Freeze dance
Mar. 7th, 2024 01:04 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
nowiammyselfOctober, November, December, January, February all gone by in a blur. I still feel like I just got here. I have so much free time. I spend so much time holed up in my room. Winter felt like one long day. I feel like I've been sick my whole time here.
I came to Spain full of hope. I talked about this year for months and months to anyone who would listen when I was at home, thinking that somehow this would fix me, and in some ways it has. I've been reading more, writing more, walking more, thinking more, listening to music more. Yet there's so much here that I can't do because this space isn't my own. I am living in a borrowed room using borrowed things. Here I don't have my silence. Here I don't have the life that I worked so hard to build that I was so eager to throw away to come to Spain to test myself, whatever that means. Sometimes I feel like I've failed the test because I've sat here sad in my room so many nights and mornings and afternoons and I have not achieved the blossoming social life that I thought I would have by now, but I've also never been like that, so I don't know why I expected it.
In January I was walking the narrow cobblestone streets of the historic center when my first roommate in Spain, who I haven't spoken to in months, called me. She saw me walking by and asked if I wanted to catch up. I thought she hated me from our brief stint living together with a older man who made us uncomfortable for reasons I won't go into, when we were both new to Spain and our anxiety high as we struggled to adapt. We moved out into separate places after a month and I cut myself off from every English speaker (the other Auxes) after a texting mishaps in the group chat (I am always fucking things up over text message or email - someone should ban me from both platforms).
I went out with her again last night and we talked shit about our experiences here over glasses of vermouth and tapas. She told me she had been defending me to the other auxes, explaining how bad our first roommate situation was, and that they finally understood my reaction in the group chat. I don't really care about what a bunch of strangers think, but it feels good to know that someone has been talking positively about me while I've sat sad in my room for so many months. I don't know why I isolate myself so much.
I've been trying to end my self-imposed isolation. I reach out and I reach out and I reach out. I've been trying to reach out more for help, and I've found women who are more than willing to take my outstretched hand. I tell them I'm lonely - why lie? - and they tell me they're lonely too. It's a lonely world here in this city when you're an outsider. But I try to hold back my excitement so that they don't think I'm too weird, too intense, too needy, to desperate for connection.
Yesterday, in music class with 1 ESO students, I had to give a presentation over brass instruments. Boring stuff. This class likes me and they made it fun. I found a website about instruments and there's a matching game, and the kids go absolutely wild over it. As soon as I pulled it up again, an 11-year old child gave me heart hands and told me he loves me. At the end of the class, I clicked on the 'freeze dance' link. Dance while the music is playing and then freeze. The page played classical music and paused intermittently. First only a few kids danced, and then more and more started to dance, and then they'd freeze when the music stopped and they'd laugh, and more and more would join in until half the class was dancing wildly to classical music. The music teacher was looking at me and laughing, I was laughing.
Some days I feel so lonely and disconnected here, but then there are moments like this, of making kids laugh, of someone telling me that they thought kindly about me, and I have to remember that life is full of ebbs and flows, and that my experience here - though not as magical as I thought it would be - has brought me good little moments that I hope to carry with me forever.
I came to Spain full of hope. I talked about this year for months and months to anyone who would listen when I was at home, thinking that somehow this would fix me, and in some ways it has. I've been reading more, writing more, walking more, thinking more, listening to music more. Yet there's so much here that I can't do because this space isn't my own. I am living in a borrowed room using borrowed things. Here I don't have my silence. Here I don't have the life that I worked so hard to build that I was so eager to throw away to come to Spain to test myself, whatever that means. Sometimes I feel like I've failed the test because I've sat here sad in my room so many nights and mornings and afternoons and I have not achieved the blossoming social life that I thought I would have by now, but I've also never been like that, so I don't know why I expected it.
In January I was walking the narrow cobblestone streets of the historic center when my first roommate in Spain, who I haven't spoken to in months, called me. She saw me walking by and asked if I wanted to catch up. I thought she hated me from our brief stint living together with a older man who made us uncomfortable for reasons I won't go into, when we were both new to Spain and our anxiety high as we struggled to adapt. We moved out into separate places after a month and I cut myself off from every English speaker (the other Auxes) after a texting mishaps in the group chat (I am always fucking things up over text message or email - someone should ban me from both platforms).
I went out with her again last night and we talked shit about our experiences here over glasses of vermouth and tapas. She told me she had been defending me to the other auxes, explaining how bad our first roommate situation was, and that they finally understood my reaction in the group chat. I don't really care about what a bunch of strangers think, but it feels good to know that someone has been talking positively about me while I've sat sad in my room for so many months. I don't know why I isolate myself so much.
I've been trying to end my self-imposed isolation. I reach out and I reach out and I reach out. I've been trying to reach out more for help, and I've found women who are more than willing to take my outstretched hand. I tell them I'm lonely - why lie? - and they tell me they're lonely too. It's a lonely world here in this city when you're an outsider. But I try to hold back my excitement so that they don't think I'm too weird, too intense, too needy, to desperate for connection.
Yesterday, in music class with 1 ESO students, I had to give a presentation over brass instruments. Boring stuff. This class likes me and they made it fun. I found a website about instruments and there's a matching game, and the kids go absolutely wild over it. As soon as I pulled it up again, an 11-year old child gave me heart hands and told me he loves me. At the end of the class, I clicked on the 'freeze dance' link. Dance while the music is playing and then freeze. The page played classical music and paused intermittently. First only a few kids danced, and then more and more started to dance, and then they'd freeze when the music stopped and they'd laugh, and more and more would join in until half the class was dancing wildly to classical music. The music teacher was looking at me and laughing, I was laughing.
Some days I feel so lonely and disconnected here, but then there are moments like this, of making kids laugh, of someone telling me that they thought kindly about me, and I have to remember that life is full of ebbs and flows, and that my experience here - though not as magical as I thought it would be - has brought me good little moments that I hope to carry with me forever.
