Happy 2015!

Brains Are Weird, Guys.

So, as it turns out, Chromebooks (or at least my Chromebook) are startlingly fragile. I broke the screen horribly months and months ago and have still not replaced it with a laptop (although, obviously, am now borrowing a laptop) and could not be bothered to try another way to deal with this. ha ha.

Anyway, not dead. I’m sure you were worried.

I still love Spain! Only now I love it with a much higher level of Spanish and a stronger grasp of things like “directions” and “locations” and “how things work around here”. I have a whole life here – friends and stories and places I go and routines and adventures ahead of me. Plus, the whole “moving your life to a new culture” thing has really done a number on my brain in the best possible way. With any luck (and here, ‘luck’ means ‘effort’), I will soon be speaking multiple languages with…well, probably not ease, but something less than agonizing frustration.

On the other hand, I keep spelling things like the British do, so, that was an interesting change. I only even noticed it because this laptop has an automatic spellcheck and keeps switching words on me. All my textbooks are UK textbooks but…still…surprised.

I spoke with someone back in the States the other day who informed me that my Spanish is very Spain (although in all honesty, I have probably picked up more Catalan speech patterns in my Spanish than anything else – I actually said la before a pronoun the other day) and that I’m doing that th sound that people back home make fun of. I…had not realized I was doing this. Even with her saying it, when I said it again I couldn’t hear it.

Which, given that my career involves noticing the nuances of pronunciation and speech, is strange. I’m good at that! I can hear an accent and understand what is being said quite easily, I can visualise where in my mouth/throat my own accent is coming from and alter it (usually? this is one of the ways I learn languages). Hell, even my American accent is weird and atypical for Americans – back Stateside they ask what my first language is, here they tell me I speak very clearly for an American. “It’s so easy to understand you!” It throws (some) people off.

At any rate.
It’s different.

Vale. Hasta próxima!

Yes, All Women.

Even Tank Girl had guys treat her like an object.

#YesAllWomen is trending and I am tired of answering questions about gun laws in the States.

I am tired of reading these phrases and feeling not just empathy, but complete agreement and understanding.

I am tired of starting to write something about this here before considering who my audience might be and what this might mean for them. Not because I am concerned someone might say something intentionally cruel (I highly doubt I have the readership for that), but rather because I am worried that my words and experiences might hurt people I care about. And, terribly as it might sound, I am tired of that feeling too.

I am tired of there being a level of “acceptable violence”. That it doesn’t feel like a big deal when a stranger paws you over your clothes because after several people have slipped their hands under your shirt or down your pants (or once, danced up  being me and slid his dick under the back of my shirt), you have a different barometer of what is “okay”.

I am tired of being warned to be careful because men will take advantage, of being told to say I have a boyfriend if someone is hitting on me and I’m not interested, in being warned that if I dress a certain way or talk a certain way or drink a certain way or say hello to a male, then I am asking to be assaulted. Of having to figure out exactly what about my sexuality I can share.

I am weary from no longer being surprised.

I am sad because I realized recently that not being pressured or cajoled into sex is strange.

I knew a girl in college who once said someone had a nice husband because he didn’t force her to have sex when she didn’t want to. I’m tired of a world where people are nice simply because they don’t rape someone.

I don’t murder people, I don’t abuse children, I don’t torture animals. That doesn’t make me a nice person. The bar for “nice” shouldn’t be so low and it’s insulting to say otherwise.

I once apologized to someone because they were angry, not because I had done anything to make them angry. They bruised me anyway. Over ten years later, they still contact me because they don’t understand that what they did was not okay. I could not make them see this.

I know a girl who, given the chance, will remind me that I was stupid for taking a drink from someone at a party my first year at university. I “let” them drug me. Which implies, I think, that I knew it was happening, but I suppose everyone is entitled to their own opinion. I was considered lucky because my friends escorted me home, when another girl had been drugged by the same guy that month, and woke up along and confused and with no memory.

I am tired of excusing people by saying things like “everyone is entitled to their own opinion”. I wish I didn’t try so hard to see all the viewpoints and make things make sense, because some things don’t make sense and it took me years to come to peace with that.

When I was involved in a violent incident, people decided that it was my bad judgement of his character that allowed such a thing to happen. Or perhaps I had been out of line. Maybe I angered him. Maybe I should look at myself to see what made me so vulnerable for this attack.

