5 minute read

As I write this, less than 48 hours have elapsed since my husband and I returned from a mini-break in Baja California, the wine country in Northern Mexico, just five hours away by car. To paraphrase Joan Didion, we had gone there in lieu of getting a divorce. Or maybe more accurately, we had gone there as a prophylactic measure, recognising that our marriage was under considerable strain and a volcano-like eruption was quite possible.

You see we’ve been under significant stress – financial and career mostly. But who isn’t feeling stressed given what we lived through collectively in the last couple of years? The world has changed – irrevocably so? – and we’re not sure how we’re going to keep up. Who is?

I’ve written many times before about my love of life in Los Angeles. The beauty, the robust community I’m part of, my feeling of belonging here. I happily call myself an ‘Irish Angeleno’, but I just can’t get my head around ‘Irish American’. LA is a fishbowl and the hustle here is real. Everyone is up to something and committed to upping their game, chasing their dreams, and realising their ambitions. Even the bus driver has a screenplay and yesterday my check-out cashier at the grocery store was telling me about interviewing golfer Padraig Harrington for his part-time job as a sports commentator.

There’s pressure in LA. Lots of it. Not that you need to live in Los Angeles to feel the pressure these days. Social media generates enough of that; a mere scroll through Instagram can leave you feeling deficient - like your life comes up short. Even when you know that there’s a lot of smoke and mirrors, that people are curating their feeds and their lives for optimal engagement. The whole enterprise can leave a person feeling sub-adequate and rob you of your ability to focus. I know it does me. I waste way too much time on there. To ensure my ability to concentrate while writing, I’ve left my phone in another room and turned off Wi-Fi on my laptop.

It's a lot to vanquish. Like much of life these days. Which brings me back to the need to step away to prevent a catastrophe. My husband and I have a good relationship. We’ve been at it for more than a minute now and while there’s plenty of conflict, there’s even more commitment. And the love? Well, the love is immeasurable. So how did we get to a place where we both recognised a complete meltdown was possible?

I spent the first couple of months of this year on the sidelines of depression. Circling the abyss one might say. Wondering what the point of my life was, would I ever get ahead of my debt and generally questioning my purpose.

Of course, I was simultaneously pretending the exact opposite in my obligatory social media presence. You see as a yoga teacher I am somewhat compelled to have an online presence, particularly as a yoga teacher who has been promoting a yoga retreat in Ireland that has been rescheduled three times due to the pandemic.

I’m going to drop the pretence and tell you that it’s been harder than I anticipated. The weeklong programme is stellar; carefully curated and in the works for over three years. All of my heart and soul has gone into making this an incredible event and I just hadn’t grasped how deeply the pandemic has shifted things. It seems that people have lost trust in life, and are reluctant to make plans, to spend money. I was unprepared for how hard the sell would be, how big the hustle.

I’m not a natural hustler. I’m a content person and I tend to put all of myself into my creative endeavours, be it yoga, writing, or producing a yoga retreat. This can lead to burnout. ‘No bueno’ as we say around here. And much as I hate to admit it, financial stress is real and no amount of spiritual sweet talk pays the bills.

My husband is a musician whose professional life has been upended by the pandemic. Uncertainty abounds, and much trust is required. Trust in the universe you might say, trust that things will turn around, that we’ll get out from the pile of debt, that more clients will come, that touring will become possible once again for musicians, that more people will sign up for the retreat. Trust that things will be okay. I know that we are not alone in this regard. There’s a crisis of trust across the board it seems these days and people are hesitant to commit. I get it. The uncertainty is real and most of us are treading water in one way or another.

A welcome outcome of the pandemic and the collapse of my husband’s touring career has been more time together at home. But this can be a hazard. There have been many statistics cited about the increase in separations and divorces since the pandemic hit. We’re not in that bracket but there have been some challenges. Quite some: financial, circumstantial, temperamental. Collaborative.

