Failure

The past two weeks have been really hard, and I have no idea why. My life is good. I enjoy it, seriously, I do. But I don't feel like myself. I feel like someone lost. Like I'm supposed to be somewhere else, someone else. My mind's foggy. I keep losing things and finding them hours later, exactly where I thought I'd left them in the first place. I can't think. I can't even write.

I keep crying. If I see or read or hear anything remotely sad or sweet, I'm fighting back the tears. And if I'm alone, I don't even try to fight them.

I look at myself and I don't know what I see.

I feel like such a failure. I don't know why. I can't put it into words. I just feel like I could be so much better than I am. I could be a better writer. I could be nicer. I could be more worthwhile. I could be a person who deserves to be where I am.

I'm stressed over school, too. That's new to me. I usually never worry about that, even when I procrastinate. And that usually works for me. I got straight As last semester. But this semester I feel like I'm just going to fail everything. And then when I graduate, I'm going to go straight home and never do anything with my life. Never go anywhere, never become anything. Honestly, I'm absolutely terrified of the future.

On the bright side, I did make a pretty cool dress out of newspaper. I guess if I fail at everything else, I can always go into newspaper fashion design.

When I wake up in the morning, I want to wake up as myself, again.

What I did this semester (when I had my camera with me)

For one thing, I got a new claddagh ring! Not from Ireland, but it's still pretty. Though, that happened yesterday, and for now I'm only talking about this semester. (During which, two more rings fell off my finger and got lost. Seriously, if I ever get married I'll have to glue that bitch to my finger).

ANYWAY. Things that happened:

We went to Emily's Bridge at midnight, and didn't die! Yay!

It's a pretty creepy place.


Had lots of girls' nights.





Visited Meg and Ryan's homeland in the Northeast Kingdom.

Celebrated 3 nights of Halloween (5 if you count the low-key candy and horror movie nights).

Night One!

Night Two!

Night Three!

Had more girls' nights.

Celebrated Christmas, tastefully.

And took everything very, very seriously, at all times.

The Revenge of Helen Keller

A while ago-- weeks, already, don't ask me how-- my Vermont besties, Meg and Ryan, came to the Cape for a week. And by came, I mean they suddenly appeared in my doorway. You know, homeless and stuff. Except not really because it was all planned by everyone except me. I have NO CLUE how they managed to keep it a secret, but it was funny, Meg was all, "didn't you think it was strange that your parents bought a new air mattress and a bunch of other stuff?" and I was all, "no, my parents are weird!"

Anyhoo, I guess we must be weird, too, because what we ended up doing most of the time (in between going to the drive ins and P-town and clubbing and stuff) was laughing about Helen Keller.

(I'm pretty sure he was pretending to be Helen Keller.)

They liked the fact that Cape Cod has a bunch of braille trails. The kind with ropes to hold on to while you walk, attached to splintery wooden posts that you smack your hands against because you're blind and can't see them.

Like this:

(Conveniently, this trail's winding and there's also lots of roots to trip on!)

But yeah, we laughed at her lots. I mean, with her. I guess she started to get annoyed with it. (Though she had to admit that I hula hooped just like her.)

See? Just. Like. Helen. Keller.

Anyway, the last night they were on Cape, we were figuring out what to do. I didn't get out of work till ten at night and they were leaving at like one in the morning (slight exaggeration), so they didn't want to do anything too intense. SO, we went with the obvious option of going back to Johnny Kelly Park with a ouija board to contact Helen Keller's ghost. Obvious choice.

Since the Cape doesn't believe in street lights of any kind, it was wicked dark and sketchy and we ended up never even taking the ouija board out if the box. We just huddled on a piece of playground equipment like cool kids and giggled. (See?? We are so cool!) We stayed like that for a couple minutes before I mentioned that Helen Keller's ghost doesn't talk, it touches. Which, you know, was a great idea, because then we kept expecting Helen Keller to reach out and touch us and got wicked sketched out and ran away via the slide. Zak Bagans would be so proud. Except not, because we never yelled at her, bro.

(The funny thing is that I was hanging out with another friend a few nights later, and we decided to walk around a graveyard because we were bored, and it was only a little sketchy.)

Anyway, as we were going down the slide, the strap of my purse broke. Right away, I knew is was the ghost of Helen Keller. Touching my purse.

