Travel Blog 11: Sad to Leave

It's time to go home

Read this first.

I wrote the following as a way to process a web of complex emotions. Giving words to emotions helps me to understand them and process them in a healthy way. I now feel I understand what I was feeling.

I wasn’t sure if I would share this journal entry, but I have decided to do so. Forgive me if there any errors or if anything isn’t articulated clearly.

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Travel Blog 11: Sad to Leave

Today was my last day in Taipei. I am sad to leave.

I connected on a deep level with a number of people. I feel sad that I have to say goodbye. I have an entire social circle here that I wish lived back in Calgary. I want to see them regularly.

In Calgary, I speak with new people on a regular basis due to my personality, the nature of my work, and my lifestyle. As a result, I’m afraid of forgetting those I know here. I feel connected to them now, but maybe the feeling will fade. I fear they might get lost in the sea of people I interact with.

Is that a weird fear?

The thought of forgetting them scares me.

It hit me today that one reason Taiwan (and Taipei specifically) holds a special place in my heart is that it’s where I have a relatively expansive network of friends who either:

1. Are already people I’ve known for a while and like a lot or,

2. Are people I only recently met, but who I feel like would turn into close friends quite quickly if we lived in the same city

It’s also worth mentioning that it’s quite easy for me to make friends here due to the number of popular Meetup groups.

In Canada, the vast majority of my network is comprised of professional relationships or surface-level friendships.

I only have three close friends in Canada, one of which lives in another city and an other who I only see every few months. There is only one who I see on a regular basis. Because of this, forgetting the people I like here in Taiwan represents losing something I value highly: a network of good friends.

That thought scares me.

Here’s what else I will miss aside from what I wrote above…

• Attending Meetups every week and meeting new people

• Eating 蛋餅 at my favourite 早午餐 restaurant

• Living with my friend Momo and her family. I will particularly miss the room I sleep in.

• The convenience of getting around Taipei on the train

• Working on my Mandarin for hours every day

Things I would have done if I decided to spend 6 months or more here…

• Spent more time with those I like

• Visited a few other parts on the island

• Dated

• Continued to attend Meetups and other events I enjoy

• Found a part-time job. I’d be curious about experiencing the work culture here.

Traveling is when I purposely push myself out of my comfort zone and try new things. It’s a way for me to grow personally.

Because of this, I also would have done the following if I had more time here:

• Taken dance lessons (maybe Latin dance.) This would be uncomfortable for me and it is a skill I am curious about learning. I feel oddly uncomfortable putting that into writing for some reason.

• Taken swim lessons. I can’t swim and have been trying to learn on and off for about a year.

• Gotten a gym membership and a personal trainer.

• Gone skating. I found out there is an ice rink here. I can’t skate and would have taken the opportunity to learn.

• Signed up for Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu lessons. This is a hobby I very recently took up.

• Tried to develop a sense of fashion.

  • I have feared and disliked fashion for most of my life. I used to associate it with vanity and insecurity. I also was intimidated by nice clothes, thought they were uncomfortable to wear, could never understand how to put certain articles of clothing on (more as a child than as an adult), and was constantly worried about getting them dirty by brushing up against something muddy or spilling food. Lastly, as a child I hated being told that I had to wear something for a certain occasion. Just let me wear what I want for crying out loud!

  • I got over this emotional block, for the most part, early this year. It would have been a great time to continue working on this aspect of myself.

Pushing myself out of my comfort zone when I’m abroad has a double benefit: my foreign language proficiency improves and I become a stronger, more skilled person.

Give this a try yourself - learning languages in a way that pushes you out of your comfort zone makes the language learning process so much more meaningful and expedites your progress.

To wrap this blog post up, I would like to thank some of the people who made this trip so meaningful to me.

• Annie

• Kent

• Connie

• Amara

• Ava

• Jean

• Nicole

• Momo and family (Qinghui, Derek, and Ann)

• Vanessa

• Thomas

• Tetsu

• Teddy and your girlfriend

• Tina

• Isaac

• Josh

• Rushi

• Tiffany

So long everyone, until our paths cross again…

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Thank you for taking the time to read this post. Feel free to reach out on any social media account (polyglotazren is my username), email me, or comment on this post if you have anything you’d like to share.