Almost two years into the Coronavirus outbreak and I’m spiralling into sadness once more. My moods are cyclical (as they have always been) but I’ve been tracing them throughout this period, with some interest. So many emotions - bewilderment, curiosity, frustration, anger, despair, cynicism, stoicism, cautious optimism…I could go on (like so many of us). But, essentially, I’ve been through endless highs and lows since this madness began.
And there are two elements to it for me - one, the fact that I am - in any event - a moody kinda gal, who has her ups and downs, who feels joy with boundless enthusiasm but also falls into moments of great sorrow quite easily. This is my temperament (for better or worse) and it’s been this way since I was a child. Years of therapy have taught me many things and one of them is that I cannot change who I am, just learn to spot the danger signs and try and ‘go with them’, whilst still keeping a grip!
Now I feel I’m falling into a depression. It began with the death of my friend Harvey, in September.
It threw me for a loop and left me exhausted and confused.
It took a while for me to acknowledge the reason - that Harvey had been the closest thing to a father I’d ever had, someone to encourage me, praise me, support me and love me.
Moreover, I’d been able to talk to Harvey about so many things - we really were on the same intellectual, cultural and emotional wavelength.
He, too, had experienced despair in his life and I felt he understood me, and loved me deeply, whilst acknowledging that I’m a ‘complicated’ soul but not caring too much about the complications!
Combined with Harvey’s death, there’s the second element - being 'mostly ‘grounded’.
The feeling of impending doom I now have that Corona hasn’t receded (as I pretended it had, in the summer, whilst swanning around Toscana) is enveloping me. Corona is here to stay and that means more restrictions, possibly more lockdowns, more illness, financial insecurity and more despair. Not just for me, but for millions around the globe. But one thing that sets me apart from many people is the fact that I am a wanderer - a woman who’s always on the move, travelling here and there, with no fixed plans, looking for her next adventure, And Corona has well and truly put a stop to all of that. So where does that leave me?
Seriously, where does that leave me? Travel is my alpha and omega. It is my raison d’être. if we all have little ’projects’ in life, like baking, raising children, fiddling with motorbikes. gardening, DIY, mine is surely travel. I’m not good at sitting still and, from a young age, have been filled with an insatiable curiosity. As far as I’m concerned, the world isn’t big enough for me to see in a lifetime - there are so many countries I want to visit (and so many I want to revisit) and though I’m not that old yet, nor am I any more a spring chicken. OK, I’ve had 30 great years of solo travel, but I want many more.
All this leaves me with ‘saudade’ apparently. This new, and wonderful word, which I recently discovered, essentially means a melancholy yearning. Melancholy (for anyone who doesn’t know) indicates sadness, and yearning is a strong, persistent longing or desire, especially for something unattainable. And that just about sums me up now.
I lie on the sofa, reading crime fiction (my great escape, after days of working with PhDs and ‘serious printed matter’), drinking tea and looking out of my window. My mind wanders, back to happier times - days before PCR tests and QR codes, days when I’d spontaneously book a flight (sometimes the day before) and throw a few things in a bag, confident that whatever I forgot I could pick up en route.
I laugh to myself as I remember a trip I made to Australia - I’d booked the ticket on a whim on a Friday afternoon (the cut-price fare, advertised in the London Evening Standard had been reduced from £800 to £200 round-trip). The ‘catch’ was I had to leave in 48 hours. Obviously, I was up for the challenge and ended up having a month-long trip ‘Down Under’ that surpassed all my expectations. Or a last-minute journey to South East Asia after an awful break-up, I’d hit the road with nothing more than a backpack and a one-way ticket to the Far East, with no idea how long I’d be away (I wandered for 4 months, as it happened, through Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and Nepal).
Then there was my famous ‘driveway’ escapade. At the tender age of 23, and living in California, I’d taken a winter break/cross-country road trip with two friends, which we planned on the spur of the moment. Within a few hours, we’d packed the car and were heading from San Francisco to Las Vegas. where my two amigos spent the next 48 hours drinking and gambling, whilst I lay by the hotel pool, drinking cocktails and gazing at the azure blue desert sky. One of our merry band returned to California soon after, but two of us continued - past the Grand Canyon, on through Santa Fe and eventually stopping in Texas. Three days later, I left him, hit the road with an Amtrak train ticket and spent the rest of my break travelling in Chicago, Boston, NYC and then back to California via the Rockies.
I’m so nostalgic for these times, the yearning is so great, that it’s gnawing away at my soul.
I feel trapped, ‘locked in’ and incredibly restless. I know I am lucky, compared to many - I have a comfortable apartment in a wonderful city, and I live 5 minutes walk from the Mediterranean, which means I have access to long beach walks, whenever I need to escape the chaos of everyday life and clear my head.
I also have many wonderful friends here, friends I can really turn to - for coffee dates, idiotic gossips and serious talks.
And I have work - not as much as I‘d like (thanks to Corona) - but I can still make a living.
But the yearning persists. Saudade has enveloped me.
I am feeling a deep and profound emotional longing - for a life I once had but now seems to be gone. You see, travel - for me - was my great romance. My passion was - and will always be - for long train journeys, explorations of city backstreets, chowing down street food at exotic night markets and walking along empty beaches. My passion is for scrambling up mountains, trekking in hill stations, diving in Mexican cenotes and searching faraway cities for the perfect cup of of coffee. Romantic love is a fine thing (and I sure have been in love a few times) but men have disappointed me far more than my travels.
And now I cannot travel, I feel as if someone has deprived me of something so fundamental to my being that life seems to feel increasingly pointless. That might sound dramatic but, yes, it’s getting to be this way. What to do? I have asked myself this many times in the last few weeks.
There is only one answer. Write it out. Write it down. Write. Let the words tumble out of me and onto a blank screen. Don’t just relive my journeys in my imagination but share them. Tell stories of the places I saw, the feelings they invoked, the passions they stirred. Pick up a pen (or tap at my keys) and bring back the memories - the good, the bad and the simply unbelievable. Just write.