The other side of Pura Vida

Oh, that’s the preventative pill, right? You don’t have something for a mistake with contraception that happened yesterday?” I asked at the counter of my small local Costa Rican pharmacy.

The junior pharmacist smiled sweetly at me. He must have been little older than 22 years old.

“You mean la píldora del día después? Oh, no that doesn’t exist here. Está prohibido,” he shared, looking kindly at me with something akin to camaraderie.

I did a double-take. We had experienced a fairly good pharmacist-client rapport until then. I tried again, certain that somewhere my Spanish had let me down.

“So what does a woman do here, in the case that her usual contraception has failed, as is the case for me?”

“Well,” he said, looking sweetly at me, “if your usual method of contraception fails, and you fall pregnant, then hay que tener un chiquitito.” He beamed, as if this was the greatest gift anyone could hope for. Abortion is illegal in Costa Rica.

I stared at him, not quite believing what I had heard. This whippersnapper was telling me, a 34 –year old woman new to his country, that if I fell pregnant, now, single, and living and teaching here, 6 months into a 2-year work contract; that if the unimaginable had happened and a split condom meant that I was now pregnant by a man I had known for three weeks, I was going to have to GIVE BIRTH TO A HUMAN BEING.

This kind-faced young man, still with traces of post-pubescent acne on his jawline, had laid eyes on me all of 2 minutes ago, and yet, here he was, telling me in no uncertain terms what I was to do with my body. The decision was made. Costa Rica said so. It was possibly the most powerful “computer says no” moment I have ever experienced in my life. And I’ve been to the DMV in New York City, where they have a lot of computer says no moments.

Before you judge me as some kind of promiscuous gringa; someone whose knicker elastic is as loose as her morals, some harlot who goes out corrupting young Costa Rican men with her worldly European charms and her tales of travel and the Theory of Knowledge (the subject I teach), let me make something clear. I’ve had three long relationships since the age of 16. My first lasted 6 years, and we stayed together all through high school and university. I slept with precisely no-one else aged 16-22. Then, upon that relationship ending, I fell in love with an older guy, and we were together for 2 years. He proposed.  I accepted. We realised we had made a mistake. I moved out to a shared house and slept with again, precisely no-one, until a few months later, when I met the guy who I thought was the love of my life. We were together 6 years, and we lived together for 5 of those, moving our lives and work from London to Barcelona. When that relationship ended in 2015, I had a few partners, but you could count them on one hand. I think I was fairly restrained, after a lifetime of sexual restraint. I like being choosy. Not that it should matter, choosing to be choosy is just that: a choice. An equally valid choice would have been to tear up society's rule book and go to wild sex parties, but I'm basically too much of a germaphobe.

In my life therefore I have taken the morning after pill exactly twice.  Once after a very young and very stupid experience with my very first partner, a manipulative older guy, aged 15 ¾, and once again last year, after a night with a close friend, a guy my age (we should have both known better – but – mojitos – and we trusted one another a lot. A pregnancy wouldn’t have been the end of the world, but he was moving to Colombia and I to Costa Rica.)

What I had taken for granted in my EU liberal bubble, I suppose, is how easily available that option had been to me. Even so, in my very first experience at a sexual health clinic, I was terrified. I was technically under the age of consent, by a month or two, and a nurse had to give me an extra assessment to ascertain if I was mentally able to make the decision to receive the morning-after pill without them informing my parent. They also had to check that I wasn’t asking for it as a result of abuse, or something untoward. I had to go with my high-school best friend, whose older sister knew where the clinic was, and assured us it would be confidential. I trembled throughout the assessment, feeling like I’d been sent to the school principal’s office. All of the nurse’s questions seemed designed to make me feel slutty and wrong.

My second experience was much more straightforward. I walked into a Barcelona pharmacy, asked for the pill, paid, and gulped it down. I sent a text to my friend to let him know. He treated me to an ice-cream and a hug, and we resolved to be more responsible.