All this is to say that a few weeks ago we found ourselves in a mess. Both completely stressed out about career and financial pressures. Trying to work harder but not being effective, losing the bigger picture, why any of it mattered beyond making ends meet. Constantly on edge. Hostility was beginning to seep into our conversations on the daily. Falling short of the 5:1 positive to negative interaction ratio required for a relationship to flourish. Frankly, there were days we were barely hitting the 3:1 ratio for survival. (https://www.theheyday.ie/member-articles/notes-on-flourishing).

We had to do something to turn things around and fast. The fights were getting too bad, we were coming apart. Fortunately, we both concluded that evasive action was necessary, a quote by Hemmingway on bankruptcy coming to mind: at first, it happened gradually, then suddenly.

Not wanting our marriage to explode in a million pieces we did the only rational thing for two people under financial stress and a certain amount of credit card debt. We booked two nights at a stunning villa in the Valle de Guadalupe for some good old fashioned R & R. Courtesy of Visa you understand.

Having had a spectacular blow up the night before leaving we managed to get on the road without further aggro. By the time we turned onto the dirt road that leads to the property some five hours later I was feeling more hopeful and simultaneously completely exhausted. I simply had nothing left. Within the hour I was lying by the pool surrounded by palm trees, rosemary shrubs and all sorts of cacti. My husband was swimming laps and as I lay there feeling the sun on my skin and the sound of bird song in my ears I let the heaviness seep from my body. I felt utterly stopped. My whole being was in suspension. The suspension of total depletion and near annihilation. There was nothing to do but give in.

Eventually, I joined my husband in the hot tub and as the heat seeped through my pores I felt stirrings of release, tendrils of ease unfurling. I gave my mind permission to stop. Not that it did but I refused to get pulled out by details and worry about all the things we’d left behind.

The quietude of the valley was a balm for my battered nervous system. I turned my phone off for twenty-four hours and simply let myself be. We ate. We drank. We slept. We made love. We took our time. We cuddled. We did a lot of nothing. We remembered how much we liked each other!

The simple joys of enjoying beauty and quiet provided solace that no great meal, no buzzy bar, no expensive massage has given me in LA. It was about connection and time and space. About remembering who we are to each other and to ourselves. It was about playtime; respite from the need to be constantly productive.

Earlier I said that Los Angeles is the home of the hustle. It’s insidious here. The near-constant blue skies and mostly warm weather, the stunning coloured flowers and fruit trees are the backdrop for a city populated by strivers and movers and shakers. If you’re not on top of your game here, you’ll be left behind. But of course, you never want to look like you’re hustling. Hell no. Pass me an iced oat latte and let’s post on Instagram. My life is amazing – abundance baby! I’m literally manifesting my new reality as we speak.

Yeah, me too. I’m also manifesting a lot of credit card debt and self-doubt also! But what’s the smoke and what’s the mirror?

I don’t really know and I can’t say that my brief Baja sojourn with my beloved provided all the answers. But it did refresh my perspective. It did reset my nervous system and remind me of the non-negotiable importance of rest and time away from technology. As I felt progressively more relaxed the open sore that had been on my lip for a couple of weeks began to heal. Time to just be and talk about a magazine article, or nothing, with my husband, reminded us why we’ve stayed together for so long. Lazy cuddles and long delicious meals rekindled our connection. Did we blow up our credit cards a little more? Definitely. Was it worth it? Absolutely.

I’m aware as I write this that even having a credit card and the mindset to use it is a privilege. I know that I’m extremely fortunate and that in many ways my life is amazing. I don’t need to make up a fabricated version for online performative purposes. But I also know that stress is real and burnout is real. And marriages explode, bankruptcies happen. Gradually, then all of a sudden.

I’m glad we were able to take the break, to find each other again. To remember the importance of play. To cultivate pleasure and let it feed us. I know that I came back with a sense of renewed purpose and enthusiasm and commitment. Yeah, it created more debt but it’s a whole lot cheaper than a divorce.

Dearbhla Kelly, May 2022