September

There are months in the calendar year that people tend to dislike. January, of course, is one of them. November, could be another. Ha.

Guys, if there is a hard month round the year, that one is September. Yes, I know. Still summer. And yes, bright enough and not that hot. 

No. September is a quite damned difficult month. Go back to obligations, work and alarms settled for the mornings. Just try to forget how well you were doing chilling by the sea. Or hiking a beautiful mountain. Say good bye to all your seasonal friendships. 

Get ready for a new school year.  Add up one thousand more tasks, errands and jobs for your personal to-do-list. Enjoy the adjustment of your kids, who are struggling to change their summer pace to the back-to-school hectic rythm. They may spend a couple of weeks in denial, and that would involve you dreaming about boarding schools, because they know how to get into your nerves. 

Face the bloody scale. You may try it a few times to see if the measurement is accurate, if there is any chance you can get a smaller number. You may even take your earrings off, but still, you won't like the figure showing there.

And a long etcetera. 

Now, there is only one good thing about the month. Actually, recovering your routine is hard, but a blessing. It gives you safety feeling, control, etc. 

But, what if there is nothing of that for you to pay off? What if September is the month when you are starting your new life somewhere else? What if there is no routine, home to come back, or friends (that over the years have become family) to welcome you? What if you can not share any more the stories, the gossip, and, let's admit it, a bit of the bitching too, with your bestie over a cup of tea?

I know, it sucks. It takes so much, that you must be entitled to the tantrum of your life. Don't worry if you go for it, ignite or explode. Don't feel guilty, you are in your perfect right!

But, let's be practical here. There is no way around it. Try to face the challenge. Prepare your superpowers. Take out your super hero costume, pick who would you like to be: Wonderwoman, Captain Marvel, Scarlett Witch or whoever is your favourite. You would need the strengh, the inspiration and the mental control. You may need the powerful can-do-actitude too. 

And on the bright side, think that September is a month with only 30 days. It could be worse, it may have 31. 

The place in the mountains

If you read my previous entry, you may be wondering where all my furniture went. Why my new place was empty?

Well, you know, shipping from overseas it’s quite expensive. No one was paying us the cost. So, most of my furniture was donated to charities and particulars needing them. Apart from the three things I took to Madrid, I just shipped to our place in the mountains my dining room's furniture, a coffee table and a carpet. 

It’s a beautiful house located, most of the times, just above the clouds, where you see sunsets you cannot even dream about. Close to one of the most beautiful cities of the country (and lively too!).

To reach there, you need to take a road heading south for almost 5 hours, if you consider the terrible traffic to cross Granada. But is an enjoyable trip with stunning views and open landscapes and, when that it’s not enough to entertain ourselves, we play an audio book and listen to it. Hence, except for the constant rhythm and pace of the story teller, it’s at it most a trip in silence, where I can enjoy the views and be alone with my thoughts. Dreaming away as I please.

Of course, there are interruptions, this is real life, remember. Every now and then, my 3 year old, may shout for his life:

-NO ‘TORY!!!! (as per story) and I WANT MUSIC!!!

But most of the time, he sleeps. Bless him! I must admit, we ignore him greatly when he doesn’t and he just travels peacefully without a screen (hate them with all my heart!) or fighting much his older siblings.

So the way is beautiful, the fact that is again the 5 of us is healing, and when I arrive there I really feel home, surrounded by the things that I couldn’t leave behind. 

That place help me so much dealing with the transition. There are many things to liase with when you go back to your original country. One of the most important is that the family concept changes. Well, that is if you are from a Mediterranean country, where family is expansive and involves so many interactions, commitments and big family meals, with three generations seating round the table. It could be a bit overwhelming.  That’s why finding a place –anywhere-to keep being the family you used to be,-a very tight, hard core- family was so important to me.

The home scent

We are going back to December 2016. It's my birthday, I am turning 39. Last birthday back in London. But at that time, I never suspected it. I don't remember the celebration, or most of the presents received.  I remember one, though. One that arrived a bit later, once 2017 had started, when I met my friend L, quite probably around spring time.

She always gave me a birthday present as soon as she met me. She never missed a year and consistently produced a little something for me, even if that meant that I would be unpacking my tiny, but meaningful, surprise months after the day.

This time it was a home scent. The label in the box read: 

“Happiness home mist” “Scent to make you happy”

On the upper lid, you could read: “Scent to make you feel good”.

