my first real failure here

a couple of weeks ago, i excitedly set out on my first real weekend of travel in a while. i was itching to get off of campus, and, to be honest, to run away from the little annoyances that come from living in this place. i was looking forward to a night not characterized by drunken yelling waking me up at 2 am, or fire alarms doing the same at 3 and then 4 and then 5 am (which is a distressingly common occurence). i needed a change of scenery, a more legitimate reason to put off homework other than the fact that i just didn't want to do it... and cardiff was beckoning.
what i didn't expect from this trip was that getting away from those little annoying distractions here would open me up to all of the loneliness that they had been obscuring. i enjoyed the three hour train ride, arrived in cardiff, settled into a sparkling 5-star-worthy hostel, and promptly fell apart inside.

i think that sometimes you don't realize how unhappy you are until your environment changes sufficiently to trip that switch inside you. and then it all surfaces like some huge, ugly whale that just can't hold it's breath any longer. that whale came absolutely crashing up out of the depths, and did a big old belly flop on my weekend in cardiff.

this was the first time, in all the time i've been here, that i've truly failed to be here. sure, there have been lots of times i've wished i was somewhere else... but this was the first time that i honestly was not present to what i was experiencing. i wasn't able to enjoy my usual wandering, i didn't feel the excitement of new discoveries; i just didn't want to be there, and so i wasn't. i was 5000 miles away, and hating the fact that i couldn't be at home. i missed everyone, especially erik, missed my special places, really missed being able to talk out what i was feeling with someone... pretty much i was one big ball of emotional turmoil and disatisfaction.
what's worse, is that i took my unhappiness out on the people and things around me. i got irritated with my travel buddy, and treated her with an unfair lack of patience and regard. i was blind to the beauties of cardiff, because they weren't what i wanted: i wanted home, and in wanting it, totally missed out on what the weekend had to offer. i recognized what i was doing too, and i was frustrated with myself for feeling that way, but was unable to dig myself out of the mountain of yuck that had fallen on my head, so i gave up. i surrendered the weekend to self-pity, and left it at that. it wasn't going to be salvaged, and i figured i may as well get it out of my system. wallowing ensued. i really failed this time around.

looking back on that weekend, with the benefit of hindsight, i had a lot of legitimate reasons to crash that way. i think i did the healthy thing, in just letting myself feel like crap. trying to fight it would have made it seem less legitimate (and doubting yourself in that way is absolutely the worst thing in the world), would have left me exhausted, and would have prevented me from processing what was going on inside. my only regret is that i feel like i cheated cardiff, not even giving it a chance to reveal itself to me, and that i treated katie poorly for it. sometimes the timing is less than ideal, i suppose, but i've learned that it is impossible to control such things. and even less so here.
so, it was a less than stellar weekend. it's honestly kind-of a grey blur in my memory. but, i once again was presented with a new challenge, and dealt with it as best as i could. i'm learning if nothing else.

b

ps> below are a few pictures from cardiff. i did manage to document a bit of it, even if my mood is pretty clearly reflected in the color palette...

castell caerdydd (cardiff castle)

inside the castle keep

lonely walk

cardiff bay

cardiff bay waterfront walk, looking toward the norwegian church

cardiff bay people watching