Twenty-four hours.
That's all that remained of my crazy Spanish summer adventure.
Had I not been planning this last day in my mind for the past few weeks, I would have probably been a wreck - but, happily, I knew just what I would do on my last day. I headed into Madrid and began my usual walk through Malasana, Fuencarral, Chueca, Grand Via, Sol and Opera. I was on a mission: I wanted that one really dorky/touristy pink and green bag I'd been eying all summer long but had resisted.
It was the bag that had "MADRID" scribbled all over it in sparkles. It was the bag that I would wear the hell out of, proudly and with an air of humbled superiority (if that's even possible), all over America. It was the bag that would loudly proclaim, "YES, I'm proof that Chelsea was in Madrid and loved every minute of her time here. Don't you wish you'd had the amazing opportunity and balls to jet-set to another country as amazing as Spain, yourself!?"
I'd seen it virtually everywhere all summer - in kiosks on the street next to the postcards, in little touristy shops, in big touristy shops - just everywhere. So when I reached Sol and Opera (the touristy shop capital of Madrid) and had not seen ONE pink and green version of the bag, I began to stress. I walked in a loop and tried again, purchasing those crazy pink Arabic pants I'd also been craving all summer (thinking they'd be perfect for Portland's love of being uniquely weird) and a few little things for L along the way. Still, no bag. It was getting late and it was almost time to pick up L from work for the last time to go on our picnic. "One more store," I thought to myself.
And there it was, hiding in the corner. Finally!
I was exhausted from my hunt and walking all over Madrid when I finally arrived at the San Bernardo station to meet L. We journeyed a little further, seeing as it wasn't quite sunset time yet, to get a Starbucks mug for part of my mom's souvenir and then headed to our colinas at the Buenos Aires station.
As we passed the market where she'd first taken me mysteriously months earlier to buy sushi for our first picnic atop the gorgeous little hills overlooking the breathtaking city of Madrid, I smiled. As we passed the fire station headquarters where the second time we picnicked atop the gorgeous little hills she took me around, insisting this would be a shortcut, but quickly realizing (but not admitting) that she was sorely mistaken and we'd had to climb mountains of stairs to even reach the base of the hills, I giggled. As we passed the gravel pathway, I looked up at the sky, remembering the night we went there to watch the solar eclipse and how she helped me study for my final the next day, all while looking everywhere in the night sky as impatient as a small but adorable child for the missing moon, I gazed over at her. As we passed by the first hill where she'd first kissed me that night in early June when we'd flirted and feasted and she'd tested my stubbornness, ultimately giving in with a whispered, "Puedo?" in my ear, I melted and squeezed her hand.
In a mere few months, this was what my life had turned into.
My whole life I'd always said that if (or, rather, when) I am to die, above all other causes of death, I should be very pleased to die in a plane crash. First, dying doing what you love (traveling), is always the way to go. Second, I figure there'd be a brief panic, a nice high (if the oxygen masks swing down and you believe Chuck Palahniuk when he says the pure oxygen acts not as a way to re-pressurize the cabin but as a pure drug to instantly calm you) and then an ultimate, blithe acceptance of your looming death.
Sometimes, when I've been all alone, I've laid still and pressed my mind for details of how I arrived here - into this perfect, blissful little state of existence - and wondered if on my plane ride over to Spain I didn't get my wish (to die in a plane crash) and this new life I was living in Madrid was just a form of heaven. I mean, damn, some philosophies even say you pick up right where you left off when you died - so maybe things just get a little more heavenly with each death/rebirth?
Since arriving in Spain, life had seemed just that: Heaven on Earth. Now that I was about to leave, would it go back to seeming like normal life, or had I been so transformed here that my sense of celestial serendipity would continue with me as I was truly in a new stage of my life that was not based solely on my current location and acquaintances?
As we sat, picnicking and burrito cuddling ourselves in the blanket, I pondered this for a moment and decided on the latter explanation of things. Just at that moment, my madre called to confirm at what time she needed to pick me up the next morning to take me to the airport. After talking for a bit, she told me that my padre would be taking the morning off of work to accompany us there!! AWW!!! <3
This news left me happier than could be! We burritoed further into the picnic blanket and laid there giggling and full from our mini feast.
... and then it started.
Tiny comment by tiny comment and suddenly L was alluding back to our first night on that hill when she'd defensively jested, "You get all this, and a summer fling, too!" I'd vowed to myself to make her see that this was not how I considered her or us. All summer I'd thought I was on the right path to accomplishing this self-made goal until I had a brief moment of questioning on the train ride to Barcelona and cried and blogged about it, saying that if she ever still thought such a thing, I wouldn't know what to do with myself and the failure this would implicate.
