putting on the same clothes as yesterday

June 25th.

I feel like the biggest fucking idiot ever. I actually am so pissed with myself, and I just have to sit in this misery. I am so fucking stupid that it makes me angry. I got to Tarragona, with no money, scrambled for an hour trying to decide what my next move was, before finally texting Gerri and buying a ticket for Barcelona. He’s brainstorming with me on the line, like, are you sure that’s what’s best? Why don’t you turn around and go home?

I told him the only money I had was through the application I used to train tickets, which was tied to my credit card. I was kicking myself for not having a physical version of it. My blue debit card and my green debit card could only amount to around twenty dollars, and that was not going to be enough to take me into town. I should have looked into how far the train station was from the beach, but for some reason I just assumed it would be like Malaga. That was an oversight. 

I am sitting outside with the taxis, counting my coins. When did I spend all of my money? I walked to the bus. The driver told me it was two euro, and can you believe it, I just have 1.50. I didn’t bother to negotiate, and he didn’t seem like he had any mercy in him anyways.

I’m trying to cool down but I just keep on crying. I love and hate crying in public. Hopefully I still have time to tan at the beach.

I’ll go to a contemporary museum in Barcelona, and maybe I’ll get something good for dinner. I don’t fucking know. I really hope this day turns around. I’ll leave the rest of this page blank so that it does, hopefully. 

I’ve arrived in Barcelona. This man stopped me at the train station to tell me that I looked very serious. He didn’t seem very suspicious, but I was wearing my headphones and sweating from stress so I couldn’t understand him very well and asked him to repeat himself. I assessed the exits as he spoke. He told me my cowboy boots took his attention when he was exiting the same train as me. He said he noticed that I was pretty before he noticed that my expression was so sour. I didn’t take too much offense - after all, I was searching for anything to make me feel less insane. When I said thank you, he told me that he hoped that I had a better day moving forward.

I walked out of the station a little flustered, so fast that I didn’t realize the metro was inside. I can’t believe that he noticed how angry I was. I didn’t know I could be so expressive.

I will have a few hours to tan. This has been a completely unnecessary trip. I hope to get some color. 

If I could cancel the tickets, I would just stay here and get a hostel or an airbnb. But, then I still have to pay for a place to stay when I visit Vincent this weekend, which is going to be around $200 at minimum. Adding another $60-100 on my month’s spending for an unnecessary accommodation feels irresponsible. 

Money is seeming to become a problem. I wish my job actually paid me. I am having some resistance applying to graduate school because I know it is expensive, and it wont guarantee me anything. I wonder if I will still get something good out of it. I should submit something today. The fact that I nearly applied to film school in Germany shows me that I just have to do something to make me feel like I have some sort of direction. 

I’ll write more on the beach, maybe. Perhaps I spent all this fucking money just for a nice walk around la Barceloneta. 

I am on the beach. I have reached page 100 of my book on Labor movements across Latin America. There is a lot of detail on Cuba and Argentina, and not much on Venezuela. I’m trying to look on the bright side. In a bit, I will walk down the shore, then look for Honest Greens. Vincent recommended it to me. He said that it was a chain, but that he loved going there while he was studying abroad here last fall. In my disaster, all I’ve eaten is a croissant. I didn’t feel like eating roast chicken today.

Work, school, Matthew, over and over again. What is he doing? Would he visit me this year because he wanted to? I’d like to know how often I cross his mind. 

I still can’t believe I have the life I do, and these questions bother me so much. I would like another sign, please, because the last one was a dead end. 

When I get home I’ll research journalism programs in Spain. If this note-book were conscious, it would be sick of me flip-flopping around, not knowing what to do with my future. 

Time to go. Talk to you soon. I hope Vincent’s recommendation is good. 

June 26

I feel so young, so old, and I feel a little self-important. You’re not going to believe what happened to me last night, or maybe you had some sort of foresight that I was not lucky enough to have. 

After the beach, I got falafel. The woman at the front spoke to me in English, because everyone around were guiris. I responded in Spanish, and she code switched. I ate my meal with Ruth over the phone for only five minutes, because I had to order a car or miss my train. I reached the station with just three minutes to spare. 

