Here I Am

Anytime I've ever heard anyone talk about traveling abroad the stories are always of wonder and glory. 

Adventure. Transformation. 

You go one woman and return another. 

I'd never once heard anybody talk about what it does to your body to travel a third of the world, through five time zones, up for thirty hours on a mere two hours of sleep. 

It fucking sucks.

My first couple of days in Alicante I was in a fog. 

Excited, certainly. 

But like some character I was portraying in a play, part of me was very present in the action of the story, in all that was happening to me. 

But another part of me had this awareness that I was also somewhere else. 

I was somewhere dormant within, unable to fully wake the core of my spirit because it was so fucking exhausted it refused to play anything but comatose. 

I also was rooming with a girl I'd never met. 

The whole story sounds like a play or some movie. 

Which really isn't surprising because I'm such a fucking drama queen it stands to reason every action I take, whether subconscious or not, stems from a desire for drama. 

In the few short days I've been here (though here they have felt long) there has already been tears and misunderstanding and laughter and pure joy. 

A friend of mine recently had a baby, a child she's wanted desperately for years. 

And one day we were talking on the phone and she was describing her day to me. 

How she'd gone to the park and her baby had a diaper accident and how she had to clean it up.

"That was my day," she said. 

"The park and the messy diaper."

But no one ever puts photos of that on Instagram. 

Because who wants to be inspired by the honest monotony of daily life?

I am grateful to be here. 

I am overwhelmed that I found this incredible closeness with someone I've known such a short while they were a stranger the last time the Phantom was inside me. 

Time can move with the speed of an impatient teenage boy. 

Or it can drag each hour for months while you wait for that once enraptured boy to text you again. 

Sheldon never saw me even though he said we'd "work something out" and it still pisses me off 5,619 miles away from him.

I can't change anyone's choices.

After my first day here I was looking through the photos we took. 

Wearing similar dresses with our matching red lips and pinup hairdos I couldn't believe that we were creating an actual photo side by side the way we'd been creating collages of our photos for months. 

But there we stood, right next to each other, and the joy we both felt was evident on each of our faces. 

The absurdity of me carefully placing my phone in that window ledge so we could pose on the stairs together like models on a set, directing each other as though the shots would be sent to print, promoting the colorful dresses we each wore. 

I smiled as I looked at each photo and then stopped on one. 

I'd never noticed it before but my friend suddenly looked like the girl, my friend of five years who'd basically broken up with me months ago because I "only ever talk about myself" and we "never talk about her." 

Because having the man you were starting to fall for and the man you'd depended on for three years banish you from the privilege of their affections wasn't enough. 

I needed to have a woman I considered a soul sister do it as well. 

And as a sigh of sadness crossed my heart I felt angry. 

Because I'd worked so hard to be standing where I was. 

I'd spent hardly any money feeding myself for weeks to compensate the cost of my plane ticket. 

I'd spent hours each night those same weeks desperately searching for a new job to come home to so I wouldn't be void of savings the next time rent was due. 

I'd even accepted the polite rejection of the first sincere and genuine guy I'd dated this year who admitted he wasn't ready for a relationship. 

And I stood here, on Spanish soil, with the first (of many, I might add) stamps in my passport, and I refused to let these people taint this moment. 

This moment was mine.

And maybe it wasn't glamorous like the Marilyn Monroe movies I've watched over and over again. 

But you know what?

Marilyn was secretly a hot mess. 

And we love her in spite of it. 

Maybe because of it. 

And the first part of my trip I felt a bit like some fragment of my actual self. 

In a strange land where I don't speak the language, in the home of a girl I only just met, with the expectation and anticipation of the adventure that is to be of my lifetime. 

But I came here, I boarded the plane with no expectations. 

With no anticipation except I wanted to meet my friend. 

I could have gone anywhere. 

I wanted to meet her.

And I've felt for days, since I started traveling, like I didn't know what to write. 

Because it's supposed to be this great adventure so I should have something great to say. 

But you know what my favorite part of today was?

It was when Marjie decided to take me to this store she knew I'd love. 

A store in a mall. 

It wasn't some local restaurante or some great historical landmark with significance and the perfect backdrop for an IG #fromwhereistand.

It was this cheap super store with all kinds of knick knacks and doo dads every girl having a bad day would go to buy happiness. 

And the first section of the store we went to had pajamas in it. 

And as I scanned the walls I saw it, featured on display. 

A giant baby pink onesie with white hearts and a cat head. 

The kind of pjs you'd put on a toddler and force it to stand there uncomfortably while you took pictures of it for grandma and grandpa who bought her the stupid thing. 

And with no shame or modesty or embarrassment at all, I grabbed it off the wall and put it on over my dress.

Giggling I asked Marjie to take my picture in it. 

It was the most ridiculously adorable thing I'd ever seen and it was only thirteen euros. 

"I'm getting it," I declared and a childish smile danced across my face. 

And for the first time since leaving my apartment at 2:30 in the morning, I felt like myself.

My 100% energetic gives absolutely no fucks self. 

And THAT is the most intensely difficult thing about traveling abroad. 

Because how the fuck could I start my adventure when I wasn't even fully here yet?

Time can move with the hope of a seeking woman. 

And find its perfection in the most seemingly insignificant moments.