The job is going well. First week done. Getting settled in. Learning something new. Meeting new people. Finding out more about Indiana people. The homegrown kind. And as suspected, they're just like everyone else. Might as well be working in a factory back in Drogheda. I'm working with a lot of people who are born and bread Indianapolis, people who've worked in this particular factory since they were kids. Salty dogs. Lifers. I'm not a lifer. I think I'm a drifter. I drift in and out of jobs, careers, clicks and groups. I tend not to stick around too long. In saying that though, I think I'll be here for a while. No bad thing. I need the job, the pay, the security. Being without any of that in this country is a terrifying thing. I suppose it is anywhere. But I've never felt so desperate as I have here in the last three months.
I suppose that comes down to many things. The wrench of immigrating. The high emotion of taking the kids out of their childhood home, away from there grandparents, family, friends and neighbours. Tossing them into a boiling pot of unknown soup, where they watched their normally settled and sure parents flounder alongside them. I can't imagine how that must have been for my daughter. She turns 4 in two days. Her personality, the one she will carry with her through her life, is being moulding right now, everything that's happening in her life is shaping the person she will become. She's the clay. We're the potters. It's a hefty and frightening responsibility. And one I don't take lightly.
Being in a position where I could not provide in the least is a place I've never been before. I left Ireland because I wanted to give my kids a better chance in life. Things there were bad. Desperate. Trying to carve out a living was simply impossible. There was no getting ahead, and every time it left like we might be getting ahead there, some rug was pulled out from under us. Either in new taxes, cuts or charges. I felt like I was being watched, "Oh, Frank Kelly's getting ahead of himself there, seems to think he might make something of himself, cut his benefits €100, and just so he's not enjoying himself too much, close his favourite shop so he cant buy dvds anymore."
So, we came here, but it was literally a case of out of the frying pan and into the fire. We had help, yes, back up and support. We had people looking out for us. People were incredibly generous, yes. But they also had their own lives to lead. Which they went straight back to after we had arrived. We were still fledglings, having just left the nest and we were left to flying on our own, and we were falling. Two months in we realised we hadn't really heard from anyone, no one had dropped around. We were at our yet lowest ebb, money was running out fast, we were stressed, fighting, not sleeping, feeling like fools and failures, and completely on our own. I said to Maryann one day "I think everyone thinks we're fine, they think, 'Oh, Maryann and Frank have been here two months, I'm sure they're well settled!' " We weren't. We were in a torrent and close to drowning.
At home at least I had my family. My parents, my brother and sister, all close by. I had friends. I knew the town. It was familiar. All that was gone here. And I did not feel like myself. I left stripped bare. Alone. Lonely. Vulnerable. Helpless. Stupid. Worthless. Unsure of my own identity. At home I had a strong sense of self, of who I was. I was a filmmaker. That was what I did. I wrote and I made films. And I was going to keep doing that until I was able to make a real living at it. But that was gone here. Really, when it came down to it, I wasn't a filmmaker anymore. I couldn't make films. I could hardly write. I couldn't find the time and when I did my head was so muddled I couldn't think straight. The bubble had burst and tangled all up in my brain.
Who was I?
I don't know. I had lost my identity. The one it had taken me a decade to build. In just two months it was gone. I had no means to leave the house, go anywhere by myself or buy anything for myself. It was a very strange feeling. I was getting depressed. Which was no good for anyone.
It felt as thought people had gone away too. I don't know that they had. At home a couple of months would go by and I wouldn't hear from one friend or another, no big deal, we'd talk eventually. But in this situation, feeling so isolated, that was amplified. So not hearing from anyone for so long, and after such a monumental change - after all, I had just immigrated with my family for crying out loud, a little check-in wouldn't have gone astray! I thought I might hear more from people, I thought people might answer some emails... but they didn't. They didn't. And I was alone. In my little house. That I did not know. That was not mine and closing in around me. Wondering, how the hell I got there.
This is the reality of it. The truth of it. I don't want to lie about it or shy away from it. Immigrating is hard. It's an emotional wrench. It's not a holiday, especially when you're not walking into a job and especially for someone like me who's carved out such a specific niche that it's nearly impossible to employ me in anything else. But someone did. Someone took a chance. Saw passed the piece of paper and realised there was a capable person willing to work standing in front of them. And I'm grateful to that person. They made all of the above disappear. In one single sentence "So, would you like to give it a go?" all that dissolved.
What it did too was release my mind to creative thought again. That bubble gum that was tangling up the strands of thought, was gone, instantly. I felt it come back that quickly and I immediately wanted to write, wanted to reach out to people and start getting projects started. The security of that job gave me that and for the first time in a long time I realised the importance of that. Along with that I felt like I was me again, and I could be the same husband to my wife as I had always been, the same Dad to my kids. I could provide for them, support them, nourish them and turn that potters wheel more confidently again. Not worried so much anymore that I was going to ruin anyone's future.
I'm still working on it. We've been struggling for many years, financially speaking. This is the first salaried position I've ever held. So I'm not sure what changes it will bring. We're still trying to break habits of a lifetime. We're still not used to the idea that it might be OK, that think might work out for us, that we can stop worrying. When life throws nothing but punches, you learn how to duck, until ducking is what you do. When life stops throwing punches, it's not so easy to drop your guard. So I'll keep ducking for now.
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