Wednesday, March 13, 2013
lying alone on my bed at an 8-bed mixed dorm hostel in barcelona with thoughts flooding over my head...
i'm not sure when was the last time i felt like this - suffocating from uncertainty, unfamiliarity. it shouldn't be like this, especially when it's supposed to be a holiday. something enjoyable. something happy.
1st day in barcelona. shouldn't it be a wonderful thing? yes, such beautiful cityscapes, but, no one to share this first-hand experience with.
i would say it was an okay training day except for the fact that i screwed up. pushed too far in foreign land. that 50 euros was the price to pay. and it hurt bad. probably that was why i ended up writing this post - that incident flooded my mind with thoughts of the remaining weeks of this trip.
it's really only the 4th day since the commencement of my lone europe travel ever since zh and faiz left for school and internship while richie remains injured and stranded in his hospital bed in oostende, but it has been a real tough struggle with the mind, to say the least.
now i know how long two months actually is. if you actually count the dates right, today is only my 15th day out of singapore, and i still have exactly 8 weeks to go.
can i actually handle this loneliness? this feeling away from home, away from friends, away from familiarity.
making new friends is tough when you don't have your (already) good friends with you. even tougher when the citizens in the country you visit don't have english as their native tongue. for the first time, i felt a true language barrier. you feel distant. away. vulnerable. of course we still share the same universal language of movement, and that's really the only thing that's making me feel alright.
and will i have enough money to last me? i'll have to work doubly hard to get contacts so that i could stay in their houses instead of hotels/motels since splitting the cost doesn't work now. i should really save up the money, even though there's this lingering voice at the back of my head saying 'don't worry, there's still money in the bank.'
my mother even asked me to just buy a new tix back home, and trust me, it really is tempting.
but i don't really want to waste my amsterdam return tix (but i do admit it was a rash decision to book a trip for two months long - should've just gotten a one-way). and i still really wanna travel, experience, and live, before i go to NS (which i believe is way more tougher than this).
i guess, despite the current feeling of loneliness/fear/self-induced stress, i'll have to push on. it's a challenge i set for myself. it's only two months. all the talks about studying/interning overseas - that'll be more than six months maybe. and yes, you'll be alone too. so if i can handle this, why do i even have such high hopes about living overseas?
maybe i'll get used to it by the end of march. maybe when i get to denmark and uk. it's the starting that's the hardest, like everything else.
i just hope this two months will train me up not just in parkour, but my mind.
it's all part of the package.
when i touch down in singapore on the 7th, i'll feel so accomplished.