That was pretty anticlimactic. But, you know, Helen Keller hates climaxes.

Why I need go back to Galway. (And the rest of the West!)

Okay, so I know that I haven't even finished writing about Cork yet, but I just got back from Western Ireland and I really wanna talk about it. Need to talk about it.

Because it was amazing.

It was beautiful in so many different ways, and I had one of the best nights there that I've had in Ireland so far. (Um, my roommate Ashley and I ran around downtown and talked to random people. Except we weren't ourselves. She was Megan Kelly from New York, and I was Sarah Nilap from Alaska. Shush. It was fun. We made up this huge back story, too. You probably had to be there.) I think Galway's my favorite city ever, pretty much. (Basically, if I had to describe all of the Irish cities I've been to really, really quickly, it'd be like this: Dublin: busy-indefinable, Belfast: quiet-friendly, Cork: crunchy-mellow, Galway: jovial.) But Galway's the last place we went to, so more on it later!

Our first stop was a fairy ring in County Clare.

You aren't technically supposed to go in the middle of fairy rings-- it's supposed to be wicked bad luck-- but we all did, anyway. Apparently, actual Irish people won't even go inside them, though that might just have been something they told us to make the ring more exciting.

Take that, fairies.

We didn't stay long, but it was fun. The only thing missing was a bit of fairy sighting.

We went to the Burren, next. It's a region in Count Clare that's, well, barren. It's nearly all scraggly, grey rock. You can walk on it for ages.

I sort of fell in love with it. It's just so different from anything you would expect to see in Ireland. I mean, everyone (hopefully) knows that Ireland isn't just one huge green field, but I wasn't expecting this desolate expanse of stony hills and flatlands. But it was gorgeous. I don't even know how to describe how atmospheric and beautiful and just different it was, but it really was all of those things. We were only there about a half hour, but for most of the time, I just sat and watched the world. It was incredible how quiet everything was. I mean, technically, it wasn't. There were lots of people around, and they talked and laughed and did all sorts of other normal people stuff, but in this place, all of that seemed muted, and the slight wind took precedent over their noises.

I thought it was fantastic how there could be these long stretches of stone, and then, suddenly, there'd be all green grass again, like nothing had ever happened.

Oh, and there was an ancient tomb, too!

It was pretty chill.

So were the Cliffs of Moher. As an Irish person would say, they were grand.

Western Ireland is supposed to get twice as much rain as the east, but half of the time we were there, it was hard to block out the sunlight. It was like that at the Cliffs, and they really looked magical.

See those orange specks of people? Coast Guard. Not completely sure what they were doing, but none of us fell off (because of the fairy ring, you know), so it wasn't that!

The next day, Saturday, we went to Inisheer, the smallest of the Aran Islands, and I really fell in love.

Inisheer is way in the distance. You can't completely see it, but it's there!

We took the ferry, which was fantastic. I love being on boats, really love it. I love the waves and the smell and just everything about it. But once we saw Inisheer, even I was stoked to get off it and start exploring.

I only have a few pictures from Inisheer, which totally guts me. They hardly even begin to capture the astounding beauty of the island, and they're all from the first ten minutes after docking. Inisheer's small, but not that small. But my camera was acting up and there was nothing I could do about it.

Things I have pictures of:

A house with a thatched roof.

A lonely red cart and the ocean.

A Road.

The start of the masses of stone walls, and frolicking.

Things I don't have a picture of:

The friendly cow that came to us when we called it. The rest of the stone walls that cover the island unrelentingly, rolling up and down over hills, and everywhere else. The castle I climbed on, and then got stuck on. (It was terrifying.) The grave yard with the 10th century old church underneath. The shipwreck. The pub we had lunch at. The yellow fields of dandelions. The two island dogs that followed us everywhere, alternately begging for attention and happily chasing one another, again and again. The craic.

At least, once we got to Galway, my camera was working again. Well, for a while.

I adored Galway. It was the most cheerful place I've ever been to, I'm pretty sure. We got there at around 5 in the afternoon, and straight away, half of everyone on the street was drunk. Cheerful drunk. We're-all-one-big-family drunk. It was fun.

It was happy. It got to the point that we (my two roommates and me, this time) would just walk down the streets, across the rivers, laughing at nothing but the fact that we were laughing. Being in Galway that first evening actually sort of felt like being drunk, but without having to put down money for alcohol.