In a different country, with a different prevailing set of beliefs, with a different partner, I too feel different. It was clear that my values and judgements about what was correct were not totally aligned with the law in Costa Rica. I'd noticed snippets of machismo in daily life here - catcalls, being called muchacha, or girl, by older men, enduring plenty of ogling - but I hadn't imagined that my right to a safe, legal way to control my fertility would have been questioned. After some heavy googling and plenty of frantic whatsapps on the subject, it became evident that Costa Rican women do of course have another method. The Yuzpe regimen, as explained by the World Health Organization, is an equally effective post-coital method of emergency contraception alongside the copper IUD and the morning-after pill. It's sightly more fiddly, requiring two megadoses of the combined ordinary pill taken 12 hours apart, but it exists. And boy, was I glad it did. But I had to question what I would have done had I found myself in the same situation aged 15 ¾. Or were I not an educated woman with access to information from trusted sources and not just the final word from a spotty pharmacist. I asked myself what the outcome might have been for a young Costa Rican girl living in a rural part of the country, or in a very strict Catholic household. I asked myself what many women must have to do in other parts of the world. And even as a committed feminist, a liberal, a teacher - I myself was shocked by how little time I had spent reflecting on what the reality of access to contraception and choice must be for many women worldwide.

For this, and so many other reasons, I marched on International Women's Day, March 8, here in San José, amongst thousands of other women and men, protesting femicide, domestic abuse, inequality, lack of access to legal and safe abortions, and the right for women living here to make their own decisions about their bodies' destinies, as well as their ability to work, live, love and exist without fear of judgement, harassment or comment. As I walked alongside people of all ages, holding placards with slogans like "Keep your rosaries off my ovaries", or "Ni una menos!" (a call to action on the number of femicides, several this year already shaking the bedrock of Costa Rican life to its core), I thought about a time when this won't be necessary. I hope I might live to see it. I also tried to think of my sweet junior pharmacist ever having someone tell him in no uncertain terms that he would have to be a father. (Maybe he already is.) That's the thing about this blinkered approach to birth control. It's offensive to men and women alike, robbing both sides of their sovereignty. It no doubt makes both genders feel trapped, and less trusting of the other. I wondered what the correlation is between countries with legal abortions and widespread access to birth control and equality of opportunity in terms of education, pay and opportunity. This paper from Georgetown University's Law Center helped answer my query.

Don't get me wrong, Costa Rica is a stunning place, with so much to recommend. Its people and way of life are often embodied by the phrase "¡Pura Vida!", which generally means, "no worries, no fuss, no stress, life is good", but I now see: there's still a little way to go.

Too Much Tomato Soup, or Cognitive Bias & Curvy Edges

Have you heard of the More Exposure Effect? It's one of our best-loved biases as humans. It's the tendency to express undue liking for things merely because of familiarity with them. It explains why you (probably) love Heinz tomato soup, and would actively choose it over another generic supermarket brand. You've probably had more Heinz tomato soup in your life overall then other generic brands, and now you associate Heinz with what canned tomato soup actually is.

So, of course, this got me thinking about relationships. Tenuous allegorical link incoming.

What if you've only had quite a lot of one kind of tomato soup, and you get stuck thinking that's the only kind of soup out there? (I watched the soup nazi episode of Seinfeld recently, that must be where all these soup metaphors are coming from. I'll stop with that now.)

This past year and a half I've had to re-evaluate so hard, with so much effort, what kind of relationship I'd like, or need. I've been a newly single woman, after being in successive relationships basically since the age of 15,  heading towards her mid-30s. Just writing that line makes me feel neurotic. And yet I'm not. This year (well, now 18 months of self-discovery and singular alone-ness) has been some of the most life affirming time I've spent. Of course much of it has been in the company of others, but really, mostly in my own company. And I've lived a lot of life-affirming moments. But usually as part of a couple.

I know that I have an innate desire to be paired up with someone - my own bias, I admit. I like time on my own, and I value my independence fiercely, but there's something in me that needs to be tactile, needs to hear the breathing of another, needs to look into someone's eyes before the lights go out. I'm someone who finds joy in making breakfast for two, who likes to think about what the other would like to do, or see, or watch, who lives for planning unplanned road trips and weekend breaks, who wants to touch, and smell, and taste the other person in their life, living moments with their hands in my hair, and our legs intertwined on the sofa, and cooking soup, or singing, or dancing together. I actually quite like having private jokes, knowing looks and winks shared only between us. I would hate to be one of the "smug marrieds" but I think I'd make a pretty excellent matching jigsaw piece for someone. You know, with the weird curvy edges.

