Growing Pains
The one where they leave Drumcondra
In the coming weeks, three of my best friends and I will be moving out of the house that we have shared for many years now. Somewhat similar to the passing of an elderly relative, the news isn’t coming as a surprise or a shock, but this doesn’t mean that the grieving process has been any easier.
I still have all of my baptism cards. I’ve kept my workbooks from primary school. I haven’t thrown out the shoes I wore at the disco where I got my first shift. I don’t sell things that I no longer have use for. I find it difficult to let go.
Therefore, with this enormous change comes a myriad of emotions, all competing for dominance. It has been quite some time since I’ve felt compelled to sit and write, but the fact of the matter is, that I am only one of the hundreds of like-minded millennials who are all facing a season of movement and change; two years of a global pandemic which placed a barricade on international travel, is likely to have been the catalyst. For these reasons, I feel that many will be reflecting on a similar period of their life, finding themselves somewhere between the safety and comfort of the old familiar, and the daunting prospect of stepping forward into something new.
Anyways, back to the house. For context, we live in a very humble terraced house; only a stone’s throw from the stadium of our national sport. No more than a twenty-five-minute walk from the city centre, the nearest seafront, and Europe’s largest public park, we really did land ourselves in the beating heart of the Big Smoke. It has been the perfect den from which we could roam and rove through our early twenties, all wearing a prescription lens that would have us see the world with a starry-eyed giddiness, and an insatiable appetite for merriment and adventure.
Littered around our house, were always signs of what was happening at that time. A calendar, of sorts, could be formed by what one would find lying at the foot of the bed, on the kitchen table, or more likely, on the living room floor. A gym bag at the door meant that the intentions were so very pure; a Monday. School books on the couch signalled that an attempt to maintain one’s job was being made; probably on a Tuesday. Bags of new clothes indicated that a big event, one where you’d really be out to knock ’em dead, was on the horizon; a Wednesday, perhaps. And on a Thursday night, you could find a tanning mitt anywhere from on top of the toaster, to down behind the cistern. An empty naggin and a stray heel, well, that sounds a lot like a Sunday morning, doesn't it?
Many milestones and stages of life have been lived out under the roof of 7 St. Brigid’s Road — the good, the bad, the repetitious, and the remarkable. Love and loss, tragedy and triumph, disappointment and delirium, exhaustion and exhilaration. Faces of people from all walks of life have passed through our doors, were shown to the armchair, and given the mic. Tea was poured. Stories were shared. Problems were halved. Plans were hatched. Tears were wiped. Laughs were plentiful. Birthday candles were blown. Christmas presents were opened. Innumerable bags were towed away to the bottle bank.
Within these four walls, the monotonous became marvellous, the grubby was golden, and I don’t just mean the daily struggle of trying to salvage cutlery that didn’t have the cure for covid growing from it. (In fact, if you ever had the fortune of making it into our kitchen, you might be forgiven for thinking that we’re moving out in order to avoid cleaning it.) Errands such as picking up milk and bread in Centra became an opportunity to parade ourselves down the street, binoculars at the ready. Saturday morning strolls into town weren’t complete without a shift in gear around the gates of Trinity, for a quick creep on the multiple bodies scanning the crowd for their date. And of course weekend rituals comprised of making generous donations to the wages of the staff in Devitt’s and Coppers.
Undoubtedly, your early twenties are probably the most formative years, in terms of finding your ‘vinyasa’ amidst the ever-changing ebb and flow of life. Our time together in this house has been decorated with pivotal moments for character development, a lifetime's worth of drama, timeless memories, and most importantly, a breeding ground for some truly ICONIC content for the pending autobiography. This home of ours has been a harbour, a safe haven at which to dock. Regardless of how hard the world hit, once that big yellow door shut behind you, dementors of any shape or form were left outside in the oftentimes hazy grey fog, of an unrelenting rat race.
Although I struggle to make sense of change, over the past few years I have very consciously tried to regard it as optimum conditions for new learning and self-development. If you think about it on an existential level, our ancestors survived only because of the opportunity that lay in their struggle for growth e.g., the progress made in medicine, the creation of societies, and the cultivation of the agricultural industry. In this time of great uncertainty, there is one lesson that I can draw upon, gained from the two greatest mentors of all, Time and Experience; whenever I have felt as though things were falling apart, hindsight has taught me that every mishap was a catapult in disguise, launching me into the unknown, always somewhere that I hadn’t the capacity to imagine existed. As Rascal Flatts once put it, God Bless the Broken Road.
I wouldn’t change a second of the last four years; not the paper-thin walls or coffee-stained carpet, the see-through curtains, or the diabolically low-pressured shower. There was beauty in our struggle. The coldest nights made for the warmest of conversations. Our home has known such joy. Every room has held laughter. Every window was opened to welcome new opportunities as they presented themselves; new jobs, new men, new coffee spots, and new countries etched out on the scratch map.
As I come to the end of this ode, I pay homage to my gorgeous housemates. Their voices have created stories that will live forever. Their hearts have made 7 St. Brigid’s Road, one of the places I will forever associate with the truest form of love.
While we walk tentatively towards adventures anew, we do so with immense gratitude for what was, and hope for what will be. If I can remind myself that it really is the people who make a place, then maybe I can move forward in the knowledge that happiness must have more than one address.
We might be leaving St. Brigid’s Road on July 4th, but St. Brigid’s Road will never ever leave us, and will only further define and shape our experience of nostalgia, for the rest of our days.
