Delusions of Glamour: The Time I Went to Spain and Told Lies to My Boyfriend

Ch. 4: My Secret Diary

January 15

In my little room

I’m bursting at the seams to write shit…I’ve been here three weeks now and how do I feel? A bit overwhelmed, enchanted, excited, exhausted, defeated, worthless, boring...No sé…I really just want my Spanish to be better so I could fucking COMMUNICATE.

I'm thinking about AJ constantly. I wish he would write me more. Does he not even miss me? :(

I can’t help but feel like my roommates don’t like me, that they’re talking about me but it’s Spanish so I can’t understand. But how am I so vain to think that whenever they speak it must be about me? That’s ridiculous!!! I need to worry about my classes more and actually do homework and whatnot. I need this time to reflect on life and be a more whole person. I realize I’m using guys as a distraction, I keep my mind occupied thinking about them, plotting about them. What a joke. If I was ready for a boyfriend or to actually meet someone significant it would have happened.

So any illusions I had of keeping a journal are pretty much done with. The romantic notion of sitting around, preferably under a tree like a proper English poet, recording my thoughts handwritten into a journal…it’s just not realistic. I have to type on my laptop, it’s easier. So there. 

Thought 1: It’s awkward not knowing anything about anywhere. I realize that’s what’s great, but realistically day to day….it’s not that romantic. It rather sucks. I just feel dumb all the time, like I can’t even converse about the simplest things, so I feel literally mentally handicapped. I don’t want to take for granted that I have the opportunity to be abroad, but what do they say, our language skills right now are like a third grader’s? Awesome. I’m an Honors student in America, and a mentally handicapped third grader in Spain.

My roommate situation is a bit awkward still. I’ve had partial conversations with all three of them but its not going to be as I hoped with lots of interaction. I’m so scared anyways just to talk to them, and I realize the theme of the semester will be set now in the beginning, like the first few weeks of high school/college. I HAVE to make the effort to talk to them I guess. Be pushy even, it’s just so awkward to like, ask about their day in shitty Spanish, and they reply in super fast native Spanish, but I have no idea what they’re telling me, so I ask them to slow down, explain it again, but they get frustrated, and I’m embarrassed, and all they were saying is probably like “I went to the market and bought jamón.” 

I definitely like the city. The center is beautiful, so historic and charming. I do wish it were like that everywhere, charming and beautiful, especially where I live. I live forty minutes on the metro from the city center (twenty minutes in a cab, but who has dinero for a cab?) But I am glad I don’t live with Americans, Jenni and I were talking about how you end up never leaving your comfort zone. I just want to talk to my roommates more and feel like I don’t just sleep here but live here.

Made out with a pretty sexy Spaniard on Friday night at this club, Samsara. I never even caught his name, and he was biting my neck, it was pretty hot, I’ve never done something like that! Last night was hilarious. Me, Jenni, Paul and Vahe went first to this really authentic  Spanish place and had croquetas, I’m sure really bad for you little mozzarella stick type things.

New ideas:

--Stay here for the summer or the year, become prefect at Spanish

--Get an internship while I’m here

--Stop trying to constantly get guys attention

So it’s a Saturday night and I’m staying in. Really and truly staying in, dammit. Even if it takes this bottle of Spanish wine, I’m not going anywhere.

My main impulse right now is to just call someone, anyone back home for comfort. Especially AJ. But I need to stand this on my own. I’m a world away in a foreign country…I need to make my peace with everything. To be able to go home a sensitive and ready person. To communicate my feelings and be okay. I need to go on a trip alone. I need to make peace with myself. Sitting right here. Or at least come to terms with the fact that sometimes life is shitty and you feel lonely, even though you shouldn’t (because you’re having an amazing opportunity like studying abroad). 

I may be a bottle of wine deep, but the point is...Spain: I’m here to stay.

I have arrived 

Or is that the wine talking? 

Okay all for now, kinda lame. Lo siento.   

--H

January 19

In Retiro Park.

Scratch the idea of taking a nap, it's rather dodgy around here. There are a lot of homeless, rough characters too with mean eyes. And there are the beautiful gypsies, the real gypsies, with the long hair and handmade jewelry and smoke curling from their lips, dark-skinned and wild eyes and s-e-x-y. Retiro is like Central Park. But cooler. Duh. Because it’s Spain.

Seriously hundreds of people here, soaking up the sun--it's so cold and frigid in Madrid winter that this little bit of sunshine is like warm honey on the face. I had no idea Madrid would be so cold. Guess I thought all of Spain is hot. Marketing, I guess. It's almost worth the cold, though, those first few times you feel the sun after months and months of winter are always the best. 

Everyone's smoking something, cigarettes, hash, pot, whatever. I said I wanted anonymity and I have it. No one notices the American girl writing in her journal. Do I feel self-conscious about being pretentious and "writerly"...? Sorta. I have to get over that and embrace my writer self and writer dreams.

As usual, being in Retiro, somewhere romantic and "cute," I wish I had someone with me, to smooch and roll around with, look cool with, after wanting for so long to be alone....and yet if i was with someone, I’d want to be alone. I'm a person of contradictions, eh? But, okay. I enjoy this about myself. "Imaginative non-fiction" is what I want to write.

--H