Cuba 7: Community

I'm not very good at being on vacation. The at the end of our first day, I wrote: I made it through the first day, despite some fears of the contrary: of vacations being wasted on me, of impending boredom and lethargy, of social constrictedness.

Vacations are hard on me, and that ends up revealing itself in a variety of ways. One primary symptom was an awkwardness with the people around me. It became hard being around my friends all the time for a whole week. Here are some feelings I recorded:

The thing about going away with someone is that there's nothing to say at breakfast. 05/17/2010

When we play Boggle, it's interesting to see how reluctant I am to accept your words when you have rejected mine. "What do you mean 'pina' isn't a word? Well then 'alt' definitely isn't either." 5/18/2010

I feel very third.
I'm so glad I have my own cot and am not sharing a bed with one of the other girls. A very small piece of my own space. I'm starting to have a hard time sharing presence.
Three is a weird number to travel with. Small enough that you feel like you need to go everywhere together. But way more needs and preferences to consider.
There are definite downfalls to travelling with friends. You see all their shortcomings. You see how your habits (tidiness, timeliness) clash. Everything the other people do and say begin to bother you. You start to push them away, for the preservation of your friendship. 05/19/2010

Someone always has to get the short end of the stick. And when I recognize it, I either need to take it for myself, or leave it for one of my friends and take the more favorable option. That feels awfully selfish to me, so I tend to take the worst option presented, leaving them with the better alternatives. But eventually I start to resent it. 05/21/2010

I don't think this was about them; I think it was more about me. Me being uncomfortable, and that coming out in my reactions to them. I do continue to value their friendships, even though this was an unfortunately bad example of that.