memoir
Yes, dear reader, then it started to rain. Do you check the weather trends before you book
a holiday? I’m not that kind of person, and I’d like to say it’s because I’m fun and whimsical,
but really it’s because I’m a bit lazy. Now, there’d been some rain on my previous trip to Tulum,
maybe up to an hour-long downpour every day, but each time the rain stopped, brilliant sun
came out and dried everything and it was as if it had never happened. Not so this week: late
November, it turned out, is a common time for the Yucatán to be hit by severe tropical storms.
The rain started just as I finished my tacos and it did not stop for the rest of the week.
No, I was not going to get a tan. No, I was not going to swim in the sea.
Moreover, I was not ever going to be dry. The infrastructure in Tulum is by
and large designed for people to always be outdoors. There aren’t a lot of solid
ceilings, and where there are solid ceilings there are rarely solid walls.
What could I do? I took classes in the yoga porch where, if I set up
my mat close to the centre, I was only lightly spritzed by water. Between
classes I could lie on the bed in my hut and get rained on through the
palm-leaf roof. I could eat food, but in order to access it, I needed to wade
through a three-inch-deep puddle that had formed just beyond my hut.
I went to have lunch in the fancier beachside hotel across the road. Rain
dripped through the roof there, too. Without asking, a kind waiter brought
me a towel to wear while I ate nachos.
I did not turn off my phone. I used it constantly, texting friends blow-by-blow
accounts of my misery. ‘Go get a massage,’ one suggested, so I went to get
a massage, provided by a kind woman in a hut where rainwater leaked
through the roof and mixed with the massage oil. At night in the muggy
heat, I listened to the clanking generator, raindrops splashed on my pillow and my brain
whirred with self-loathing. I called the airline to see if I could get a flight home, but there
were no flights available until the day before I was scheduled to depart, and at an extortionate
price. I decided to endure the weather for the rest of the week.
So I returned to the yoga porch, rolled out a mat and bent myself into shapes, and I will
concede that by the end of the week, I looked more toned and healthy than I had done when
I arrived, albeit with a complexion that was still pale, with a touch of green. At the end of the
final class, the teacher (slim, blonde, sunny demeanour) gave me a warm hug. She looked
concerned: I must have looked sad. I’m not usually a hugger of strangers, but I leaned in.
By then I’d accepted that, if it hadn’t been a mistake exactly, the trip had achieved the
opposite of what I’d intended when I’d bought my flights and reserved my hut. Rather than
offer a brief respite from my troubles, it had pressed on them like a raw nerve. The truth is,
I probably would have still felt pretty desperate if
the trip had been sunnier: maybe a different kind of
desperation, that I couldn’t even enjoy a nice holiday.
Good weather wasn’t the only thing standing
between myself and happiness. I was getting in
my own way, trying to shut my sad feelings down
instead of allowing myself to move through them.
It’s not like I was able to solve my problems the moment I got home. But realising that they’d
stalked me across North America meant that I was more prepared to co-exist with them than
the day I’d boarded the plane, brimming with desperation to burn them off in the sun.
The next morning, the sun glittered in silver mosaic tiles as I sat at the bar and drank
my final smoothie. I didn’t allow myself to feel sorry that I was leaving just as the storm
had passed. I focused on knowing that soon, I would be free. At the next table, an American
family – middle-aged parents, twentysomething children – were enjoying each other’s
company and the opportunity to wear sunglasses. Tulum, it occurred to me, was a place
where people came to celebrate Thanksgiving, not just to escape it.
The barman smiled at me. ‘You have brothers and sisters?’ he asked. ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘one of
each.’ ‘Ah,’ he said, ‘but you are the one who is alone.’ ‘Well,’ I said, ‘yes.’ I gave him a jaunty
wave when the van finally arrived to collect me. What else could I do? I’d come to Tulum
to escape my problems. I never imagined that I could feel so excited to fly home to them.‘I WAS GETTING IN MY
OWN WAY, SHUT TING
MY FEELINGS DOWN’
‘The rain started
as I finished my
tacos and did
not stop for the
rest of the week’This Really Isn’t About You (Picador) by Jean Hannah Edelstein is out nowPH
O
TO
G
RA
PH
Y:^
G
ET
TY