putting on the same clothes as yesterday

June 5th 

Ruth can’t stop throwing up! She’s thrown up in every bathroom at the Barcelona airport. And she threw up in a garbage can right at the entrance, where people ash their cigarettes. It reminds me of the time Robin’s boyfriend got kicked out of a plane in Ann Arbor, and then had to take a three-hour, two hundred dollar Uber to the second closest airport, so he could catch a flight to his next show. Robin was so patient with him while he was getting ready to go, even though he was rummaging around drunk, asking for the same headphones over and over again while they were in her hands all along. She was so calm whenever she reminded him that she still had them in her possession. Robin, Ruth and I were at a bar when we heard that he had been kicked off the plane. Robin’s boyfriend had thrown up in a barf bag while they were still loading passengers, and the flight attendant told him he was too drunk to fly. Apparently, his management was furious.

Ruth was in the clear, here, because no one caught her throwing up outside or even inside, and all we had to attend to was our hostel reservation and not a DJ performance for college students. I had to buy her anti-nausea pills - or, I insisted on buying them, because I was worried about something similar happening. We ended up in Majorca just fine. 

Note from Ruth

June 12th

I’ve applied to three jobs and they all pay very little. Honestly, I feel qualified to do what they ask of me, but my materials might not measure up to what they would like. I also just feel like applying to jobs with no connection is like printing out your resume and then throwing it into an incinerator. They’re just going to run it through some AI software and weed me out anyways. 

I am feeling really upset by how little control I have, and how little the shit I make means to anybody. What I want is for it to just matter to me, but if I can’t generate profit out of my interests then it seems I'm better off not making anything. I say this and I know I’m wrong, but yet I still feel so defeated. What is the fucking point?

I thought at first that moving away from home would give me a fresh start. I thought that I completed all that had to be done in my hometown, but then I began to wonder if I should be focusing on fixing things locally, to make the place I grew up in better for the next generation. Then I thought about how many other people want change in San Francisco, how those ideologies may compete with mine. How soon could I reasonably change anything? 

I try to write something and then upon publishing it is out of date. Is the solution to just keep on writing until I am ahead? How is that even possible? 

I want to be close to people but I feel so tired all the time. I want to meet other people and yet I also want to know them already without trying. I want to guess what they are like so that they can accept me as a friend immediately. I want to make sense when I speak Spanish.

I am frustrated and I know that worrying is stupid, but how else am I supposed to fill my time when I feel like the world is ending? My lungs hurt and I can’t stop smoking. I smoked a cigarette last night. I first contemplated going downstairs, eleven stories below, and sitting at the entrance of my apartment. Then I thought about opening up my window and risking the smell. No one was home, because no one is ever home. When I am in town, my roommates are at work at the hospital, or in Huesca visiting their families. When they are around, I am in Barcelona, or Madrid.

I chose the second option, showering afterwards to get the scent out of my hair and to go to bed clean. Everything feels incredibly dramatic when I am alone all of the time, and when the people who I’d like to reach are nine hours in the opposite direction of me. Now that Nico is gone, everybody I know is out of reach.

I am supposed to talk to Matthew tonight. I feel like I’m going to have a heart attack. I feel ashamed that I have already begun to measure the logistics of moving to New York, of throwing all of my dreams of Spain away to be in Brooklyn with him.

I feel so hopeless about the world, and all I can hold onto to for clarity are my relationships, but he is slippery. He refuses to stay put for long enough for me to rely on him.

I’m trying to live my life, and I am trying not to go insane. I have no idea where I am going to be in a year and I am not getting any younger. I am idling on Matthew, waiting for him to make a decision about me, because I am looking to him for an answer about my future. I am too willing to accept his ideas over mine.

I will call him once my hair dries.

June 13th. 

I’m at work. I’m trying to edit this wordpress page and it is actually very difficult. I looked up a video online and it was not helpful - most how-to videos are so beginner oriented that I get bored and skip, until I get confused, and then I end up teaching it to myself. It’s kind of a long way of getting things done. I really am trying to get the most out of this internship, but I struggle to ask for help. 

