dear hannah,
where did you go? and who is in your place?
sincerely,
hannah
what i’m realizing
If a guy treats you badly after you’ve had sex with him, it’s not because you had sex too quickly. If a guy is going to treat you badly, he is going to treat you badly. It still sucks, but sex is not the reason.
battlefield
Everybody talks to themselves….right?
This is the last thing I would ever want to sound assertive about, because it’s a quality in myself that terrifies me and makes me feel very uncool, because I often find myself walking and thinking, and then I realize that as I’m passing all these people on campus or wherever, my lips are moving. It’s entirely embarrassing, but then again, it could be one of those things like how nobody but me notices that my nostrils are crooked. So is it?
The reason I ask you, empty Internetlandia, is because I find myself having really insistent conversations tonight. I cannot keep my head in my book, partly because I was listening to music, and when you listen to music and read, it should be music you’ve heard before, not a newly downloaded album. I also partly can’t keep my head in the book because it’s The Journals of Sylvia Plath, and it’s a very exhausting read that will take me about a hundred years, because I usually only manage about 10 pages per sitting. But I also just can’t concentrate on reading because I keep thinking about conversations I’d like to be having or things I’d explain to people or whatever it is that is unimportant but that I think about. It’s like I’m absolutely desperate for conversation.
I haven’t exactly been Suzie Social since I got home on Wednesday, but I’ve certainly had contact with other humans since being home, so can I really be starved for company? I don’t even like company; I’m always thinking about how I love being alone or with a small group of people. But it’s summer, and it’s maybe a bit unnerving that I don’t know who is available to be my human company if I want it. I like being sort of lonely and out of touch with people during the summer, but that feeling has dwindled slightly since college threw me and all my relationships with people out of whack. Maybe it’s that I just spent six weeks doing one of those magical summery things, but it didn’t feel as magical as some summers. It felt many other positive and negative things, but it didn’t really feel like summer. Then again, I was in the southern hemisphere, so in a technical way, it wasn’t summer.
But I’ve grown accustomed to (that’s not quite the verb I wanted, but the Spanish verb “soler” doesn’t really have a good English equivalent…”be in the habit of” doesn’t have a very nice ring to it) pairing summer experiences with great, long conversations, and I haven’t had one of those in a long time. My, do I miss my Fridays. And writing camp. And cherubs. And knowing where I am. This is very off-putting, because I do not know what I’m supposed to be doing. That also means that I am doing a lot of reading and I am feeling compelled to write, and I’m actually writing, so it’s not really a bad thing so much as just a necessary discomfort for a good thing. However, it would be nice to occasionally spice my old maid lifestyle up with some good conversation and chai or something.
a cold summer in montevideo
It’s funny, because I love to learn languages and meet interesting people and experience new things, but I’m learning that I am really not a good traveler. Like, I really don’t like to be away from home. Who knew that after spending my entire childhood and adolescence begging for boarding school, for my mother to accept a job working abroad, for college out of state, that I would end up a homebody who loves spending time with her family? This is some weird sort of karma.
It’s not that I don’t like being in Montevideo. On the contrary, I was actually really happy yesterday to return after a weekend in Buenos Aires (beautiful, beautiful city, but snooty people and lots of dirt and a somewhat unpleasant hostel experience). I’m sad that I haven’t gotten to take full advantage of my classes or internship, having missed more than a week due to my flu, but I really like working at NGOs, and working at a Latin American NGO is twice the experience, because it’s work experience and language practice. But traveling in a group is just not my thing, and I feel very off-balance not being at home. I’m too accustomed to being settled. Apparently I don’t like change. Apparently I actually like my life in Tucson. Interesting.
Something that has always astonished me is that I can’t really write when I’m on vacation, even though being in another country (or just another state–pretty much everything is different from the desert) gives me a lot of inspiration and generally feels exhilarating, at least for awhile. But I don’t feel compelled to pick up my journal, I think partly because there is so much to say that I don’t know where to begin. All of a sudden there is a new climate, new streets to learn, a new culture of people, new stores and restaurants and foods, new phrases, and now a language that I’m starting to think in. It’s like there’s so much to say just superficially, just to establish my new place in a new world, that I can’t actually get to the point of talking about my feelings or new friends or specific experiences. It’s a daunting task, and I simply can’t say anything without spending two hours just writing in a journal. And there’s no time for that, because I’m on vacation on a specific program and I have things I need to be doing. And on days like today, when I spend my afternoon alone in my hotel room on my computer (though I was actually looking up important information for the rest of my trip, like hostels and bus fares and things), I feel like a failure on both parts, because why should I be in my hotel room when I’m neither experiencing the country I’m in nor doing something I would do at home, like work on my writing? I don’t have all the things I need to feel at home, but I also feel a bit overwhelmed always being here.
So while I can’t bring myself to be totally me, neither can I stop myself. I really want to be writing. I want to be working on my novel, and I want to be working on my essay for Ann’s book, and I want to be working on that other novel I started, and I want to start developing some really good short pieces, because it’s about time I started submitting stuff and making money off my writing, and it would be prudent to start publishing in the genre I want to have a career in, rather than in all the others that I just do for fun. But I can’t work on things here, because I’m very materialistic and high-maintenance, and I don’t have all my drafts or my big old desk or my things. Things, things, things. This is why I’m a bad traveler. I can’t pack light. Physically, mentally, or emotionally. I have lots of baggage.
It’s not all that bad. I’m learning, and that’s really all I care about. This is probably the first summer experience that doesn’t feel like summer (which it shouldn’t, because I’m in the southern hemisphere and it’s freezing). What I mean by that is this is the first summer experience where I’ve gone away to a program and have not felt like it’s completely magical or that I’ve made friends for life. In fact, the only person I see myself really remaining friends with is the one person I knew before coming, though I really did not know her very well. That’s totally fine, I guess. I am a huge cynic, and since college I have become a lot more particular about the people I make friends with. I know lots and lots of people, and I really like it, but I also really like just having a handful of really, really good friends, not a bunch of friendships that are all high-maintenance. There are people I have a deep necessity for, and they generally make me happy. The rest make me happy, but they’re not necessary. And that’s the way life goes. In this group of people, I feel very, very old and stuffy, and I guess I kind of am, but it’s also just how I’ve developed within this group of people who are not very much like me. And it’s fine. I am enjoying my learning experiences, and I am very excited for my two weeks of travel with my friend.
I am all over the place. And where I’d really like to be is home, but I know if I were there, I would be complaining about how I never go anywhere. There is definitely more to traveling than just appreciating where you come from, and I hope I am doing that. I think I am more meant for individual and small-group travel experiences than strict programs with boisterous personalities. I am slowly drawing into a shell, and I really shouldn’t do that.
BUT planning for my traveling is so exciting! Another three days in Buenos Aires by myself, this time to meet my grandmother’s cousin and to go to museums and experience traveling the way I like to do it, then a bus ride to Iguazu, a stay at a hostel for a day or two, bus ride back, boat back to Uruguay, perhaps a day in Montevideo, then travel to the hot springs! It’s going to be a packed two weeks, but it’s going to be great.
things that suck
It sucks to be sick. It sucks to be sick in a foreign country when there are lots of things to be doing. It sucks to hear that every time I go away for a long period of time, someone dies in a car crash. It sucks not to be there to hold her goddaughter’s hand at the funeral. It sucks to have to hear about the funeral over an e-mail. It sucks to have a cell phone that only half works. It sucks to think that the baby may not completely recognize me when I get back because she won’t have seen me for six weeks. Sometimes vacation sucks. This is why I prefer to be a homebody.
