My peers said studying abroad would “change my life”—that I just had to do it. This pissed me off. Who are they to say what I need to do with these crucial years of my youth? I need to pass my classes. I need to graduate. I need to find a therapist. My TJ Maxx wallet doesn’t sprout money, and not all of us have zero inhibitions and fairy godparents who grant our every privileged wish. I may not be happy in New York, but at least I’m comfortable, no? Besides, I can travel when I become a famous writer/internet personality. To my classmates: keep posting pictures on Facebook of all those beige cathedrals and legally purchased cava, but let me fulfill myself on my own timeline, thank you.
This was my mindset for the first three years of college. While I had reservations about the Abroad Experience, I should mention my love for adventure and openness to change. I am the friend who is “always game”—the one who’ll bury the body or drive to Canada just because. Yet moving to a different country for all of thirty-seven days felt like breaking up with everyone and everything I left behind. I temporarily lost the immediate comfort of my family, my Bob-O-Pedic mattress, my dog who hates me—also my boyfriend. If you choose to leave home for more than a month, be prepared to feel like all your love has been snatched from your heart, leaving you hopeless and empty in a place where your name means nothing.
That said, leaving America was one of the best experiences of my life. I got sick of patatas bravas and chorizo and that whole roster of tapas every restaurant kept serving me, but spending a month in Barcelona played a crucial role in my newfound wisdom. You could even say that Barcelona “changed my life”.
I tackled the airport with surprising ease, having immediately bonded with a girl from my program, Lea, with whom I was sharing a flight. Knowing she would eventually see me cry, I went the show-your-weakness-right-off-the-bat route. “I’m a very emotional and nervous person,” I disclosed.
In the plane, it all hit me—the angst. My boyfriend hadn’t texted me good luck or stay safe. It was my first time leaving the country, for crying out loud (I was, indeed, crying out loud).
It’s like the first day your parents drop you off at daycare (or middle school), and you cry, and crying at school is the worst possible scenario, but you can’t blink away the tears. Then, when you think you’ve finally calmed down—when your breathing isn’t an unpredictable series of gasps—something reminds you of what ignited your meltdown, and you lose it all over again. I started feeling that way on the plane, and the feeling persisted throughout my first week in Barcelona.
While awake, I faced the pressure to do things: absorb knowledge, boil pasta, engage in conversation (in English, Spanish, and Catalan). I faced the pressure to function in the midst of debilitating heartache. While my boyfriend pranced down the streets of Bath with his classmates-turned-family, I sat in class—my swollen eyes poorly hidden by sunglasses. But when I fell asleep, everything was normal. It’s like when you’re hungry at 1 AM; you could vacate the warmth of your bed and make a sandwich, or you could just fall asleep, a state during which hunger ceases to exist. In Barcelona, I prayed for dreamless sleep. No alternate life would have made me feel any better about the circumstances, but a full night’s rest would have saved me from utter hysteria. The memory of my eyes blnking open for the first time each morning before reality gradually flooded my psyche still puts a lump in my throat. Where am I? What am I doing today? Where is he? … Oh, god.
He was in Bath, England. Our time zones were only one hour apart. I would see him at the halfway point of our abroad stays—in Paris, la ville de l’amour. We spoke every day, at least through text, and I trusted—despite the chronic aching in my gut—that our having these separate adventures would fortify our relationship, rendering us as a “real couple”.
I just had to accept the fact that he and I would see each other again, just not before we had some healthy separation. This would entail adventure, discomfort, growth—anything reminding me of one simple fact: I am my own person.
Still, it didn’t hurt to fantasize about Eiffel Tower kisses, strolls through The Louvre, and feeding each other snails. My excitement motivated me to find the perfect souvenir—one that reflected both my trip and my boyfriend’s interests.
Luckily, on one of our first unsupervised outings, my friends and I walked to Barcelona’s biggest flea market, Els Encants, where we rummaged through clothes, knick knacks, soaps, everything, hoping to find our Barcelonian treasures.
I dove into the things my boyfriend likes folder in my brain, where I found airplanes, guns, and tobacco.
Tobacco. I had broken his wooden pipe months prior, promised to buy him a new one, and failed to do so. My mission commenced as I scoured the multilevel acre of artifacts, looking for a pipe (though my unconscious searched for cute clothes for myself). Finally, I saw a wooden fisherman’s pipe sitting atop a dusty box of who knows what. Among the knick knacks sat a bearded man, who watched me examine the pipe. I realized that, in order to make a decision, I would have to know a) the price, and b) if it was still functioning or just an artifact.
“Erm… ¿cuanto cuesta?” I asked first.
He answered, “Diez euros.” I had forgotten that my friend from Belgium said bartering was customary in European markets, but ten euros seemed reasonable.