It was sort of wonderful. (Especially since I'm pretty broke.)

And beautiful. Seriously, Galway is a gorgeous city-- maybe the most colorful one I've ever been to. The stores and cafes were all popping with color.

Check out the doors!

There was art everywhere.

The graffiti was awesome.

I found boats!

And there was a farmer's market. (I got a Cloddagh Ring!)

Even Galway's paintings are bright!

But in the end, this sign described Galway best:

My one disappointment? I didn't get to hear Galway Girl played in Galway!

Next time!

The Garda Won't Let Blarney Castle Keep Their Weed

Or, Cork part 2!

My second day at Cork started fantastically; my camera fell off my bunk bed. Yay! I was stoked, obviously.

Actually, though, I wasn't too worried, because my camera was at least still working. I mean, the little door thing covering the place you put the batteries in (I'm wicked technical, yo) wouldn't completely close, but as long as I held it shut, it would still take pictures. Then, it stopped and I was completely and utterly devastated. But I'll get to that later.

(I swear, though, I could write an entire blog about nothing but technology hating me. In the past month, I've had my laptop break, my camera break, my favorite coat ever got stolen-- which totally counts; coats were technology once! I bet if a cave man saw my coat, he'd be wicked impressed!-- and today, my iPod broke. But then it.. unbroke, so that wasn't too bad. Technically. Anyway, I basically have a black thumb, but with technology instead of gardening. Everything I touch falls apart. Except for phones, for some reason. Watch, though-- I probably just jinxed myself.)

Anyway, the day before, I was told that I absolutely had to go to Blarney Castle, no excuses. So I did. I mean, my schedule was completely open. Completely. Honestly, when I chose to go to Cork, I chose it on the basis that everyone said it was really pretty. No other reason. Nothing else. So, I was just basically going to go where everyone said was cool. So, I did.

And, oh my God, I don't regret it at all.

Blarney Castle was amazing. And the grounds were beautiful beyond words. I'll let the pictures do the talking.

Okay, I lied. Still talking. BUT LOOK HOW PRETTY THE CASTLE IS.

And, oh, look, there are trees! Finally, finally trees! (It's impossible to say how much I've missed frolicking around in the woods!) And it's sunny! Crazy, ridiculously sunny! And the grass is GREEN! Ahhhh I love nature!!

And then, I got closer to the castle. And it was awesome. Just as awesome as Dunluce Castle in Northern Ireland. Different, though; it goes up instead of spreading across the land.

It was all so gorgeous, and I was so excited to take a million pictures. I was so excited to post them all on facebook, too. But, oh, the drama, it was not to be. I got to take two more pictures, and then my camera died. I could have cried.

The last picture I got to take before my camera died. FOREVER. Or three days. But, it felt like FOREVER. It was legit awful, guys.

I managed to still have fun, though. (So much fun.) I played around on the castle. And then I nearly died climbing up it. It's kind of pathetic, probably, but I absolutely hate climbing up spiral staircases. They terrify me. And to get to the top of the castle, you have to climb up approximately one million of them. And they're all completely made of stone. Ancient stone, partially weathered away by centuries and centuries of feet. And that made them slippery. Oh, and they were steep. And I'm short. (Especially in Ireland. Oh my God. Land of leprechauns? Yeah, um, no. Giants, more like.) Oh, and, also, to climb them, you have to cling on desperately to a rope.

It was sort of petrifying.

I had the most fun once I got out of the castle and got to see more of the grounds. These grounds were about eight million, give or take a couple, times as beautiful as the ones in the beginning. And I have no pictures of them.

Sad face.

Anyway, the first thing I did when I got out of the castle (besides buy batteries, in the desperate hope that that was all my camera needed. It didn't work, and I was sad) was go to the poison garden. It was awesome. It was something I would have adored back when I was a little kid and liked to make magic potions with leaves and dirt and stuff. Though-- who am I kidding-- part of me (most of me) would still totally love doing that. And the poison garden was still wicked fantastic.

The best part, though, was the fact that they used to have a marijuana plant growing there. But, the Garda-- the Irish police-- confiscated it. No lie. There was even a notification-- it made me laugh, so I made sure to write it down-- saying, "We apologize for the absence of this plant. It has been seized by the Garda."

I KNOW RIGHT.