Life Rushes Back to Me

I recently spent an afternoon trying on silky black bras in a lingerie shop. I tried eight on. The black-haired saleswoman enthusiastically maintained that I looked guapa in each one, while the narrow, shape-slimming mirror they’d crammed into the changing room couldn’t quite convince me. I ended up buying two—one lacy with 10 hooks up the back that looks more like a corset than anything, and one with the supportive padding I desperately craved to make my pale chest look lush and full. Throw in the thongs and I spent upwards of 150 euros to make myself feel sexy two weeks after a long-time-coming breakup. 

I fell in love with Spain after I studied in Seville my junior year of college, then quickly fell in love with a British boy I met on a night out in Berlin. I didn’t want a long distance relationship but he insisted. Looking back, I should have ended things two years ago when he moved to London and stopped calling, but I was 21, stubborn, alone, and moved to Spain to be closer to him. I thought maybe jumping from a nine hour time difference to only one hour would solve our problems; it was worth a try after finding that kind of love where the laughter is nonstop and it feels like part of you has gone missing when they leave the room. I thought we’d continue doing long distance for a little while, then move to the same country, but two years passed, and after so many teary goodbyes, walking back to him began to feel like pulling my shins through a rushing undercurrent, aiming for the beach in that indirect way lifeguards instruct to escape drowning in a strong riptide. I finally called to tell him I needed an end date for the distance.

After nine nights of smoking mind-numbing joints on friends’ balconies and sleeping on their couches as I awaited a message or call, anything, I remembered that no young woman should wait around for anything, period. Unless she is waiting around for her period, and if that’s the case, good luck! 

En fin: Queue Halloween breakup. My friends and I were out grabbing drinks when I finally ended things, and as the previously-aloof waiter neared our table with the next round of red wine, I melted into a shaking teary mess. He hurried to set our drinks down. I tried to excuse my appearance, explaining the situation, and his eyes turned down at the corners with the universal empathy strangers offer breakups and the wisdom nobody wants to hear: “there are so many more fish in the sea.” At that moment I wondered what my fish would end up doing with the second-hand tweed trench coat I bought during our trip to York and left in his dingy, windowless fishbowl of a room.

Three days passed and that slimy fish told me he was flying to Greece because the weather in London was making him sad, to meet the petit French girl he’d been spending all his time with during those nine days of no response. She’d apparently flown there the week prior, and I guess her Airbnb had enough room for two. And two weeks later and there I was, unraveling in the wake of that, spending my afternoon committing the crime known as retail therapy, with little money but enough time to have stitched together each of those frivolous undergarments myself.

When I moved to Seville four years ago my only responsibility was passing my college courses. I remember packing my favorite pair of heeled clogs, old coats that smelled like the log cabin I grew up in, small, meaningful baubles, and oversized gold hoops a neighbor gave me before the trip. A few weeks after my arrival, my ancient host “mom” pointedly told me she only drinks on her birthday after I started coming home past seven in the morning on the weekends. I went salsa and bachata dancing with friends, nursed warm kebabs in the early morning light after the clubs closed. I bought myself skirts and gaudy earrings at Sunday markets, if I woke up in time, and if I happened to lose an earring while out dancing I’d happily hold onto the one that stayed fixed in my ear as a memento and wish its other half well. 

The more I traveled around, the more bits and pieces I lost. I’m sure I left a scarf or two crammed in between cheap, blue Ryanair seats, small fragments likely still wander through winding snickelways in York, and I consider the DNA evidence, like skin cells or my red hair, that’s attached to so much of my stuff out there, lost. Lost like the tiny crescent moons that fell hidden into the gapping floorboards where my childhood bed used to sit in my parent’s house: toenail clippings.