However,  I'm fairly sure that this bias for the familiar, for the neatly sewn-up, for the happily ever after, has caused me to outstay many a welcome in less-than-healthy relationships. Sure, I've learned something from every guy I've been with, and I hope I've taught them things too. But my former need to be paired - like my less-than-reliable cheap bluetooth speaker - has meant that maybe I've missed facing the music. (Another terrible analogy. I can only apologise). What I'm trying to articulate is that I finally feel like I can be alone, and I can be OK with that. It doesn't make me a failure, even as a woman of 34 years old who has many,  many paired-up friends. And although my lovers might come and go, I'm not going to try to "catch" one or hold on to him to meet some kind of former standard, or some societal norm. No, he shall remain out of my road trip plans, and out of my bed, unless his crazy matches my crazy, big time. And right now, I feel more likely to be able to spot a true kindred spirit, by knowing myself better than I might ever have done, at a hundred paces.

And that feels like growth, and it feels as good as making someone soup. But not tomato soup.

Om Shanti

a sound we make
to make us whole;
a terrifying prospect.
that all of us are merely halves
and shadows of our former selves

we twist this way and that
hold poses strong and fast
breathe deep, look in, not out
and let it go, they say

but only one half of me believes
in the wholeness of the self
without shadows of you.

Earplugs for the Soul

This week was one of the first in a long time where I had one of those cold-sweat early hours awakenings, the kind where a nameless dread has you all aquiver before you even know why. Then your sleepy brain-fug clears and the things you'd worried about a little during the day rush back into your field of vision, only in the wee hours they loom large, much bigger than they did during the day. Why IS that?

A few nights later, our young and carefree (read: twattish) Spanish upstairs neighbours held a gathering on the roof terrace, which now that the nights are warmer means that with the benefit of a coating of alcohol one could conceivably spend most of the small hours outside. The party started around 4am - pretty standard as far as Spanish yoots are concerned - and I was awoken from a deep slumber by some rhythmic bleeping. Because it was two floors up, on the roof, and not in their flat directly above us, I was able to put aside my marginal hatred for their uncluttered brains and weed-infused revelry, fumble around in the dark for some earplugs and return to fitful, dark and detailed dreams.

It's the first time in 9 months that I've started to feel the expat blues; not for a longing for ye olde Englandshire or anything like that, god no, but more from a sense of responsibility being dodged somehow, as there's suddenly lots of crapula going on back in the UK that we're not able to be there for as quickly as we would like. Namely, family illness. More than ever we're feeling the ageing of our parents - something I'm sure has brought many back to Blighty prematurely. It's a timely and devastating reminder that we're not as young and carefree as we thought we were a year ago. Perhaps that serves to feed my dislike of the neighbours, living out a very present existence with not a thought for anything or anyone around them. But then I suppose that's the privilege of youth. Who gives a flying fuck at that age?

There's also been a drive here to broaden our income streams, not relying solely on the B&B but also on using the skills we had before, and there's always a creeping worry that my brain will go soft, or that I'll be left behind within my sector, which has this week seen me throw my hat into the ring for a job in New York. (I know, pretty wacky, hey? Not any closer to family, but perhaps with a sufficiently large enough paycheque that trips back to the UK could be more regular, or I could contribute more to the family purse in times of difficulty). Our life abroad has just begun, but the first relatively carefree 9 months have morphed into something different. Something to test individual mettle. "What is it you really want?" the universe seems to ask. "Because if it's selfish responsibility-abandonment and sunshine, you've had enough now."

Back to facing the music. I don't know how long I can keep the earplugs in for.

La Vida Nueva

Our balcony view - a world away from Vauxhall...

It's been a criminally long time since my last post, and that's mostly because we've been embarking on the aforementioned new life. But I just looked out of the window here and had a moment of catching up with myself, and knew it was time for an update.  Next week it will be four months since we moved into our flat in Barcelona, fondly referred to then as 'the beautiful wreck'. We've spent that time trying to make it habitable and a profitable sideline as a holiday guest room. That's what has consumed our days these past months, meaning we're well behind on our Spanish language learning (please, don't even mention our lack of Catalan)...

During that time, we have painted, plastered, learned how to fix ceiling cracks, scrubbed, bought beds, secondhand sofas, tables, and found chairs on the street, hauled all our furniture up 57 stairs, done 3 mammoth ikea trips, learnt to barter in the markets, started to use the dictionary a bit less, started intercambios, freelancing, a radio station, in the case of my other half (!), held our first dinner party and tried to keep up with the conversation, welcomed friends, family, paying guests, been to the beach a handful of times, thought very seriously about getting a little dog; and started eating dinner much, much later. It's adventure we wanted, and we're having it. And I wouldn't change a thing. (Except obviously having a teleportation device for our friends and family). But they've been coming to visit. And we've loved having proper quality time with them, away from the London hustle we'd become so accustomed to. 

