In September of 2020, I sold my car along with most of my possessions and moved to Spain with a single suitcase and about 20 words of Spanish. To be thirty-three years old and suddenly not in possession of a single key to anything is intimidating, to put it mildly.
On my first day of work, I introduce myself to the fourth graders slowly, over-articulating my words because I’m not sure how well they understand me behind the mask. When I ask if they have any questions for me, one boy asks if Kansas City is the capital of America. A girl asks me if I know Charli D’Amelio from TikTok. Another asks, “Did you come to Spain to get away from Donald Trump?”
“Partly,” I say before realizing that they don’t know the word. Then I say, “Yes,” and laugh. Since moving here, I’m constantly reminded that telling the truth is only possible if your vocabulary (and your listener’s vocabulary) permits it. I often joke that articulating myself is the only actual skill that I possess, but I’ve spent my life amassing a mental toolbox that doesn’t work here.
During a summer that was somehow both chaotic and listless, I went through the visa process from my home in Kansas City, Missouri. And as most of our plans were washed away in the tide of the pandemic, I assumed this dream, too, would fall through. It was difficult to convince myself to study Spanish on interminable afternoons in July and August. Leaving the United States during the pandemic, when so many borders were impassible for Americans, felt like a miraculous escape, especially after convincing myself it wouldn’t happen. I’m also an expert at not getting my hopes up.
The international terminal at JFK was a ghost town, but I boarded my flight and watched in shock as the speckles of city light disappeared, eaten away by dark ocean. I made it, I kept telling myself, not ready to believe it. It felt as though I’d entered a timeline not meant for me; it still feels like this, a month later.
Before I left, a relative asked me, “Why do you want to go there? What about your writing?” But I wasn’t writing at home. Aside from one journal entry on April 1st (with phrases like sickening feeling, world unraveling, and how long can a person can sustain this particular kind of fear) and another in June after my divorce court date (every couple on the docket was present via telephone or videocall), I didn’t write during the summer. I was not one of the industrious golden ones, tackling that novel, finishing an entire screenplay. Writing felt pointless. So many of us were sharing the same experiences, day by day. Why articulate it at all? And whatever needed recording, some other, more talented writer could hammer it into readable truth.
I can see myself reading another’s work about this year: Ah, that’s exactly right. That’s exactly what it felt like, I’ll say. But this summer, I sat by, feeling wholly redundant and ineffectual. If I’m telling the truth, I felt paralyzed with dread, too, depending on the minute.
As I write this, I’m in Toledo, a city only an hour away from Madrid, after starting work as a language assistant in a bilingual primary school. Toledo is the medieval capital of Spain. The city of three cultures. If the world is ending, this isn’t a bad spot to wait for it. I’ve seen very little of the world, but this place is so enchanting, it feels unreal. I’m told that Toledo is usually flush with tourists and their selfie-sticks and that it is unusual to hear only Spanish, which is all I hear now. It’s isolating but peaceful—not understanding.
Even after a month walking around this city, I’ll turn down some tiny, labyrinthine street and a certain balcony or view of tiled roofs makes me stop dead in my tracks. “I don’t deserve to live in a place this beautiful,” I texted a friend my first week here. Especially not at a time like this.
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