Or maybe, just maybe – and this is pretty far out there, guys, so let me finish – maybe the man should just have not strangled me.

I was angrier, that time. I still didn’t call the police. Because I was so afraid of this person that I didn’t run screaming into the night, I went into survival mode and laughed at jokes and then left and told him to stop bothering me via text. I spent two weeks afraid that he would find where I worked.

Sometimes, I am still angry.

I am angry that for all the attention that violence against women is receiving right now, I don’t believe it will change. I am angry that I won’t tell a whole story because I know it will hurt people. Including myself when they turn around and say “I’m not trying to say this is your fault, but…”

I am angry that I will not ever be surprised again by someone blaming the victim, not the perpetrator, of violence. I am angry that this is not just the norm, but actually the acceptable method of coping with this sort of thing. We make excuses, we look for fault or reason, and I can understand the desperate desire for there to be a reason, for there to be logic and a measurable way to see when you are at risk. I understand this.

I understand this because I’ve done it too. I’ve desperately tried to work out if the problem really was in something I had done. I understand this because the need to blame myself for these things is insidious. The history of violence against me is long, stretches back, and is full of varying degrees. It influences more of my life than I am proud of, panic flaring up like an old injury, and I am not a unique snowflake. I am one of many.

A friend of mine telling me about how a guy at a party tried to force himself on her and she screamed and fought him and everyone told her that he was just joking – it was just how he played.

A girl I know saying that she’s said ‘yes’ sometimes just because she was afraid of what would happen if she said ‘no’.

And on and on it goes.

This is not to say that all men do this, of course they don’t. This is not to say that some of the women I have been involved with haven’t also done some abusive things, they have (and they had ‘their reasons’ and they also called me a whore and they also had our friends stick up for them, unwilling to hear the story because they liked them too much to want to lose them as a friend when they found out how things went down). This is not to say that men can not be survivors of abuse or violence.

This isn’t about exclusion. This is about joining together and saying that these experiences are not unique, they are not surprising, and they are happening to everyone of every age, background, ethnicity, orientation, weight, so on and so forth. Yes, all women have been told “don’t leave a drink on the table” and yes, all women have had a moment of fear. We grow up being told to be afraid.

Doesn’t that seem wrong to you?

Día de Lavandería

When I was looking up things about living abroad, I feel almost certain that I spent time looking up mundane things as well as Big Exciting Things. I mean, I’m fully aware that a lot of life is in the smaller moments (if I wasn’t before, I am now, but that’s a different post entirely) and wanted to see a broad picture of what life might be life. So I read about people frustrated with the pace of life here, I read about people celebrating the price of wine, and I saw a fair amount of lists aimed at student’s doing Study Abroads. I did not, however, see anything about doing laundry.

Why, I wonder, was that an omission in these blogs and lists? Did these people have someone else do their laundry? Did they not find it worth noting?

IT IS WORTH NOTING.

Because I have so many friends from other countries (and went abroad for a short bit last summer), I knew already that there were no dryers and I would be hanging things on the line and on a drying rack. I witnessed this first hand from my flatmates during my first few days. I thought I knew what I was getting into. But, no, I was wrong. I did not know.

The Washer was clearly a dragon to be fought and slain.

Hola, Amiga.

Look at it. Smugly staring back at me.

It knows it has my clothes and it knows it has the power.

The first time I did laundry I was terrified. Nothing made sense. I had to take a wild guess about which Spanish, Celsius notch I wanted it on and then I felt reasonably secure. Until two hours had gone by and it was still going.

Two. Hours.

I was home alone and had decided to do this on – well, not a whim, I needed to wash my clothes, but more like I didn’t want to wait to have my flatmates show me how to do the machine because I had been foolishly concerned with the fact that daylight was fading. Oh, how I laugh to think of that mattering now. But, because when you have an anxiety disorder there is always something to be barely contained over, I was terrified that I had broken the machine somehow.

Oh god oh god oh GOD WHY IS THIS HAPPENING no, it’s fine, how long can this possibly take?

I took to Google, where it appeared others had this problem. Three hours, maybe more. I freaked out. I turned it off and tried to open the door. The door wouldn’t open and I freaked out AGAIN and tried to make sense of the ruins some wizard had inscribed on the machine.

My kingdom for a house elf.

I chose the spiral that seemed to indicate “spin cycle” to drain the water.