Okay, here’s where it gets fucking horrible. I take the Barcelona to Tarragona train, arrive, and ask someone working at the station if the platform I’m on is the right place to wait. I’m feeling a little frazzled from my earlier mistakes, so I’m looking for confirmation to assure that I don’t fuck up again. He says yes. Perfect, I think. A train arrives at the track, twenty minutes ahead of schedule… suspicious, I think, but I’m anxious to get home and so I enter the car right in front of me. I look at my ticket as I count the cars by the monitors they have on the wall, one, two, three, four, and that’s it. Wait a second. I look at my phone, and the car I’m supposed to be in is six. I hear the doors close behind me, and so I go to press the exit button, but we’re already moving and there’s nothing I can do. 

I’m in complete shock. I guess there was no other way for my day to end, other than with another incredibly stupid decision which got me even more lost than I was. My jaw opens, I talk to myself, I say, what the actual fuck? Because there’s only two other people in the train car and they’re out of ear shot, and I’m literally so fucking surprised with what just happened to me that I could only think to express this shock outloud. I’m like, staring at the headrest in front of me dissociating for a moment, collecting myself. What the fuck do I do? I start laughing, because what I really want to do is start crying, but the sun is in my eyes because it is setting and making me more dizzy and misdirected. 

The ticket collector goes by, and when she motions to check my phone I tell her what happened to me. I’m confused, she’s confused, we’re both at a loss on what to do. She says the next stop is Lleida, and that I might be able to catch the train I missed if it's passing through this coming station. I thanked her, even though I had already looked at my trainline app, and saw that my only choice was a bus at 11:59. Or, should I say, 23:59. 

I had already called my mother earlier in the day, and she had scolded me, so when I phone her again to tell the rest I’m hysterical. Just hearing her voice reminded me how fucking dumb I was.

It’s past nine, and it's late June, so the sun is about to set. I’m trudging the thirteen minutes it takes to get to the bus station, trying not to scream. My mom suggests a hotel or an airbnb, and I’m like no, I’ll just take the bus, partly because I had already purchased a ticket without asking her if she thought that was a good idea and partly because I was ready to just punish myself.

The station’s a literal dungeon. I’m the only woman in the cave. There are two buses across something like twenty lines, and four scattered men, who all watched me sit down at the furthest bench. This one guy comes up to me, smelling like piss, and he asks me if I knew when the next bus to blank was coming. I had never heard of that town, but I didn’t want to give myself away. I slinked out of the station as calmly as I could, and found somewhere to sit that wasn’t trashed with empty water bottles.

My mom and I are on the phone, arranging my stay in Lleida. I inspect a hotel near me while she’s making some calls, and enter through these beautiful automatic glass doors into a dim lobby.

I wipe my tears and ask about an open room. The front desk clerk told me the last one was booked, and what I could only assume was in good conscience, said that I would have a hard time finding a place to stay in Lleida that night. I’m hysterical again! He’s not smiling anymore, I’m dry heaving, and he’s pointing at the bathroom down the hall, his eyes are darting while he’s nodding like yes, please, do what you must. 

After grabbing tissues in the women’s restroom, my mom calls me again. Charge your phone, she says. I’m telling her what the clerk told me and she snaps me back into reality, like, get out of your head and stop crying unless you want to sleep on the fucking street. I’m swallowing hiccups on this regal armchair in the lobby, my phones plugged in next to me. In front of me two old people are enjoying the night together on Roman furniture, and I’m breathing so heavily that I hope they don’t notice the scene I just caused, but we’re the only three people in that room.

My mom booked a room. She texts me the address and tells me to call a car, but it’s only ten minutes walking. Families hangout in plazas together. People walk each other home. Dogs bark, and hardly anyone drives. 

When I finally get to the hotel, it’s nearing midnight. There’s a group of ten middle-school aged girls in horrific aqua marine t-shirts that say something-something gymnasia, and the lobby feels empty but everybody’s talking. In front of me in line are mothers and their kids check in, and when I overhear what they say to the clerk, I realize why every fucking hotel in Lleida was booked. When it's my turn to give my name and my debit card, the clerk tells me I was lucky to have gotten the last room available. I’m sweating from nervousness, from humidity, and fear, and I want to start laughing again. I wonder if he can smell it on me, but he is smiling, and I am smiling, and I think my face isn’t puffy anymore.

