Find Your People and Lose Your Toenail
66 days left in Belfast (on endings, friendship, and slowing down)
Is it summer here in Belfast? June arrives tomorrow, and every day someone says to me, “This is going to be the hottest day we get all year.” Then, a few days later, it’s even hotter. (And by hot, I mean a solid 65-70 degrees without air-conditioning in most buildings.) Classes have ended, my coursework is all finished, my internship is complete, and campus is getting quieter every day. Besides the looming deadline of my masters dissertation, it does feel somewhat like summer.1
Yesterday I turned in my last Mitchell Blog, which you can read here, and I struggled with the finality of it. My time in Belfast is not up yet, and the days here can feel both endless and like they’re evaporating, but I can feel the chapters ending. And there’s this tension: I’ve been longing to go home early, and I wrestle with guilt about that urge, but I also feel something close to finally settling in, and know I will miss this place as soon as I’m gone.
Why is it so impossible to just be happy where you are? And I wanted to say something profound that would offer something meaningful to future Belfast Mitchells or to myself in a handful of years when I’m thinking about this time.
There are many things I want to reflect on about Belfast, and I will get to them eventually. You’ll have to bear with me as I post “On Belfast #1-10” or something like that. No, but really, how do you sum up a year of intense personal challenge in one 500-word blog post? Or in an extended essay in a newsletter-meets-blog that only like 200 people skim?
This is what I went for in the Mitchell Blog:
Belfast has taught me how community is not only a value, but a necessity. Much of my culture shock and difficulty adjusting to life in Belfast, I think, stemmed from leaving such a strong home community where I understood my identity through my roles and positionality in my community and coming to a place where not only did I have no connection to the community, its cultural ethos, or its problems, but I also couldn’t pretend to be apart of it even if I tried.
Each time I’ve spent abroad, I’ve always written [in journals, blog posts, etc] about how exhausting and uncomfortable it feels to be aware of how “other” I am in every space, including in my home context. I have not reconciled this, and I don’t know if I ever will. But Belfast has reminded me of all the things I love about my home. My messy, complicated, fighting-for-its-soul Deep South. It has been challenging to watch my community from so far away and to be, again, an outsider. I will return home for one week before moving across the country to what will be my home for the next six years. I grieve for the place I’ve bittersweetly called home, especially recognizing that I will never go home in the same way I used to again. But I know it calls me back, and I’m grateful for how clear this call is now.
The truth is: my life here is slow. And I like it like this. My life in the States was bloated and busy, and totally unsustainable. It has been an important lesson to know that an alternative is not only possible but necessary. Living slower has helped me invest even deeper in the real priority of this year: the phenomenal people I get to call my friends. From grad school late-night dinner hangouts to learning how to lift weights (thanks, Gil) and swim (thanks, Ellie) to intense second-hand embarrassment of Matty Healy and the most joyous day of my life when Sarah, Gil, Ellie, and I went climbing, slipping, sliding, and jumping off of 20-foot tall inflatables in wetsuits over an extremely cold lake— these are the moments that have really mattered.
I have felt most fulfilled being with friends and following my heart on things that were really and truly just for me. Like, signing up for poetry workshops to reignite my love for writing and running my first marathon just to prove to myself that I could follow through on my self-promises. Who knew that losing a whole toenail could be such a point of pride?
This is where my real advice is for the me of the past and the Mitchells of the future. Find your people and lose your toenail. :)
“Find your people and lose your toenail” is about as good as I can get with “summing it up.” My friends here are all going in different directions. It’s like undergrad all over again, but maybe even worse because the distances between us will be even greater, the chances of seeing each other are slimmer, and keeping up with friendships in the ways that they deserve will be even more challenging.
There is something I appreciate about the kind of requirement of the place as a necessary component of friendship. I actually am not opposed to a kind of finality in friendships, and sometimes, I think it helps me appreciate them more— this mutual understanding that this friendship is one you must explore in the present and appreciate in the present because it will not exist like this ever again.
Now that I’m thinking about it, none of my friends are big texters or callers. Even my very best friend, who has navigated friendship at a distance for the majority of the time we’ve known each other, is more of a once-a-month update-dump kind of gal. I prefer it this way. Social media is nice for keeping you up to date on the surface-level or big-announcement-type happenings in friends’ and acquaintances’ lives, but I also like that distance creates questions and opportunities for deeper connections.
Not all friendships can function this way, and I think, again, that’s why shared place matters in the dynamics and roles of friendships and why I think friendships should be allowed to change. I know that most of my friendships here will continue to have depth and meaning as our lives change, and these will be friends that I carve out intentional time to share life updates and plan trips to visit for years to come. And maybe some of those trips will even be here in Belfast again.
All of this to say, I can appreciate the grief of ending chapters.
I keep trying to think about “what’s next? what’s next? what’s next?” Especially after the marathon, I realized I’d just tackled this mountain of a goal, and I thought I was ready to chase after the next one. My body has reality checked me, and thank goodness for it. Nobody really talks about after the marathon or after the accomplishment of any big goal really, and what I’m learning is that rest is productive.
I’ve been scatter-reading Rest Is Resistance by Tricia Hersey and How to Do Nothing by Jenny O'Dell, and it gives me pause frequently realizing that rest and slowing down is something I continuously come back to and value and desperately want to center my life around, but find it such a challenge. Hersey and O’Dell both talk about how this isn’t just a workaholic thing. It’s a system that is designed to have you responding like this. It is… *gasp* capitalism.
But I find it interesting when the body puts its foot down (maybe not either of my literal feet) and shows you exactly what you need. I’m working on being in tune with what my body is telling me and showing respect to myself by listening to it.
So I’m letting myself take my time… in getting back into sports (I’ve been trying out new, less strenuous activities that still get me out of the house and #KeepDepressionAway), in doing my work (as one of my favorite professors always says, “done is good,” and the work always gets done one way or another, so why panic or rush?), in appreciating what I have left to do here in Belfast (one day I will go to the MAC), and in reflecting on what I will carry with me as I leave.
There’s no hurry. I’ll get back to you.
In the UK masters theses are called dissertations and PhD dissertations are called theses which is the opposite of how the US does it… why? Feel free to tell me.