While Ruth was here, I couldn’t stop thinking about Matthew, or talking about him. I told her that he is leaving me little messages - a reposted TikTok, an instagram DM, a playlist title on his Spotify. I told her how much it pissed me off, because I knew he was trying to communicate with me, but he would not call me, not text me. At dinner last week, on a beach in Majorca, I told her that I was sick of it, but that I still miss him so terribly. It is the stupidest thing. I hate that our conversations are in code, that I have to solve riddles through screenshots, but what I crack ends up being anticlimactic. He thought that I was trying to communicate with him when I reposted a TikTok about The Sopranos. Something about pulp, and orange juice. I wanted to kill him.

Anyways, when Ruth came back to Zaragoza to stay with me before her flight, I stumbled on a video of him with a girl - I didn’t even let it finish playing before I blocked him on everything. I woke up still angry. When I checked my phone that morning, I had received an email from letterboxd. He said something like, you forgot to block me on here. I sent him a string of texts, begging him to make some fucking sense, and to stop playing games with me. He flipped it on me. Then he told me he still had feelings for me.

We called yesterday. Long story short, without being direct, he said that he still thinks about what things could have been like if we didn’t break up, and that if we see each other in the future, there is a chance he’d want to get back together. He talked about splitting a studio in two. It would be cheaper that way, is what he expressed. He envisioned a future with me. 

To be honest, this all kind of started because I texted him on the first night I was in Madrid, drunk, at three in the morning. I told him I would be visiting New York in August. I hadn't properly organized it, but in saying it to him, I brought it into existence. In Croatia, I made plans with Robert to see him two months into the future in New York, as if the flight was already booked. Then, when Ruth was here, I made plans to see her in New Jersey during the same time frame. A few days with Ruth in Jersey, a few days with Robert in Manhattan, a few nights with Matthew in Brooklyn. Maybe a day with Nico in Brooklyn as well.

I basically thought that Matthew was the love of my life. Maybe I meddled my way into bringing him back into the picture. Maybe he is supposed to stay in the past. But I dream about him, and I write about him, and I miss his eyes and his sense of humor, and how much taller he was than me. I have some reservations, but I want to see him again, and I’m not sure if I care about the consequences.

I think I’ll book the flight soon. Even if it's a bad idea, I want it more than anything. Still looking for jobs though! Ugh. We’ll see where I am in a week. 

June 14th. 

My mom said I had miles on an airline. That will most definitely be going to my New York trip to visit Matthew.

I’m heading to Madrid in an hour. I tried to dye my hair this afternoon, but I felt a little sting when I started to apply it onto my scalp and decided that I would not take any risks. Maybe I’ll go to a hair salon, or maybe that was my sign to leave my hair alone.

I haven’t spoken to Nico much since he started working. He says he reads on company time, but he is almost always busy with a spread sheet, or a meeting. I wonder when we’ll have a chat about our book reviews. I’m on section two, but I need to also read an English version of the analysis. I flip flopped between reading a PDF online in English and then reading it physically in Spanish. I almost bought a ginormous copy in Catalan at La Central del Raval, but I caught myself right before I checked out. He bought his at a bookstore in Brooklyn. Maybe I’ll go there in August.

Nico had sent me an analysis in English when we agreed to both read the book, and I was a little insulted when I first saw the link. I thought, does this boy think I’m stupid? Then I started to read the book in Spanish and told him that I was filling in the blanks with the English analysis, and then he said he used it as well even though he was reading the original text in English. That made me feel better. Maybe I just always assume that guys have it out for me. That is a feeling inherited from such a long time ago, and it is time to put that insecurity to rest. It seems Nico has faith in my point of view.

I’ve been bleeding for what feels like months. I’m looking for a job. Still. I hate it. It makes me want to lie on my back and be a barista, but I’m not going to give up yet. 

The airline I’m flying to New York is United. I should probably get a credit card. 

June 16th. 

My phone and laptop died. I’m forced to go without them, because I don’t have a charger for either, and so I’m resorting to writing and watching a movie on my TV. My lungs hurt. 

I had a really fun weekend with Gerri, but I always go a little hard with him. I’m going to slow down - or bring Narcan… invisible ink.