And so she said it. She said she had only been a summer fling to me and she knew it. Caught completely off guard, her words sliced me open one by one until I felt my summer joy start to flood out of me. Maybe this was it. Maybe this all was just a dream and now I was being rudely placed back into the old world where I truly belonged. Maybe this was all just a sweet mirage of happiness and by the time my plane took off the next morning, it would all be just a distant memory of "that one time" when I was "blissfully happy."
I felt deflated. I felt angry. I felt deceived in a backwards sort of way. If she wasn't ever going to open herself to believing that I'd truly cared about her all summer and would continue to no matter what happened when I returned, why had I worked so hard to try to make her feel loved? It was a self-defeating battle on her part and one that I couldn't pick her up out of no matter how hard I tried without losing my own identity and autonomy. I knew. I'd been there too, once, and hoped so hard that I would never be back there.
Silently I packed everything up, put on my shoes, and walked away. We walked back to the metro stop without a touch, a glance or a squeak. We took the metro and the ice wall between us froze over even further until it seemed impregnable. See, I wasn't the type to get mad at her. Her mad at me? Almost on the daily. But me mad at her? And mad at her to the point of wanting to get so far away from her that I couldn't hear or see her ever again for the foreseeable future like I've been known to get with just about everybody else? Unheard of.
I could feel myself turning into the Ice Queen, my verbally inflicted wounds still gushing out hope and happiness, getting infected with disdain and fear and callousing over with inexplicable hurt and guilt. Her cautious gaze of curiosity burned in my peripheral vision and I wanted to spin around on my heels and yell at her, "ARE YOU HAPPY? PUSHING ME TO THE POINT OF THIS JUST TO PROVE I REALLY ALWAYS HAVE CARED ABOUT YOU? RUINING MY LAST, BLISSFUL NIGHT IN MY FAIRYTALE REALITY WITH YOU IN SPAIN! WAS IT WORTH IT?" But instead I bit my lip and looked straight ahead without blinking as long as I could until I felt hot tears graze my cheeks.
She dared not look straight at me, but through the reflection of the metro window she could see the glint of the tiny shards of tears silently streaking my face. Millimeter by millimeter she edged herself closer to me until finally she was hugging me from behind. Her face was that of a guilty puppy who wasn't sure exactly what they'd done wrong - if anything - but saw that their force was much more than they'd realized. I didn't pull away but I continued glaring straight ahead, crying.
As we got off the night bus a little while later, she tried her best to be lighthearted and grinned too innocently, "Are we just not going to talk for the whole way home?" I shot a look at her, and tilted my head just enough to indicate my best, silent "effoffyoujustruinedmylastnightbitch" nod. By the time we got home we quickly went to opposite rooms of the apartment so as not to have to interact.
There have been very few times I have been so upset and angry that the only solution I can think of to calm myself has been alcohol. I can count MAYBE three total on my hand in my short lifetime. This? This was one of them. She fled to her room or the bathroom while I look a sharp right and went for the alcohol cabinet in her kitchen. A few small cupfuls of way-too-warm vodka and some swigs out of a juice container later, I was dizzy and in the mood for nothing but a pre-bedtime shower, as I would have no time in the morning for such nonsense.
The scorching water (and, let's be real, the copious amounts of vodka downed in under five minutes) cauterized my verbally inflicted wounds and turned my hurt and anger into determination. Her insecurity would not win this time. It had been working overtime all summer long against me (and her) and I was not going to let it come out ahead just as we were nearing the end of our summer together. I had eight hours. That was enough to come clean.
Still in my towel, I marched into her room where she lay in the dark, pretending to sleep.
"Get up!" I roared, in a voice more stern and authoritative than I realized mine was capable of being.
She groaned a sleepy, perturbed but timid groan and wiggled to shield herself from the bright light I'd just turned on.
"GET UP!" I demanded, again.
She rolled over.
I'm not sure if I would have ever said it had it not been for how the night turned out (and the help of the vodka later on), but back on the last day of school in July when I'd gone to meditate at the church in Alcala, I'd opened myself up to whatever message was out there for me, and this was it: tell her. I'd tossed it around and turned it over and over in my mind and knew she'd just find a way to take it as some sort of insult, or insult me with it. But it was one of those things that was so true and so dear to me that future implications or consequences for letting it free and illuminating it would be unequivocally worth it. And so I did.
It was my bravest and truest act of the summer.
She cried; she did, too; she wrapped me up in a snuggle ball; sleep came and everything was how it was supposed to be again (and even sweeter) - at least, until morning.
XOXO
Jet-set Cupcake
