Goodbye To All That
“Was anyone ever so young? I am here to tell you that someone was. All I could do during those three days was talk long-distance to the boy I already knew I would never marry in the spring. I would stay in New York, I told him, just six months, and I could see the Brooklyn Bridge from my window. As it turned out the bridge was the Triborough, and I stayed eight years.”
Joan Didion, Goodbye To All That
I moved to Cardiff in September 2019. It was a bit of a random choice, according to my best friend, when we were chatting about my university choices the other day.
In a lot of ways, she was right. Cardiff was pretty random on paper; a bit bigger than Portsmouth, a lot smaller than Manchester or London. And in Wales!
But I liked the English Literature course, and my Mum and I had a fun day out when we visited earlier that year, so Cardiff it was.
Anyone that was a fresher here in 2019 will tell you the same story about the weather - it rained every single day from September until about March.
Every student union night out or walk to campus was overshadowed with getting absolutely soaked. Every fresher having their hoods up and umbrellas out was a surprising cockblock to friendship, there was far less friend-making outside seminar rooms than I had dreamt of.
And then there were the people. Or lack thereof. In Portsmouth, I was always a social butterfly, the loudest in the room, practically foaming at the mouth for attention.
But in the early months of Cardiff, I retreated into myself. For whatever reason, I lost the confidence to join any societies, talk to the people in my halls, and least of all seek out new friends that I could relate to.
It was the first time I realised that confidence wasn’t a linear thing, that an environment can shift so much about what you thought about your personality.
I shut myself off to Cardiff, so it shut itself off to me.
Things started to shift, however, thanks to some tough-love encouragement from a friend - “If you sit in your room all day, how do you expect to make friends?” - and some brief visits to the uni counselling service. I found my people, and my places.
I think about Cardiff’s cultural scene like excavating a big, cultural rock. Places I knew, like London and Brighton, and even my Portsmouth, seemed to cast glossy spotlights on their sexy grassroots venues and music events. That first year I was chipping away at Cardiff to find something that I could stick to.
I think I have an expectation to fall in love with a city as soon as we get there. Throw in the expectation that university will be the best days of your life and the pressure worsens.
Maybe it’s the way our brains are wired now - don’t like it, next swipe - but I think we owe new places much more than that.
I included part of Joan Didion’s essay ‘Goodbye to all That’ at the start because I think she felt the same when she reflected on her time in New York. Thinking she could see the Brooklyn Bridge out her window in her first apartment sounds so ridiculous, but I think we all get first impressions wrong about our cities. It was just like me thinking Cardiff was just full of Greggs and shit nightclubs. You have to give it more time.
So I stayed for five years.
I’ve memorised a scrapbook of areas, venues and events that make this city so special. I’ve made friends I could have never imagined would be so amazing, found myself in a gorgeously loving relationship and discovered the most self-belief I’ve ever had.
I’ve cried tears of joy in the crowd at Greenman Festival, became a Hard Lines Coffee fanatic, drank countless Tiny Rebel cans with friends in Bute Park and requested Sally Cinnamon at Clwb Ifor Bach one too many times. I’ve jogged around the city every week with Girls Who Run and I’ve even learned some Welsh. Iechyd Da!
The case I’m making is that it’s a real privilege to become a local somewhere. It doesn’t happen overnight. You’re likely to be wrong about most of what you first learn about a place, I know I definitely was.
Next week I move to Barcelona, and I’ll be taking these lessons forward. At least I won’t need to worry about the rain.
I’ve started my Substack, sunkissed, to mark the start of a new chapter moving abroad.
It is highly likely that this first post was entirely for myself, to give me some comfort about all the change. But if you like my writing, give us a subscribe! It would mean so much.
Speak soon, Ell x