His friend group is cool. I have to take the risk of moving here, because it seems my dreams are here. I talked to Matthew and it was affirming to hear how he felt about me, but I don’t know what the right decision is with him anymore. I did love him, and I do, but I also would like to live somewhere where they speak Spanish and I don’t think he has an interest in that. I think I will plan to see him in New York and in Ann Arbor and see where to go from there. Maybe I’ll come back to the U.S. Maybe I will not. I’m watching The Pianist, and the actor looks just like Matthew. 

I got someone’s number and I might entertain that further. I don’t really like the idea of meeting people at the peak of the night, because I tend to forget their name, what they look like, and what brought me into a conversation with them in the first place. When I got a message this morning from a number claiming that we had met, I was confused. All of Gerri’s friends are gay. I texted Gerri a screenshot and he said that he did not recognize the number. Then, the memory came back to me. I talked to a guy at the playground next to the club for a while. I can’t remember much of what we talked about, but I can remember getting home, so it couldn’t have been that interesting. Maybe I am not going to pursue this side quest, because I am too excited at the possibility of a future with Matthew. That could be a stupid thing to say. 

The Pianist is about World War II. There are parallels between what I see on screen and what I read in the news about Palestine. I am writing this word, but that is because I can’t think of any other at the moment: it is absurd that our country is being controlled by lobbyists and special interest groups, and civilians have no say in this. I want to see actual democracy work, or honestly, I want something completely different. I told my mom how I’ve been feeling and I think she understands now. I feel so dependent on her and I have no other choice, at least not while I’m in Spain.

I don’t want to accept a low paying job. I have to go somewhere for more school or training so I can specialize in something, it seems. I am trying the best I can with what I know, and what I have. And truthfully, I have a lot, and maybe that means I shouldn’t complain. I don’t think you mind if I complain to you, otherwise you would have said something by now. 

I really want to pursue politics. I need to be able to have access to changing my life and my economic system. I want to learn more about finance capitalism. I’m really enjoying reading Capital and my book on the Labor movement, but it leaves me with a sense of loss, like everything about the world has already been predetermined and I would need to read ten more books to understand how to deconstruct it all. I know there has to be another way. 

I need to get my birth control out. I’m scared it might be fucking up my hormones and my reproductive system. It's something that has been causing me anxiety. I need to get more serious about my health. I want to live a long life, I’ve decided. 

Tomorrow I will start applying to Spanish Graduate schools. I’m excited - I started a video concept that I’ll try out more tomorrow, to add to my portfolio. This tune got stuck in my head and I need to get it down. 

This movie is really good. Exactly the kind of thing I wanted to watch right now. I’m going to go to bed, and my dead phone and laptop will not help me get up in the morning. Hopefully I don't sleep in and ruin things for myself. Luckily, if that happens, I will probably be forgiven. 

June 17th

Last night I dreamt that I was at an Urban Outfitters (?) and that I left my journal inside. When I went to retrieve it, people crowded around me wondering what I was picking up and whether or not I was shoplifting. I held it up to show how cool it was. I was like, “Look at the pen attached to it, the little bookmark, the elastic that closes it!” It’s funny that I enjoy this book so much that I am dreaming about it. 

This actor really looks like Matthew. I am afraid to write down that I am desperate to see him. 

That guy from Madrid texted me again. I can’t respond because my phone and laptop are still dead. When I finally leave my house this morning, I have to buy new chargers. I forgot to tell you the reason I am in this dilemma is because I left my USBc at Gerri’s and I have been using that charger singularly to take care of my phone and my laptop. I won’t be there again for another two weeks, so I have to take a guess which store around me would sell me two chargers because I can’t look up anything. I’m not even sure if I have enough money to purchase two, and I can’t check my bank accounts. Gerri’s boyfriend called me something like a tornado. He said that when he met Gerri, he thought that he was a disaster (that was the word I was looking for) but that I have done a good job of one upping him. I don’t take it as an insult. Honestly, it's true, and the more aware I become of this habit the more I realize it's time to grow up and get serious. No matter how much better I get at what I write, what I edit, what I produce, no matter who I become, I lose all my shit and I feel like a kid again. 

The transitions in this movie are so weird. I wonder if it has bothered anyone else. 

My crisis has somewhat concluded. I have to be strategic. I can’t just get another heart attack every time a new element affects my plans for the future. It's not sustainable.

My roommate is listening to old 2010s Bruno Mars. She really likes pop music.

I wonder what time it is.