Before, during, after: our living room

Looking back at my notebook from the summer, I can see how far things have come (you get an idea from the photos above, too). In August I was writing on the train en route to the airport to meet my mum, and panicking a bit: 

On my way to pick up mum at Barcelona airport. It's her first visit, and we have been rushing to make the flat appear more finished than it is; having had workmen in for the past couple of days doing everything from changing taps and painting ceilings to industrial polishing of the floor tiles. Just having the floors really clean makes a huge difference, but then so has 30 litres (so far) of brilliant white paint. We started in the huge living room (the ceiling cracks still need fixing) and worked our way to the guest bedroom via the horrid, ugly blue and green kitchen. I don't know how anyone could have countenanced preparing food in that dark, disgustingly dirty room, but it's bright and clean now. The guest room is looking great with a coat of paint and shiny floors; it really will be the jewel in the crown of our little holiday let.

The best thing we have done this week really is ask the upstairs neighbours if we could use their wifi for a week. This has meant we have met them all but also that we have managed to do some research on the building we are living in. We had been given hints of its stature by the owner, who is clearly very proud of the history of the building, but it wasn't until I googled the name of the building's architect that we realised that not only was it famous for housing the Picasso family when they first arrived in Barcelona, it was also the building that the very first photograph EVER taken in Spain happened to portray. And add to that the fabulous setting opposite the Llotja de Mar, Barcelona's centre of trade and industry, plus in later years the art school where Picasso himself trained, and you have a location so incredible we were sat open mouthed whilst reading. It's also wonderful news for our business. I hope these nuggets of history excite and tantalise our guests as much as they do us.

But first : let's hope it passes the mum test!


I'm smiling as I read that through again. Firstly because of the energy it took to be undertaking all of that work, and because we've over the worst of it now. But also because it was still so optimistic, and although I had no idea how things would turn out, or whether we'd ever manage to get the guest room operation off the ground, I put every ounce of faith I could muster into the plan, the one we'd been talking about for years, the one we'd worked so hard to leave our comfortable but ultimately unfulfilling London lives for. Watch this space, as there are undoubtedly more updates to come... and in the meantime, if you're wondering how the beautiful wreck looks now, have a look here. You can even come and stay with us here. I'd be delighted to meet you.

The Quarter-Life Crisis, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying About Failure

The plan is coming along nicely.

We've identified the city (check), come up with a business plan (sort of) and started tucking away savings (erm...yeah. I am putting that shoe fetish on hold, as of next week. Promise). We've sorted a date to leave our London flat. In February we're moving in with my mum for 6-8 weeks while we squirrel away our rent money. (Eeep.)

All that remains is to get driving (ok, so that's a fairly large undertaking, but my 19 year old cousin has  already beat me to the wheel in Wood Green, so I should bloody well be able to apply myself). It's getting embarassing. My US family members already think I'm some kind of idiot-savant who just about manages to hold down a job and feed myself without being able to drive to Walgreens. Not that we have a Walgreens to drive to. But you get my meaning.

Oddly enough, even with all this change coming, there's a strange feeling of calm about my future washing over me. Even though I have absolutely no idea what the next year will hold, I feel like I'm really working towards something. And even if it turns out to not be a sustainable business, at least I will have tried something independent, and been my own boss. It's not quite 'do what you love', because, as this very clever lady rightly says, what we love changes all the time. So I'm taking what I consider to be some very good advice and doing what I am. What I am is someone who needs a challenge. Someone who has always wanted to be fluent in another language, and do something I feel passionate about. Passion is everything, after all.

I spent this Saturday at the Nordic Study Abroad Conference, as a speaker alongside some very learned professors from the Universities of Cambridge University, Brown, Georgetown, and Copenhagen. 250 young Danish, Swedish and Norwegian students assembled at PWC's Copenhagen offices to hear from those who had done something different, and were all the better for it. I was possibly the least senior person on the billing, with no letters after my name, no ivy-league degree under my belt, and a mere 6 years' experience of working in the field of international student recruitment. To tell you the truth, I was pretty petrified of putting on that little microphone headset and owning the stage in the way some of the more seasoned professors had. Many of the other speakers had been truly inspiring, and they had managed to captivate the audience in that way that only those who have inbuilt charisma, and a true passion for what they are speaking about, can.  But watching the talk preceding mine, from Professor Sudhanshu Rai at the Copenhagen Business School, I was impressed by some home truths in his speech, which was all about not being afraid to make mistakes, or "fail". I was struck in particular by one statement he made, which put the whole 'failure is not an option' culture into a new light. He simply told the audience of very high-achieving, driven students that when we succeed, we experience a state of euphoria, but that when we fail, we experience a state of reflection. It's therefore only with reflection, and true consideration, that real successes are born.

