“I’ll marry you if you get a boob job”. Those were the immortal words my ex, the man I thought I was going to spend the rest of my life with, uttered when we were on our annual summer holiday.

Memories warp with the passage of time, and we have debated whether those were in fact the exact words he said, but as I told him, they’re the sort of words you wish you could misinterpret, not the sort you do. For me, they set in motion a tsunami of change, the wave of which I still feel like I’m riding today.

Thankfully those changes have gone largely in my favour, which means I should be grateful he said them. But I’d rather he’d have kept those thoughts to himself and I remained living in ignorant bliss of the reason why he’d never proposed marriage.

That’s life though – and this isn’t about him anyway, or the size of my chest. This is about the aftermath of those ridiculous words that led me to quit my highly paid, fly-you-around-the-world-business-class job, leave my gorgeous (if slightly breast-obsessed) boyfriend and his stunning house, to work for the NHS as an apprentice, embrace a life of singledom, and live in a static caravan with my cat.

For as long as I can remember, I had one ambition: to be paid to get on a plane. I couldn’t think of anything better than the escapism travel brought. When I made it happen for the first time and found myself swimming in a rooftop pool of a five-star hotel in Barcelona, I thought I was going to spontaneously combust.

That incredible feeling persisted for nearly a decade, and by the time it came to an end, I’d worked on every continent (except the cold one), living what everyone saw as “my best life”. I was an analyst, and on a good day, I would only have to work a couple of hours to pocket a grand. But glorious as it was, I had become utterly miserable. 

I could no longer take the intense boredom induced by staring at spreadsheets for hours on end. Or the incredible pressure of presenting said spreadsheets to hundreds of people, salivating over the money they thought I was going to make them. It was a strange mix that made me feel like a fraud. I was sure people could sense that I was just there for the air miles and indifferent to the world they cared so passionately about. I knew there was nothing wrong with that world, but it wasn’t mine anymore – it didn’t feel right. It wasn’t where I fit. 

I distinctly remember the career equivalent of Boobgate, despite it being far less traumatic. I was lying down, sipping champagne, being flown back from South Africa. I was sunkissed and sated, yet dreading going home. I didn’t want to present my research findings from the trip because frankly, all I could really remember from the previous two weeks was the penguins at Boulders beach. Forget the important meetings I had with all the important people – they didn’t waddle in a way that made me laugh, therefore they meant nothing. 

I don’t know how or why, but somewhere along the way even the luxury had become meaningless, and I just didn’t care anymore. I didn’t care if I could help some global conglomerate change people’s perceptions of their products, I didn’t care if I could help a multi-national retailer uncover another multi-national retailer’s strategy, I didn’t care if I could help someone make more money.

I was done existing in this strange fake reality where nothing really meant anything. I wanted to be somewhere real. 

I realised that if I couldn’t enjoy that moment, on that bed, with those bubbles tickling my tongue, I probably needed drastic change. I was starting to form a new ambition: be paid to do something I enjoyed. 

So I quit. The man and the job. The job first, then the man, four months later. In hindsight it would have been far simpler and much less financially crippling to do it the other way around, but as I said – you can’t have it all. That’s the funny thing about life: once you start to question one aspect of it, it becomes easier to question other bits too. And once you make a change, you start to think you might as well keep going. I began by handing in my resignation, and before I knew it, I’d quit everything and was standing in the pissing down rain outside a static caravan, cat in a bag, boxes of stuff everywhere, staring at four 47kg Calor Gas canisters, wondering how likely it was that they would explode.

A static caravan nicknamed The Caravan of Love (that’s a story for another day, but spoiler alert, it has not been that for me), wouldn’t have been my first choice. But beggars can’t be choosers. I was determined to stay in ridiculously expensive Sussex, and as I was absolutely adamant I wasn’t ever sharing a living space with anyone ever again, it was really my only option. One which I’ve been incredibly grateful for every day since my farmer friends offered it up to me. It’s appreciated in value over time, and shows no sign of stopping.

Don’t get me wrong – trading in brick walls for aluminium has not been easy. I have frequently feared I may freeze to death in the winter, or boil to death in a heat wave given the paper-thin walls, floor and ceiling. I’ve also feared I may be blown away in a storm, or crushed to death by the trees outside falling in on me. Perhaps I might be overrun by the unbelievable number of rodents my cat can now bring me as gifts due to our new, more rural, setting. Despite my fears, I’ve conquered the weather, become very adept at catching mice, and the gas canisters have thankfully remained intact.

In doing so, I have somehow survived the last two years without my job or a man. They’ve been the best of my life. The rent is cheap, I have no neighbours so I can sing along as loudly as I like to Kylie without fear of judgement, and I’ve long since forgotten what it felt like to lock a door or carry keys. I’m now an apprentice occupational therapist, with only 18 months until I qualify, and I feel like I did when I swam in that rooftop pool. Despite the fact that now, earning minimum wage, I won’t be gracing any five-star hotels with my presence any time soon, I’ve never been happier. Not once have I wondered if I made the right choice, because it was a decision I made by myself, for myself.

I work five other jobs, mainly assisting in one way or another. I’m an admin assistant, personal assistant, tearoom assistant, occasional shepherd assistant, and cat sitter alongside my apprenticeship job working in a hospital. It takes me more than two months to earn what at one point I could have earned in a day. But I’m so deliriously happy. Because everything now means something. Previously, when my smooth hands would only ever be used for typing, now they’re calloused from pushing wheelchairs. My nervous feet used to shake under the table as I delivered presentations over Zoom, now they’re tired from pacing hospital wards.

Sometimes I stare up at my pelmets and think about how I used to stare up at a Banksy. I realise I’m no longer surrounded by cool objects that brought status and stories; things that meant something to everyone else. Instead I’m in a world where everything around me only means something to me. Every object has come to represent the decision I made to put myself first. To say to myself it’s not okay to be with someone who doesn’t love every bit of you, and it’s not okay to do a job that makes you miserable.

Even when I wake up in the middle of the night and it’s so cold I can see my cat’s breath, I don’t panic. She’ll be struggling to get into the bedding sandwich (weighted blanket on top of me and electric blanket underneath) and I’ll let her in, look into her eyes and say, “It’s okay, one day I’ll buy us a warm house”. She purrs away, we both fall asleep, and I rest well, safe in the knowledge that yes, everything now feels that little bit harder, but everything is also that little bit easier, because I’m free.

I’ve constructed a perfect tiny world in my little tin-can filled with everything I truly love. There’s no space for excess, with either people or things. Everything has to mean something (or somehow keep me warm), otherwise it’s out. It’s shockingly simple, and I love it. I have found so much beauty and peace between these thin walls.

I’ve been lucky enough to live in some spectacular places throughout my life, but funnily enough, this is the only one that I’ve ever called home – because for the first time, I no longer wish to escape.