I hadn’t realized I lost so much of the 20-year-old me, but recently I’ve caught myself searching for my missing bits and pieces. Back then I considered those scatterings to be a sort of thoughtless generosity toward the world. Now, looking back at the past three years I feel cheated; it should have been me going to Greece, me living the life in front of me instead of waiting around for phone calls. I hadn’t just lost memorabilia or jewelry, rather parts of that courageous and unapologetic undergraduate student who boarded her flight to Seville four years ago alone, bright, and full, like the sun rising on a bluebird day. Or bright and full like the last shining, hard-boiled egg waiting in stained tupperware at the back of the fridge. 

After I spent the weekend buying lingerie, I boiled 18 eggs, none of which could be lonely in such a crowded pot, as deviled egg prep for this year’s far-from-home Friendsgiving. Sarah hosted at her apartment. Originally, I told my friends I wanted to host at my place, where there’s a nice view out to a garden that surrounds a single massive phallic palm tree. I tried the phallic palm tree argument, but the balcony doors at her place swing open extra wide for the smokers, plus we all love the garish red and yellow wall paint (¡Viva la Espana!), and Sarah is rigidly stubborn, so I caved. I spent five hours roasting a lavish chicken, my first avian in the oven, to be met at her door by two of the same last-minute deadbeat invites I left the United States to escape.

Here they were. The downer American dudes. Averted eyes, unkempt sweatshirts with their college football team in bright orange or yellow, mom forgot to pay my rent this month, I’ll talk over you until you’re forced to agree with me, you can’t make me care American men. 

While one American downer dude showed up, lanky in sweatpants although well prepared with a bottle of rum—I’ll call him The Wandering Eye—the notably tinier of the two walked in and tossed ‘la ensalada de remolacha de ayer‘ (yesterday’s deadbeet salad) onto the table. There it sat, also looking as small and uninviting as its owner, amongst an otherwise divine array of dishes my friends and I spent the week divvying up, planning, and preparing. 

Luckily, that night we enjoyed ourselves by drinking and targeting the little American with some of the cruelest jokes only drunken, jaunty young women can whip up. After a long and tiring rant about the prospects of communism, I hotly inquired on why, exactly, he’d chosen Spain over Russia. Four bottles of cider and seven bottles of slow mulled wine later, he voiced his impatience with the mulling process with a repeated, “Come on guys, isn’t it done yet?” egging us yipping she-wolves on. 

The only thing the boys seemed to be able to do was to gobble up most of my 18 hard boiled eggs. Which I had meticulously peeled, halved, balanced, and restuffed, so really 36 deviled eggs in total.We served dinner and sat around the living room table, pants unbuttoned in a show of traditional American gluttony. Our Spanish friend, Majo, nicknamed the smaller man “little hobbit” (leetle hoebeet) which, he may have pretended not to hear out of embarrassment, The Wandering Eye, my preferred rum-wielding bachelor, alternated between pouring everyone shots of spiced rum and eyeing my cleavage (yes, I boldly wore the black, post-breakup push-up bra, and yes, I was flattered.)

Amid this sloppiness, the exigencies of the pandemic demanded that we finish the bottle of rum and the previously sidelined bottle of tequila before the boys had to leave to make it home before a newly instated Covid-19 curfew. Oblivious to the not-so-subtle hints we’d been dropping, the Cinderellos finally scrammed as the bell tower nearby dolled out twelve heavy tolls. 

Spanish curfew runs from midnight to six in the morning, which is obviously not enough time to polish off 13 bottles, so the girls slept over and kept drinking. We giggled, we lounged, the girls’ new Swedish roommate Michelle even pulled out her hairbrush to tame snarls in her lusciously long locks. I recently discovered that she braids her hair every night before going to sleep, which is something I thought women only did in fairytales. As Michelle gracefully stroked her hair, parted over either shoulder, Sarah leaned forward with a joint hanging off her lip and snorted, (“yesterday’s beet salad?!”) Michelle and Sarah sat side by side, but they could’ve been from different planets; that scene from the 1967 claymation Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer came to mind, the Island of Misfit Toys.