The walls were wooden, the bed was huge, the shower was warm, the AC was cold. It was wonderful, which made me feel incredibly guilty. I felt like shit but all the tears in my system were used up. I was too tired to even find out how to play a movie, so I watched whatever advertisement was already on the TV on mute while my mom and I debriefed on the phone once more, then I went to bed. 

This will be fucking burned in my mind the next time I try to be so impulsive. It was hit after hit, mistake after mistake, and I only had myself to blame. 

June 27th

You’re not going to believe this. I’m back in Lleida. I’m stuck here! Again. Two days after the incident. I thought I would never return, especially not against my will. It’s ironic, and I guess the only way it was going to happen. We’ve been stopped for two hours already. There was a bus that crashed? And a fire that started? And I think that the fire spread to stop the flow of traffic… I will try to confirm later. My mother sent me an article, which I sent to Vincent. I texted Ruth that I was stuck, and she sent me the same article my mom sent me.

I want to have some sort of a resolution, but like last time, all I can really do is experience the weight of all the hours I lost today, and know that I can’t go back and fill them.

The sun is going down and the lights have turned on at the station. Some man is heckling the conductor, and groups from both trains are roaming along the platform aimlessly. The conductor tells the man he is just as clueless about our time of departure.

The over-head told us we’d be stuck indefinitely after we had already been stopped for ten minutes. Everyone started banging on the walls of the train, chanting for the doors to open so they could go outside to smoke cigarettes. The line was from Madrid to Barcelona. I was sitting next to a man my father’s age, and I lowered the volume of my headphones to hear him say something like, this fucking sucks, right? I nodded and turned my phone screen towards me. 

He got up for a moment and came back with chips and a soda. I was really craving a Coke Zero… and it wouldn’t be a big deal to buy it from the vending machine inside the train, I’m thinking, because maybe that means Coca-cola won’t directly profit from it. I don’t think this is sound logic, the BDS list is what the BDS list is, but it was going to be a while because the fire was not contained yet and I wanted a treat. I’m waiting in line to get snacks because the card reader isn’t working. It takes a few taps for it to accept the payment of the two people in front of me, so I’m standing for around fifteen minutes. When I finally go to order the Coke can… the fucking machine turns off. The guy next to me laughs and says something, but my headphones are at a mid-level and I have absolutely no humor in me.

I bought a refrigerated ham and brie sandwich from the cafe I went to two days ago last time I was stuck in fucking Lleida. It came in a cardboard box with a see-through panel. It says it will expire in three days. I texted my sister and her fiance this, and they text back, eww. 

Someone who loves me wouldn’t think it's okay to ignore me. I’m having a hard time grappling with this, and it consumes me, because I would never do this to someone. Why is it being done to me?

Or better yet, why does the solution have to come in the form of me flying to another state. Why am I in complete control, and yet I can’t get what I want? I hate that the answer is that I don’t know what I want. Should I move to Spain? Fuck!

If I were in Barcelona by now I would be done with my first spritz and bothering someone for an industrial cigarette. I’d be catching up with Vincent and I’d notice his hair looks fuller, and that his cheeks are tan. I’d realize how much he cares about Pol, enough for him to dedicate four months of his life to living in another country where he knows almost no one. I would be drawing connections to myself, and wondering when I would get my turn. But I would be happy for the two of them. By now I would realize what exactly brought them together. I’d probably compare Pol to Vincent’s ex, Tristan, briefly. And then I’d compare the two of them to Matthew and I, and find no similarities.

I want purpose, obviously, I want to have an impact. But is it pointless to look for meaning, when I have access to the things that make me feel good? When will I move on? I would like to be in love. Why does Matthew keep removing himself then inserting himself back into my life?

There was just this awful, juvenile scream. The train attendant is whistling, calling everyone back inside. I hope that we are actually leaving soon. Ojala.