I’ve just got back from a week in Croatia with my Mum. This is not the first coach tour holiday we’ve been on and I doubt it’ll be the last. Over many years, we’ve figured out that having a schedule to follow – crucially, set by someone else – allows us to see many sights and go to many places without much in the way of argument.
Still, holidaying with a parent when you’re 45 yourself is a bit weird. Holidaying with 47 strangers when you’re a committed introvert is absolutely nuts.
Seven days spent with other people, 24 hours per day is exceptionally hard work. Chaotic group buffet breakfasts, exchanging morning pleasantries while waiting for the coach, the general small talk and chit chat over the course of a day trip and another group buffet with shared dining tables in the evening drains me almost to my limit. Sharing a room with someone – anyone, even my own mother – on top of that pretty much runs out the last of my social battery, every day.
In addition, it’s inevitable that all those strangers will come to some immediate conclusion about you (and everyone else on the tour) and will talk to and treat you in line with that assumption from day one, until you finally lose them in the baggage reclaim hall on the way home (I’m talking about you, Pauline).
What I’ve realised over many years is that it actually has nothing to do with me. People will see you as they want to see you and – over one week and with no great incentive to want to try – it’s almost impossible to shatter that view and replace it with something more realistic.
Surprisingly though, in the context of conserving social energy, this actually works in my favour. For a week, I am just Someone Else. A travel-sized version of myself, maintaining the core elements of Lyndsey-ness while leaving all the fun extras and potentially breakable bits behind.
There are a handful of occasions where I’ll break out of my self-imposed façade and call someone out on something, most usually when it represents an -ism of some sort (still talking about you, Pauline). But for the most part I maintain a thin veneer of myself and otherwise just nod and smile and respond in a way that’s entirely expected and hits just the right level of polite interest.
I’m not there to share my deepest inner world. I’m there to have a pleasant holiday, make sure my Mum has a pleasant holiday and be one small part of what helps the rest of the group have a pleasant holiday. It’s not Burning Man, it’s not a gap-yah trip to Thailand to find myself, it’s a coach tour for mostly retirees who just want an agreeable week in a warm place.
Before I left, I bought a cheap temporary ring and left my actual engagement ring back at home with G. I chose the temporary ring in part because it reflected certain elements of my engagement ring, helping me to remain emotionally connected to my life back home, but mostly because it would be functional. It wouldn’t matter if a combination of sea water and suntan oil saw it slip off into the Adriatic; my real ring was safe at home.
I left my real self back home with G for much the same reason.