It made an ungodly noise and I stood in my room, staring through the window at the interior patio where our washer stands. Mentally imagining it shaking to bits and just knocking the whole thing down, thus destroying the flat and ruining my life because I couldn’t afford to fix that and where would I live then? My oddly sharp sense of balance (I’m clumsy, it makes no sense that I have a sense of evenness, and yet, the great mysteries of life continue to humble us all…) had previously informed me of the ever-so-slight downward slope of the small balcony, so naturally all of my fears were founded in reality.

There was a lot of Kik-ing during this.

Eventually, of course, the machine let me open it and I cheered at the victory. And immediately faced the next traumatizing part of laundry in Europe – hanging out over a ledge to attached clothes to string with clothespins. The risk of dropping some of the only things you now own is very real and, because my apartment is on the top floor of our building, there was quite a ways to go.

My flatmate calls this The Abyss.

I didn’t drop anything.

I did, however, turn all of my lights a strange shade of almost grey, which was not awesome. I own only a few white items and out of those, really only two of them matter enough that I’d prefer I didn’t permanently alter them. There is a reason I do not buy white things and this, really, is kind of why – because I ruin them. I didn’t even think to sort the laundry (see: reason one I ruin whites)  because I never had before.

But obviously I never had a three hour wash cycle before either.

I’ve since half-solved this problem by purchasing these Capture Color sheets. You throw them in with your wash and they sort of…soak up the extra dye? And this week marks the first time I’ve sorted my clothes (because why learn the first time?) so we will see if that helps.

Ayudame, CapturaColor, eres mi esperaza solo.

I wish I were kidding, but I’m mostly not, when I say that the first night – when I looked at my clothes hung on the line in the dark of night, I felt this rush of delight. I was successful! I had done something! I was productive!!

I still kind of feel like that whenever I do laundry.

So – for the new ex-pats out there – I want to assure you that the terrifying laundry machine which you are about to battle is not as bad as you think it is. You’ll be okay! Maybe a little dingier than you expected to be, but okay.

Also, you should buy some fabric softener, ’cause that really makes a difference.

Vivo en Barcelona.

Oh, hey, we’re just some fruit trees. Just hangin’ out. In winter.

I live in Barcelona.

This thought occurs to me several times a day. Partially because it is such a fantastic thing, something that surely can’t be true, and partially because it is a way to remind myself that I actually did it. Although right now it feels…not like a vacation, exactly, but not precisely like this is where I am actually living, I still did it. I still dissolved my past life into a new life.

Not just any new life, at that, but one in a different country. It amazes me.

It’s lovely here, truly, and I haven’t even really done all that much exploring. I’ve not been here a whole week yet, although I left Chicago a week ago, and so I am still kind of mucking about with jet lag. I don’t like it this jet lag nonsense – my sleep patterns are ridiculous, I haven’t sorted them out yet and and look forward to when that happens. I don’t think I thought this would be easy, but I also don’t think I fully appreciated what it feels like to live somewhere where so much of the language is a mystery.

It’s interesting to feel that way on such an extreme level. Before, whenever I’ve been in situations where I didn’t understand the language, it was temporary (which I suppose this will be too, kind of) and I knew that later,  I would have English readily available. Here, I’m not passing things on the street and immediately grasping what is happening or what is available. I say this even with some things being in English here, even with having English (like, from England) flatmates, and with being in Spanish classes with people who also speak (at least some, for the most part) English. It’s strange to have suddenly a new city to live in where I don’t really know anyone and to add in a new language as well.

Not to mention, I can’t just call someone up from home and talk about how something was amazing or upsetting or anything. That’s perhaps even more jarring than the language barrier.

Just the same, I’m ridiculously pleased with myself about being here. I don’t at all miss the snow and horrible cold.

Actual photos and updates and such to come.

 

 

The End of an Era.

 

Toddler Science!

Today is my last day at work.

When I was first hired, I never would have believed that this would be more than a job. Well, no, I knew it wasn’t “just a job”, I knew I was on a career path. Why else would I willingly have children scream and cry, spit up all over me, throw up on me? Why else would I have been covered in virtually every bodily fluid a tiny body can produce?