“Does it still work?” I asked before receiving a blank stare.
I filed through the you’ve taken eleven years of Spanish, dumbass folder in my brain and finally came up with, “¿Se funciona con tobacco?” I motioned as if I was putting something in the pipe. When the man shrugged, I examined the pipe once more. I don’t see why it wouldn’t work, I thought. Besides, my boyfriend would appreciate the sentiment regardless, right?
The flea market adventure not only got me out of my bedroom, but it also connected me with Barcelona. Still, that experience was relationship-centric. I wanted to have an intimate relationship with the city too.
I began to embrace my own experience by acknowledging my surroundings. We resided in a neighborhood where the streets smelled of sewage and gas. Homeless people spooned their lethargic dogs atop dirty blankets at every corner. Each building was either a café, a Zara, or a vacant shop guarded by a rusty gate. Lea and I mastered the route to the academic building after a week, yet we never conquered the blazing Barcelonian heat. My sweat would dampen whatever chic outfit I pulled from my Pinterest board titled “European Fashion.” Still, I managed to turn heads on every outing with my long, sunkissed legs and golden hair (locals said I looked Scandinavian). More importantly, I accumulated many Facebook likes. None of my followers needed to know how much I struggled to get out of bed each morning.
About a week or two in, I started noticing the fountains and the light bouncing off the falling water. They’d always have statues closeby, of people I did not know from this place I did not know. I wanted to know it; I was ready to learn.
A bit of my sanity returned after our visit to the Picasso museum. A well-dressed tour guide with a pixie haircut took us through the exhibits, the first of which featured Picasso’s early work. This early period includes Picasso’s mimicking of renowned paintings and his borrowing techniques from previous masters. Realism over innovation. Every face looked like a face; every chair looked like a chair. The paintings looked nice, but they weren’t Picasso; they were copies. I thought, What’s the fun in that?
We examined “Science et Charité”, a painting of a dying woman in bed with a child on one side and a doctor on another. The lighting achieves the bleak tone of the piece and successfully elicits melancholy from its viewers, but this exact formula was used for Enrique Paternina’s “La Visita de la Madre”, a painting from five years earlier. At the wishes of his father, who advised him on his early paintings, Picasso painted conservatively despite having recently discovered expressionism.
Picasso painted his 1896 piece—“Première Communion”—when he was in La Lonja School of Art. Like “Science et Charité,” this painting consists of realistic figures: a girl in a white dress, an alter boy, and a priest. While Picasso never considered himself religious, he followed the nineteenth century trend of painting Christian scenes. Critics classify “Première Communion” as typical work of an art student.
As I listened to the tour guide spew facts about these seemingly basic paintings, I grew restless. I thought maybe I had confused Picasso with Van Gogh; I knew at least one of them had colorful, abstract paintings. I guess I’ll have to go to the Netherlands for cooler art, I figured. I’ve gotten really good at drawing Spongebob. Does that mean I get my own museum of Spongebob drawings?
I thought something was wrong with me. I thought I would never be able to appreciate the fine arts, because if I didn’t like Picasso, then I clearly had obscene taste.
Then we reached the room of surrealism.
Color smacked me in the face, along with disproportionate body parts and thick, squiggly lines. The paintings next to the exit grabbed my attention, because they featured dogs, or what the tour guide referred to as dogs. To me, they looked like mutated loaves of bread. I was thrilled. People with eyes of different sizes and multicolored faces laughed at me. Weird dogs laughed at me. And I laughed with them, shoulders dropping, teeth unclenching. No more copies. No more perfection.
Oh, to be without the make-or-break standards of happiness—of love. Since my adolescence, I have tried to mimic lovestruck TV characters or celebrity couples, as if they’re famous works of art. I have tried to get every line and shade just right. Did he write me a handwritten love letter? Did he pick me up and twirl me around? Did he notice when I dyed my hair? When the answer is no, disappointment weighs me down until I start crying on my knees. Why can’t it just be easy?
I’ve cried a lot since Barcelona, due to lack of attention from my boyfriend, fear of graduating college, and everyday chronic depression. But between the crying comes the laughter, shared among all the other people who have realized that life can be both miserable and manageable. No conflict means no color.
In an interview with Picasso, Pierre Daix asked if the artist regrets painting pieces like “Première Communion,” to which Picasso replied, “No way. Back then, it was very important to me.”
And if I were art (which I often think I am), I would want massive purple eyes and legs that extend beyond the canvas. I would want thick, blue eyelashes that look like they’d blow in the wind, and I’d want to hold a way-too-big teddy bear. My upper lip would be pink, my bottom one black. I would have silver hair with a single strand of orange, and I would look as though my arms were made of jelly. Oh, and I would need one of those dogs sitting with poor posture right at my feet. But that’s just me.
