Chapter 4
4
At the end of that watershed day, I didn’t just start boxing up my stuff and immediately book a flight to Ireland.
—
Instead, I took the odd step of ordering a miniature handheld loom and a weaving kit. No clue why. I wasn’t remotely craft-y. All I knew was that I needed something to soothe my many anxieties: my beloved books had stopped working because my concentration was shot and I couldn’t keep depending on my evening alcohol.
Then, in a bargain struck deep in my subconscious, I made myself forget the truths which had revealed themselves. My current circumstances were known quantities. Unhappy as they made me, I was more frightened of venturing into a vast unknown.
And there were plenty of distractions. Well, one big one really—work. Kamilah, Monifa and I were going all out, talking down influencers who were hurt and angry.
Our little crack squad emailed, Zoomed and phoned, apologizing over and over. Because our remorse was sincere, the influencers went easy on us. The formula returned to the lab and reappeared, this time without the color-lightening chemical. Then we launched it.
As expected, thousands upon thousands boycotted the product, but it wasn’t a wipe-out. Then, quietly, it began to sell. Seven months later, the sales figures were exactly as predicted before the sabotage. To celebrate I bought myself a skein of wool.
Despite my job creating so much internal noise, clarity often broke through, reminding me I couldn’t go on this way. Quickly I’d pick up my loom or open a bottle of wine or contemplate being a bankrupt and that was enough to knock all thoughts of radical life change from my head.
One thing keeping me anchored in my New York life was my bone-deep judgement for anyone who “walked away from it all.” I wasn’t a naturally ambitious person but living in Manhattan had infected me. A persuasive little voice would insist that burnout was just a made-up thing like the compulsion to eat coal. You want to be a weak, lazy loser? One of those also-rans who earned lots of money but preferred to have a rest? We rest when we’re dead, right! You there, Anna Walsh, yes you, you dedicated workhorse, you can buy anything you want right now! How about an air fryer! You never cook and you don’t know what an air fryer actually does, but that’s not important.
Detaching from that mindset was hard work. But financially supporting myself when—if—I “walked away from it all” was a genuine worry. Beauty PR was the only real job I’d ever had. In my twenties I’d worked on car production lines, in canning factories, running bars on Greek islands. If it involved back-breaking work, no qualifications and lots of freedom, I’d done it. But those were not jobs for the less-young woman—which was what I was. This came as a shock every time I realized.
—
It took at least a year for the pendulum of my indecision to stop swinging. In the intervening time I crossed the line, back and forth, back and forth. I’d make peace with living in Manhattan forever. Then something odd would happen, like realizing the only time I felt calm was when I was weaving a small square of fabric. Or I’d get into an altercation with teenage boys in the street. (A one-off, but it was enough.) That incident prompted a visit to the doctor where perimenopause was finally diagnosed.
The subject had been tiptoed around in other visits—my irregular periods, ever-present anxiety, faint mustache and outbreaks of unbearable heat. My doctor and I had told each other it was all down to stress. Adrenaline , we said. It was as if she was too embarrassed to tell me I was aging and I was too frightened to admit it. But the results of the blood test were unequivocal: I was approaching menopause.
But menopause was for other women! Women like my sister Margaret, who’d been eagerly anticipating it since her thirty-fifth birthday. Not me, though. Not yet. I was only in my forties. Admittedly more than halfway through, but still too soon for perimenopause, surely? Actually no, as it transpired. I was right on time.
Wary of HRT, I began a regime of natural products. But after three months without any improvement, desperation made me submit to the hormones.
Things immediately got better. But thanks to the diagnosis itself, I felt like an aircraft which had started its final descent. Life seemed suddenly more urgent . I upgraded my loom for a slightly bigger one. I fantasized about living a gentle, Wi-Fi-free life where I ate home-grown carrots from self-made plates. Very late one night I rang Ireland to tell Dad I loved him. (Mum grabbed the phone from his hand and angrily told me that he was terrified.)
Then Angelo and I broke up.
After that Tuesday morning when I’d lost my temper over the prayer bowl, we’d talked, acknowledging we were under atypical stress. But at that stage, we weren’t even a year into the pandemic. As the weeks, then months continued, Angelo seemed to be continually laundering the bed sheets—some sort of stress response. Him marching past me, his arms full of white cotton, giving off a low-grade rage, felt like a twice-daily event.
As for me, we were eating dinner one evening when a strange noise began—as if Angelo was engraving something on his plate. He was putting so much weight into it, I half expected ceramic splinters to spark into the air. Why did he have to carve so hard? It was only cauliflower . When had this started?
But a coldness in my gut told me he’d always done it; I just hadn’t noticed before. And now that I had, I would never un-notice it again.
Occasional breaks in lockdown bought us some time, but by late spring of 2022, when I could return for good to my own apartment, we were beyond saving.
“Angelo?” One night, with no warning, I knew it was time.
“Yeah.” He nodded. “Let’s sit down.”
Oh, okay. He knew .
Facing each other, he tucked a strand of my hair behind my ear and said, “Looks like we’ve come to the end of our rainbow.”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“So am I. But it’s the right thing.”
Sad as I felt, it wasn’t enough to change my mind. Briefly I wondered if all we needed was a short break. But we’d had breaks in the past—well, one in particular—and this was different. I still loved him, I still respected him, but I no longer wanted to attach my life to his.
I was now free to move back to Dublin, if it was really what I wanted.
Testing the waters, I emailed an Irish recruitment consultant who assured me that after bossing it for eighteen years in the toughest city on earth, I’d be concussed by a hail of job offers. As—just like me—her job was to be a professional liar, I was somewhat skeptical. Immediately I contacted another consultant who was less excited but still confident I’d land something decent. “They won’t match your New York money,” she warned. But that meant that they wouldn’t match my New York stress either.
Doing full due diligence, I spoke to yet another, who simply couldn’t believe I was walking away from beauty PR. “That’s where you’ve the best chance of getting a job.”
“I’ll do anything but beauty,” I said.
“The prison service is looking for a communications officer. On a quarter of your current salary. How does that sound?”
But the next consultant said that as a result of working at “legendary” McArthur on the Park for almost two decades, I could walk into any job in Irish PR.
It was impossible to know whom to believe, but even the most cautious of them seemed certain I’d get something if I wasn’t too sniffy about salary.
The more positive consultants were keen to get me in front of potential employers right away, but I knew I wanted to live in Ireland for a while, boots on the ground, to get a sense of what was out there. The changes I was making were already huge so I might as well explore all possibilities.
It would mean a couple of months without an income. I was anxious but it could be done.
Then, on a warm night in May, getting ready for bed, I saw the butterfly. It was no big surprise to see a butterfly, it was almost summer—except butterflies tended to be daytime creatures.
What you need to know is that butterflies and I had history—details will come. Call me a credulous magical thinker who wasn’t courageous enough to take full responsibility for my decisions but at many pinch points in my life, a butterfly had appeared; I’d always taken it as a “sign” that it was safe to proceed.
This particular one moved around my bedroom with…well, what looked to me like purpose. It sat on my wallet—telling me I’d be okay for money? Next it visited my keys—I’d have a place to live? Briefly it landed on my face, as if giving me a kiss, then flew out of the window. “Thank you,” I called after it.
The visit gave me enough steel to give notice to Ariella, who insisted I work “every damn second” of my five months’ notice period: it would be a tough time.
All the same, my exit plan was in place—time to start spreading the news.
After eighteen years of my parents and sisters begging me to come home to Dublin, they were finally about to get their wish.
They weren’t going to like it.