I turned up the speaker as Majo thumbed through her reggaeton playlist. Sarah spilled nugs of weed out onto one of her many books dedicated to spliff rolling—an American history book (in Spanish) with that classic painting of the elderly farmer couple gripping a spade and pitchfork in front of a barn—and her eyes fixated on her fingers, while Michelle continued to preen. After a puff or two, like every other time we mix and match weed and alcohol, I suddenly wake up the next morning on Sarah’s couch. I feel my heartbeat leap into my temples, drumming away as life rushes back to me. 

I’m far away from my loving family as the holiday season kicks off. Last night confirmed that American men will never be an option even though I’m stingingly single, and after leaving so much of myself scattered all over the world I’m not sure who’s left lying here on Sarah’s couch. Not to mention I have 1,000 euros to my name. Well, less now, after the new underwear.

The bassline in my temples intensifies and as I reach for a teacup filled with water. I struggle to catch my breath, which comes in slow and shallow and my mind wanders to oxygen tanks and ventilators. Sarah and I keep the lights off and sit with our eyes shut on her couch for the afternoon. The sunny, warm Spanish day passes us by while we sit inside and wallow in our hangovers surrounded by those dark red and yellow walls. Too anxious to sleep, I stare at the bright colors on my phone screen until my head can’t take it anymore and then close my eyes to play memories over and over in my head until that gets to be too much and I pull the handheld dopamine machine out, again. 

The profile of my ex-boyfriend’s face appears in the memory, always half-turned away, his words spin around in my head like a repetitive, warbled, poorly written and produced record, and I sit and feel bad for myself for an entire day.

The world’s tiniest violin sounds much pitchier hungover. 

And what’s a young woman to do when the world’s got her down? When her own bad habits turn one night of fun into an extra day of self-inflicted misery? She leaves the house in yesterday’s outfit for pizza and pitchers! There’s no good-morning text to reply to—nor the more likely scenario: complaining about the lack thereof—and I’m that much more present when Majo jolts us all out of our stupors by jabbing her icy claws up the backs of our shirts and everyone is finally ready to start another day together, albeit a little late. I slide my feet into the same black leather boots I’ve managed to hold onto for three years and loop my favorite of the masks Kat’s mom made and mailed us over my ears before practically running down the stairs. Side-by-side, we’re good as new.

Sundays are for hand-rolled cigarettes, personal pizzas, burrata balls, and Tinder! Stepping out into the dying daylight, my arms link with those of my friends. While we laugh about last night, a young woman’s voice pipes up from somewhere between my head and my heart. My 20-year-old self, she sounds familiar, and free, and she characteristically mutters something I don’t quite catch. I turn my head as we walk, new strength in my steps, to look at the faces of friends. Under the masks, I know, are smiles stained with flecks of last night’s lipstick and wine. The street outside their apartment with the tall, heavy wooden door is busy in the twilight, families and couples wander past, while we walk out into a fresh, if chilly evening.

One picnic bench outside the pizza place empties and we sit down around a pitcher of beer. I pour it, frothing, into everyone’s little cañas, generous and surrounded by friends who do the same for me. The girls laugh as a couple of indecisive pigeons fly up suddenly from under a bench nearby. Someone knocks over a glass of beer that spills eagerly over the edge of our table and we lament the loss, I jokingly giggle “bye bye.” 

Those little pieces of me and all my crap floating around the world, maybe they’re lost parts, but probably they’re unexpected whispering gifts. Looking around at my friends makes me realize that losing things was really just outgrowing things that I probably shouldn’t have squeezed into in the first place, but I can’t blame my 20 year old, curious self. I’ll leave those bits and pieces in easy to find places for the next woman. Those Ryanair seats might be comfier when passengers unknowingly encounter a little piece of me as extra butt-padding. York’s snickelways echo a little louder with my bits of love and laughter bouncing around on treacherously uneven cobblestone, and my mom probably even collected my sliver toenails from the floor of my childhood room, to cherish them when I’m so far away. ▩