Freedom

Morning 1 waking up in the van. Jotting down some bullet points and it turns into a piece of writing.

I'm very excited that I'm seeing scenes, slices of other lives, that I wouldn't have seen otherwise, if I were at home or in the places I go to by habit. Yesterday evening, Sunday, I ended up at the Pope's Cross in the Phoenix Park in Dublin, a massive protected park at the heart of the city. I saw a large group of young people having the time of their lives. So young and effervescent, enjoying each other, planning what dinner to have (spice bag for 7e featured). I saw a group of sweet, easy-going looking people clearly in community together, having had a nice day out, hugging and parting, deck chairs and food boxes. I saw two young women in the car in front of me having the chats, a guy by himself in a grey SUV enjoying a sandwich. I was part of a communal outdoor enjoyment of the brief properly summer temperatures (Ireland doesn't get more than a few weeks of 20c/68f+ a year). This morning I'm watching a group of Dublin City Council workers have a gentle start to their day in their vans, under the trees, by the river, eating breakfast and chilling. And now there's a digger and I wonder what he's off to. I found a dream of a small park adjoining a quiet residential street near Glasnevin after moving on from where we overnighted. Believe it or not, I spent my first night in the van outside the first room I ever rented. A nice synchronicity, I hadn't meant to end up there, but it was really perfect and amusingly, I noted the current occupants have a camper in the driveway, so I thought maybe they wouldn't mind.

Not only chancing upon new micro-communities, I am also relishing chance encounters with nature. After a not-awful, but not-great and too-short night's sleep I asked AI for recommendations for flat parking near trees, preferably somewhere quiet, so I could go make coffee and walk Kru and absorb some good tree energy. I ended up at the most exquisite little park with weeping willows, the river Tolka (which I grew up across the road from a little further upstream), and the great, fresh calm of early morning before most of the world has stirred. I always experience an uptick in mood and a feeling of restoration in nature but it was like pure medicine to my hot, tired head and my achy, stiff back and shoulders. It felt like I was being wrapped in cool, moisturising, anti-inflammatory softness. Yesterday was very hot and very dry, this morning is cool and the dew and proximity to the river were such a pleasing contrast from a night spent dehydrating in the in the van.

An image comes in. Kneeling in the little oratory by the river, in the town I used to work in, ten years through my 15-year career in public libraries. My nervous system overclocked to the maximum, in a state of almost pure functional meltdown panic, I begged for freedom. I'm not sure that was what I was saying, but that was the state shift I wanted. What I heard, very clearly, and it surprised me, was the answer that betrayed what I was really praying for, the sentence unfolded, complete and containing all it needed: 'you are free'.

In my mind's eye I felt a gate, or a cage door swing open, and I felt it, on a completely somatic level, for perhaps the first time, which seems wild to me now: I am not trapped in this job, the door is actually open, I can walk out. It might sound simple, but for me, at the time, it was radical. In the rush of that registering in my body, I realised that, yes, I actually could walk down the street right now and not go back and nothing would happen. I am physically free and won't starve or die even if I lose this job and have difficulty finding another and my life changes because of the decision, I will still be intact, I will still find a way. Life will keep lifing.

I had a terror of things changing so much that I wouldn't be able to cope. I had a terror of making wrong decisions and hating myself for not being able to avoid the consequences. I had a terror of being judged, of finding out that I was not good enough (to keep the kind of job people are envious of, to make the situation work). I did not trust myself to be able to navigate so big a change. And that was partially true, at the time. If I had walked out that moment it might have done a lot of harm, I might not have coped well with it, I would likely have experienced dreadful anxiety and possibly regret. But the clarity that I had a choice to walk back in survived that acceptance, sat alongside it.

Both things were true. I couldn't unsee the freedom, I couldn't unfeel it. I had received it. I knew it, not just conceptually, as if I had already experienced it. So I walked back up the road and back onto that library floor and I kept going. Very shortly after I made the decision to request to work part-time, which I got, a few months later. During that year I did an entrepreneurial workshop and came out of it not with a business idea, but with a decision to follow something I thought would bring me joy. I became a Drag King. In becoming a Drag King I realised I was trans, the long road to accepting that led to realising I was autistic and before even all of that, I had to lean into being queer in the first place. I have had to unlearn and learn anew a lot in this life. And here I am at it again.

It's 11:22am now and boy this place is a popular dog-walking spot. I am so lucky Kru isn't a barker. Someone has pulled up behind us with yappy dogs who have no idea why their owners make a shh noise when they bark. I have a new cup of coffee and the council workers have more vans now. I suspect they are waiting for a tree surgeon who is running late. Wow, the people with the yappy dogs just walked past... pro dog walkers, 11 dogs, a blur of curls and wags and jaunty rumps.