to know I was discontent with myself and my life. It became a rationalised unhappiness.

London became a place synonymous with unhappiness for me - when it shouldn’t have. 

In 2013, I was resisting a growing sense of concern - that I had made completely the wrong decision about my life.  When I started working at the aforementioned non-for-profit organisation, it was to support me financially through my out-of-work periods of being an actress. But realistically, it was to place my eggs in two baskets - in case I had taken a risk in acting and it did not take off. I was adamant that I would not end up back in square 1 at 30 years old, having wasted other skills and talents that I might have had to offer. My restlessness was also at its peak. Alex had finally acquiesced that we might live in a different country if we could make it work for the two of us. The best option seemed to be Los Angeles. I also felt that if I gave acting a go properly, on my terms, that this was the place to be.

I visited Los Angeles twice, once at the end of 2013 and again at the beginning of 2014. Californian sunshine, beautiful canyons and a collection of friendly expats led me to believe we could set up a life here. There was hope, acting wise, conversations with an ABC drama called ‘Switched at Birth’ and multiple visits to their set near Laurel Canyon. So many meetings with agents, managers, producers, writers - on my terms. Back in London, I threw myself into the collection of letters of support for a visa and green card, the restless energy being fed into a frenzy of getting myself organised to make this happen. But piece by piece, I lost my way again - with two managers falling through and Switched at Birth no longer a place of promise. No ripe fruit elsewhere. I knew that it was not my time to be in Los Angeles and that the contentment I searched for in my career would not be filled on the other side of the pond. I had to find it within myself at home - the acceptance of the highs and lows of acting or to accept failure and move on (the only way I could express it in my head was as a failure). 

This has turned into a proper little ‘pursuit of happiness’ hasn’t it? 

The combination of this damaging dismay regarding my acting career and feeling trapped in a city did not feel nurturing or prosperous led Alex and I towards the decision to travel the world for a year. Originally probably for the wrong reasons, but the right ones emerged over time. It no longer became the means to escape or the pursuit of something new and better, but quite simply time to reflect, accept and take our lives entirely out of context for a while - explore a rich myriad of landscapes vastly removed from where we had lived and worked for the past six years. In the meantime, other events took place which helped clarify my thinking and understanding some of the aspects of my life where I had struggled the most.

First of all, though no longer ground-breaking news, my mum got cancer. In the emotional turmoil of coming to terms with this, our family knitted in a way that made me realise that viewing myself as a ill-fitting jigsaw piece was a warped irrational fragile mentality that my brain had assembled at easy convenience, rooted in the past not the present. It was I who needed to forgive myself for the child I was all those years ago and accept that this is a part of my life history. There are no puzzles in my family - we simply mould to each other as one. We always have done. 

Secondly, in some weird twist of fate, I got a role in BBC’s Call the Midwife, days before Alex and I were due to embark on our travels. (See previous blog). What that means, I don’t know. But since arriving here in Vietnam, I’ve had more good news about my acting career, and we will just have to see what happens. I know I have had a better acting career than most. I have a hungry ambition that rarely settles on itself. Maybe I’m back at the top of the insecurity spiral again, who knows? But right now I am on the other side of the world, with avid eyes peering through a very different telescope, I couldn’t give a stuff. 

Thirdly, I suddenly started to love London again. Whether this was my best friend moving in, a concentrated period of good memories, the house finally being renovated or seeing London through brighter and happier eyes, its anyone's guess. But after sullying London over the past four years, I finally feel like I can appreciate it again. Will we come back to London in a year? Who knows. But already I feel stronger to face whatever comes my way. 

As Alex is fond of saying, life's big question when discontent is - is the grass greener? And the answer is, no, it just smells different.

***This is not meant to resemble a blow-by-blow account of my emotional health over the last 28 years - for this would be a vastly inaccurate portrayal. But in reflection of consistently ‘wanting to be elsewhere’, I learnt a lot about myself along the way.