Hearing that actually helped me to make a better presentation (I suppose the pressure of failure was lessened a bit!). I spent the rest of the conference being pretty inspired just being able to speak to these young people, who had such big plans in their sights. I'm not much older than many of them, and they were so committed, so eager to do something memorable, to chase their dreams that it made me stop for a minute to consider why I'm feeling something very similar now. I might be a little late to the party, but I've realised that we all need to do something that scares and exhilarates us once in our lives. 

A tiny me, onstage (bricking it).

I guess now that I'm not as scared of getting up and presenting alongside the great and the good, in front of an audience who will achieve more in their 20s than many of us will in our entire lives, I'm on the right road. There's still loads that I am scared of: getting a phrase completely wrong in my fledgling new language; running out of money; having to live at my mum's again for a few weeks, or months. I'm scared that I might really miss the security of an office job. I might miss London terribly. And I think I still have a lot to learn, even from those 18, 19 and 20 year-olds who haven't figured it all out yet. And basically I think, if I were younger, I'd run at the opportunity to gain new experiences and try out something new.  I'm not getting any younger, so today is the youngest I'll ever be. So I'm going to bloody well do something cool before I'm old.

Maybe it's a bona-fide quarterlife crisis. But hell, I'm enjoying it.

Growing Up

Ma & Pa getting hitched in NYC, 1975. How cool is that hat?!

I've been thinking a lot about getting older recently.

Being at my mum's house a few weekends ago and seeing some old photos of her and my dad has got me thinking a lot about my roots. Mum was excited at having found old photos, mainly because we lost so many precious ones to the swirling, destructive winds of Hurricane Andrew in 1992. She showed me photos of my parents at my age. At my age, my mother had already done two huge life moves, from London to Trinidad and then to Miami. I wondered at her bravery, and at her ability to adapt.

As I get older, and hurtle towards my 30th birthday in August, I'm finding that I feel rather reflective. I start to notice my face changing - the smile lines are just a little bit more pronounced around my eyes, and I can see my skin is changing. New freckles I hadn't noticed before begin to appear. But I'm trying not to indulge in too much gazing in the mirror, and it doesn't consume as much of my time as it did in my early 20s, that's for sure. A cursory once-over is enough in the mornings, mostly to make sure I haven't got toothpaste all over my chin. No, the days of high-preening are probably behind me now.

I challenge anyone to spot any wrinkles from here...

I have started to notice a common theme amongst friends and colleagues who are all approaching this pivotal age - they are all planning to change their lives somehow, whether it's new house, new job, new partner, new baby, or new business. 30, unlike 18 or 21, or even 25, is the beginning of real adulthood, it feels like. We all have some urgency to our plans now. For some of my female friends, this is even more true, especially where relationships are concerned. Two out of four of my closest female friends are now married and thinking very closely about having children. The other two are well into their 30s and seem much less panicked about making babies. They know it will come. They've gotten over the hump, as it were.

For me, it's only when I have time to sit down and think that I start to make some headway towards deciding what the heck it is that I want. Most of the time, working a full-time job in London feels like playing continual catch-up: with your friends, with your work, with your life admin, with your laundry, with sleeping. It's only by being away from the melée that I start to commit myself to the next thing I want to do. And on holiday a couple of weeks ago, I decided. We decided. We're going to start a small business and rent rooms to weary city-travellers, and put our combined skills of being good hosts (or so we are told), creative marketers and being people-people to use. We need to do bags more research of course, not to mention finalise the city in question, as well as create a business plan, and save up lots of our hard-earned money, but the wheels are in motion - we plan to leave London in March 2013.

It's basically beans on toast from here on in for a while, but I feel so very empowered. A new sense of freedom and the scent of adventure in the distance has completely motivated me. Learning a new language will be part of it, but the ability to work together towards a common goal, in a new place, for our own profit (or possibly loss, in the first few months, I'm not going to shy away from being realistic here) is driving me forward towards the biggest and most frightening, exhilarating step towards adulthood that I have ever taken.

I think that's a good place to be, aged 29 years, 10 months, and 5 days.