My Not-So-Summer

A typical summer in the life of me:

Finish school in an exhilarated, exhausted daze of relief looking forward to 3 months of bliss, travel, excitement and freedom (in a Dobby-with-a-sock type way). For the past few years I’ve managed to jam pack my summers with lots of fun things. I’m not someone who likes to lay around at home doing nothing. Aint nobody got time for that. I believe in living your life now. Who knows what will happen tomorrow – so do it today! I usually start off with a week at home of rest, recuperation, reading, baking and some well needed cleaning, Then I would go traveling with my friends. So far we’ve gone to London and Paris and Disneyland. Of course I fell completely in love with these places. The architecture, the culture, the cafes, the people-watching, the toy-store in London, the bookshops in Paris, the smell of freshly baked croissants and the bargain price burger when you literally have only cents left. I have longing to explore and to see the world and summers are the best time to do that. For the remainder of the summer, I spend a few weeks in Sligo at my Cousins’ and go to Spain with my family. I visit friends and go to the beach. I’ve been to Irish College, learned the guitar, redecorated my room, read books on the grass and stayed up late at night watching the stars come out. Every summer I write a bucket list of things I’m going to do. Half of these I don’t get done but I like to be ambitious.

However the summer of 2015 was different.
It was my summer but it was also not my summer.

When I finished college, I had a three week gap before I was going to start working as an intern in Intel in Ireland. I was excited and very nervous. I would be living away from home, knowing nobody. I would leave all my friends behind as they would have fun and make memories without me. I would leave my poor poor cat and hope she wouldn’t forget me. But then one day, during these three weeks, my Dad was working cutting trees when he fell off one and hit his head and fractured his spine. He was in hospital for a few nights and I was terrified and didn’t know what was going to happen. Whether he’d be able to walk again. Who would mind him? Would I have to stay home this summer? Would I have to drop out of college? How could we pay the bills?
I cried for hours at night and couldn’t sleep and hardly ever ate. I was falling apart and even thought he might die. Incredibly fortunately he didn’t need surgery and was put in a brace for 3 months. But he could hardly move and had to sleep on the floor. So I took full responsibility for everything. I did what I usually did; cooking, cleaning, shopping. But I also had to do all the driving, cleaning and making the fire, feeding the cats, washing clothes, ironing, looking after my sister, helping her with her homework, drive him to the hospital. Without help it was hard. I know it doesn’t seem like a lot, but I was exhausted. I didn’t have time to do anything I wanted to do. I only left the house to buy food or bring Dad to the hospital. Without knowing it I was turning into a hermit.

Just before I left to start my internship, I met up with 3 friends. And they talked about what had been happening in their lives. Lives that didn’t really include me anymore. As they talked I sat in silence. Being more silent than I usually am. I was trying to stop myself from screaming. I felt like I was drowning. All I wanted to do was to run away. And these were my friends. But they felt like strangers. That night I went home and ran through a few fields before I just lay crumpled in the grass and cried.

In their own turn, my friends messaged me and asked me why I had been so quiet. I told them how I felt bad and what was happening at home. I said I would be okay.

I went off to my internship and stayed in a b&b type place where I had a small little room and a tiny en-suite and a little skylight window that i thought was pretty cool at the start but then it began to feel like a prison. > I walked to work and back everyday. I was probably the youngest on site and with the least amount of knowledge. I learned  how to use the Linux command Line and how to instal OS. I worked on virtualisation but needed help with everything cause it all just went whoosh – right over my head. There were 36 interns in total working that summer. I got to know a few and became good friends with one in particular. We had donuts every week but I hated going to this. I loved the free cookie but having to socialise made me sick. So I started coming up with excuses like I was too busy working or had to leave work early or something.

The interns were given a challenge to build something with a Galileo board and were given a room on site to improve. We were divided into teams and I helped work on the Gym room and did the CSS on our website. We made a little model with lego for our demo. We showed how we tracked equipment usage with sensors and used this to record workouts per member with their badge and then they could look online to see how much they had exercised and on what machine for all time or for day/week.. etc. We showcased this at the end of August and to our immense surprise we won!

Getting to work in such an environment, work on the Galileo challenge, and learn many things was a great experience. I just wish I had tried more. Like throw my hand at everything even if I failed. Or get to know people, colleagues and make connections. I also wish I had found better accommodation because living on your own in a room with nothing but a bed and lamp was awful. I wasn’t allowed to use the cooker and in the morning I could only have toast, tea or cereal. I ate my dinner at work around 12/1 and didn’t eat until the following day then. So I started to go to the shop on the way home to get a sandwich cause I was starting to starve. When I went home I went for a shower and just lay in bed talking to my soon to be boyfriend. With so much time to think I started to analyse everything in my life. I listened to sad music and cried myself to sleep. I thought about my family, my friends, my mother, people out in the world who had it so much worse. I felt like crap most of the time and had no interest in reading or baking. I was lacking positivity and motivation.

I did come home at weekends but with all the traveling that meant only a day and a half at home. So I tried to fit this time with meeting friends, dates, going to cousins. All the time my sister telling me that I don’t spend enough time with her. Thus I began to just stay at home. I didn’t want to go out.

But now I’m back and much happier. But still really bad at socialising. I crawled under my duvet and cried the first morning of college because I couldn’t handle being with so many people.

But it was okay. I got through it.

And now I’m looking forward to Christmas