You don’t have people sneeze into your open mouth and not snap at “just a job”.
When it’s “just a job”, you’re liable to bash your head into a wall if the screaming doesn’t end.
Most of the time, if you are working “just a job”, you don’t run the risk of bodily harm because someone is having a bad day. (or maybe you do, I guess it depends on your job and how you define ‘bad day’)

So, yes, I knew it wasn’t just a job. But I didn’t know it would become a kind of second home for me – and not just because of the absurd hours I spent there. I didn’t realize that I would be making some amazing friends, forming a support system that really held up when I needed it to, and getting to to have experiences I could never have otherwise had. For all that I complained about it – which, sometimes, was a lot – there was never a time I didn’t love that place.

A.A.Milne

So today, I say goodbye.
And for all the things I won’t miss, there is so much more that I will.

 

Don’t Worry, Be Happy.

I was very happy when I fixed my thermostat.

As most of you don’t know, I’ve recently joined the 100 Happy Days project. Like how I made that sound all cool and important?

Joke’s on you – it IS cool and it seems pretty important and you can join it too!

Far as I can tell, the whole point is to post, tweet, or instagram your way to being aware of your happiness. Each day, for one hundred days, you share something that you tag as #100happydays and, presumably, by the end of it there is a moment where you can say to yourself: “Well, even on that shitty day from hell, I found something that made me happy”. Although, in that case, happy might mean “less like burning the world down” – which is still a victory!

I decided to join because I have a lot going on for the next one hundred days. I feel like this type of thing is a good record keeper, is a good way to really delight in little things, and maybe even a way to help process the transition that is moving over four thousand miles away from my home. No pressure, 100 Happy Days project.

I like the idea of being more mindful of things that make me smile. I like the idea that I am sharing something joyful with others. It seems like a nifty way to share something of myself and, well, I like that my name is in the name. I’m not sorry.

It is so easy to use the internet to be angry or vent. I do it all the time, tweeting about people on the train that piss me off or judging things around me. It’s a way to be closer to other people – you share the things you hate, the things you like, that sort of thing. I want to also share the things that I’m grateful for, I want to be aware of the positive things more often because when the negative things happen – and they will – it is too easy to spiral down into misery. I want to find a way to halt that descent. I want to be able to say, even on my worst days, that there was even one little thing that was good about that day.

Anyone else taking part in the 100 Happy Days project?

Sometimes, You Take The House.

Well played, Watterson.

You know how we’ve all been told that the greatest rewards come from the greatest risks?

I’m not sure I really buy into it. I suppose it isn’t not true, but there are plenty of awesome rewards that come from no real risks at all and that’s a good thing to know. An important thing to know. You don’t need to risk it all to be happy or to have a full, rich life. You probably don’t even need to risk a little. You can coast, if you want, and be content and pleased and safe – this is a very real option for most people.

It’s a very real option for me, too, I just have clearly decided not to take it.

I’ve got an apartment that I love, a job that I enjoy even when it makes me think pleasantly of arson, and a whole life that I am living and, more than not, happy with. I could be doing more of these things, I’ve got goals and challenges and plenty to keep me busy. I could do with more money, but I’ve certainly had less and so that helps me keep things in perspective. My cat and I have more or less become symbiotic. I have a life, I could stay here in Chicago and continue to grow and develop and be happy.

Except that’s not what I’m going to do.

Instead, I am going to chase a long-standing dream of mine. In a few (terrifyingly, sickeningly) short weeks, I will be boarding a plane and moving to Barcelona, Spain. I’m going to earn a TESOL certificate, I’m going to explore an entirely new country, I’m going to be putting my dreams first and my fears second. For someone with an anxiety disorder, this feels next to impossible.

You know when, in movies (or perhaps in your life), you see someone decide to go cliff-diving? So they move back, point themselves straight, and go running full-tilt. They leap off the cliff, flinging their bodies off the ledge and into the air, for the rush. For the exhilaration. For the adventure.

I imagine this is what that feels like.

I’m so excited, I’m terrified, and I have one thousand million feelings.

But at this point, I think I can only turn to one of the greats – Neil Gaiman – for wisdom on the matter.

“If you dare nothing,
then when the day is over,
nothing is all you will have gained.”

Neil Gaiman, The Graveyard Book

So, y’know, maybe they are right. Maybe great reward does require a great risk.

And if this all fails?

I’ll still have done it. This is what I keep telling myself. I keep trying to tell myself even if this doesn’t go the way I want it to, it won’t be a failure.

Just the same, let’s hope it doesn’t go poorly, shall we?