My Perfect Life Was a Lie

After four years spent living in the glorious Caribbean, we’ve finally left. All the rum cocktails on the beach, afternoons spent swimming in the most exquisite, warm turquoise seas, and lounging by our very own pool on Sundays have come to an end.

But I’m not sad. Honestly I’m not. Because, even though it looked like the instagram account of dreams — an unbelievably perfect reality — my Barbados life presented more than it’s fair share of challenges. And I’m not talking about the ups and downs of small island life (although there were plenty of those). I’m talking about the way reality, in all of it’s stark, ugly truth, was heightened there.

Firstly, death — and its resulting grief — was a big part of my life on the island. In the years before we moved to the Caribbean we lived in Greater London. My husband and I were unmarried and in our mid/late twenties when I found out that I was unexpectedly pregnant with our daughter. We were not long back from Asia where we’d spent a couple of years living a very simple life as ESL teachers, earning just enough to get by and traveling cheaply in the region whenever we could. Part of our trip had been spent living in Thailand with my then partner’s brother, his wife and their three children. And it became clear that my partner’s relationship with his only brother was complicated. They depended on each other in a way that was intense…