The Comfort Breaks

 

Last Thursday I flew to England from Italy. Due to weird, conflicting covid rules I had to book a Day 2 test, despite being double vaxed, and submit the results online. To come back I needed a negative test taken no earlier than 48 hours before the flight. As I was only staying 3 days this meant the one test would suffice for both.

When I submitted the result the hallowed certificate came back….with the wrong date on it, invalidating the 48-hour window.

I spent a VERY stressful 18 hours between then and when I got back to Ciampino airport, shitting myself over the fact that I might be denied boarding or forced to quarantine for 5 days in Rome. I worked out contingency plans, looked at flights leaving the day after, trains coming back from the airport to my friends’ town, and worked out where the nearest walk-in covid centre was (turned out it was at Manchester airport).

I was unable to relax, tried meditation and even masturbation in order to calm down.

My friends in England said it was fine for me to stay another day and I realised that I was, overall, overreacting big time to what was a fairly small POSSIBLE glitch in my life.

That night I went with my mate to see his soul band perform at a local pub and although I had a good time, I was constantly distracted by the fear of this situation.

The next day at Manchester airport the staff on the boarding gate never asked to see the test result (which I had open on my phone, slightly enlarged to hide the wonky date) and when I arrived in Rome the cop at border control just stamped my passport and waved me through.

While this wasn’t mere paranoia (the rules SPECIFICALLY state that you have to have these tests and show them to officials in order to enter Italy/ leave England) I realised half an hour later when I got home (I live very close to the airport, lucky me) that my reaction to what had happened and might have happened was way out of proportion.

I couldn’t figure out why this blip had caused such anxiety but then yesterday I realised.

It had broken my comfort zone.

I had travelled to Manchester to see a rock band (The Macc Lads) that I followed around, 30 years ago. They reformed in 2017 and, while in their 60s, are still packing out mid-sized venues and are loved by their fans. I have published two books about them and was given the OK by their manager to come to the gig and sell the books on the merchandise stall. I had everything planned right down to how many pairs of undies I was taking (3), what time I’d need to set off to come back to the airport (4am) and what was the first thing I’d do when I got to my friends’ house (have a huge slice of mature cheddar cheese). Everything was planned and accounted for and I was in control of the situations, with plan B in case stuff went tits up. I would fly in on Thursday and be home by lunchtime on Sunday, having the time of my life seeing my adolescent idols again, eating the guilty pleasures that are English foods**, and enjoying a brief sabbatical.

When that form came back with the 18^th November instead of the 20^th it kicked the legs out from under all my carefully laid plans. I was anxious beyond belief and it went a long way to tainting what was otherwise a very pleasant day. It was all consuming and difficult to control and the only current analogy that fits is from that new Amazon Prime TV show The Wheel of Time when men who try and channel the ‘one power’ end up going insane.

When I finally got back on my own turf and was wrapped cosily in my comfort zone once more, it became possible to analyse my reactions and the realisation was fairly shattering.

I have spent the last few years in what felt like a life full of my own wild choices but was in fact very ordered and somewhat mundane.

I cycle virtually everywhere in Rome BUT I carry an annual travel pass in my wallet and a single-shot bus/metro ticket with my phone...in case my bike conks out. I have a spare set of keys for my flat that I have split up and hidden in locations around the apartment that would make the creators of Resident Evil 2 envious. After forgetting I had a lesson one day and losing the fee, I not only have the lessons in the calendar on my phone but on a whiteboard pinned to the wall in my lounge.

My life is ordered and safe and I know where things are. I live in Rome and somehow believed that I was out of a comfort zone when all I had done was created a new one. Not a bad thing by any means but it meant that when something as simple as a date error kinked my karma, I was not prepared for the emotional maelstrom that I ended up experiencing.

The bigger picture this revealed to me is that I have lived in a muted version of a life for a very long time. My ability to trust other people is still fragile after bad experiences growing up (the earliest at the age of 4) and my mother putting me off ever wanting to raise a family in case they had to go through what I did.

And then...I felt real emotion for the first time in a while and it was all consuming and scary and I hated how I felt. Physical pain is your body’s way of saying that you need to stop doing something or to get help. Stress of that magnitude was my soul’s reaction to a situation beyond my control. While the facts were that I would only lose about 100 Euros in lessons, I would be able to get back 24 hours or so later and my friends would let me stay, I was scared in a way I couldn’t articulate.

It all boiled down to the fact that I was unused to and unprepared for this lack of control over my own life. My mind and spirit wanted me to stay in a world of predictable and careful numbers and spare keys and back up travel passes.

Last night I slept the other way round on the bed. Tonight I’m writing this BEFORE I watch episode 2 of Dexter: The New Blood.

Time to change the comfort zones, slowly.

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** Cadbury's buttons, pork pies, steak pie, Cornish pasty, Lancashire Parkin, Jammie Dodgers and a Galaxy chocolate bar.