It provided as well an explanation of how was formulated and stats about the percentage of customers that felt uplifted and in a better mood after trying it. I smelled the fragrance and liked it. Since I was already packing my life to be taken to Madrid, I put it in a box, and a few months later, unpacked it. 

When I found it again, in an empty house, at my new place, I could only take literally each of its beautifully printed words.

My old furniture was not there, except for my daughter’s bed, a bookshelf and a desk (that was poorly delivered and broken into pieces -as a metaphor of my own self). The house was empty and, bit by bit, pieces of brand new furniture were arriving to fill it up. They provided comfort, but failed dramatically to give me the cosy and warmth feeling of being at home.

I loved my home scent for many reasons: It was coming from my old life; from a dearest friend; I couldn’t have imagined how much I would have needed it; and of course, I enjoyed its neroli, mimosa and lemon fragrance. 

Now that you get the picture of the situation, I’d like to move from my melodramatic mood to a more comical tone.  This way, I could hide and mask, somehow, how desperately I used the thing: You could see me spraying it everywhere. Soaking curtains, pillows, spraying in the bed, the couch and whatever piece of fabric on my sight. I believed in it as a new gospel given to me. I remember showing it to relatives, coming to visit, as some exciting treasure, new awesome discovery, a must-have item for humankind. 

Imagine my friends and relatives’ faces just for a second. Please.

I could stop here, just finish my entry now, or keep going and tell you as well that, I could not refrain myself to follow what the product called “Top happiness tip”.

I guess, at this point, any chance that you could take myself or this blog seriously, is gone. So, what the heck, I keep going. And you must feel curious too!

“To create a scent cloud on the go, spritz the mist, breathe in through your nose for 7 seconds and out through your mouth slowly for 11 seconds”.

Yes, I did it. It’s pretty cool walking in that cloud of happiness and feeling a bit like if you are using a magic potion. The spell did not last much, but doesn’t matter, does it?

As the months were passing, I started to forget that I have it, and one day, I just stopped using it.

Excuse my English!

Excuse my English!

I am Spanish. My English is not even good. I am writing this blog as well as I am able to, but I feel quite insecure about the outcome. Really. This blog means totally leaving my comfort zone, and I like it and hate it at the same time. As it always feels doing that.

But there is no choice. 

Sometimes the entry flows and, more often that I would like, it’s quite painful having to write in my second language. I am more accurate in Spanish, my vocabulary is broader and my sentences more beautiful. I can play with the words in my native language, pick them, select them with care. You will find here entries poorly written, using constantly same words: it’s not alliteration, it’s my personal limit.

But there is no choice. 

Sometimes the English word that I need is there for me and, sometimes it hides behind the Spanish one. I need to take the dictionary constantly, looking for translation and synonyms. If the poor grammar of my sentences hurts you, believe me, it really hurts me as well. I wish I could do better.

But there is no choice.

I couldn’t write it in any other language because this is a blog to connect with my new land-mates. Not the Spanish, not the English, not anyone that is a 100% citizen.  But actually all of us that have such a mixture that wouldn’t fit here or there anymore, but perfectly belong to the blurry, un-bordered, un-limitless territory of Expatland. 

I guess I am not Spanish any more. I am not English either. I am Expatish. 

Here I come again (Introduction)

Note: This must be the first entry of the blog, but I am technically useless.

********

So, here I am again to heal my life through my writing. It relaxes me, I kind of need to tell some stories. Who I am? Where I come from? What’s the story and why I feel like sharing it?

Woman in my forties. 

Powerful but weak. 
Deep thinker but obsessed with superficial media.
Mother of three. And really three little monkeys demand a lot of time.
Unemployed. Used to have a great professional career in the City, London. But that is part of my past and somehow is so deeply buried there, that I don’t recognise myself any more as someone developing a profitable and rewarding career. I truly don’t know who that person is, how to find it or re-connect with her again. 

The bank I was working for closed while I was in my third maternity leave, and a chain of unpredictable events took place and left me unemployed, full handed with three kiddos, starting a new life in a new country, and not knowing any more how I landed in that part of my life.

It was all too quick to swallow. Deepest feelings of lost were mixing constantly with my breakfast, my morning run to the school, the empty hours without kids, and of course the night rest, where I ended up crying and fantasising in front of Easyjet website about booking an spontaneous flight for the next few hours and take myself back to my old life.

I felt lonely, sad and totally lost. 

But let me tell you where I landed. Is not the most beautiful city in Europe, but it has its charm. Is the city my grandparents picked many years ago to settle for good and is the city whereto, I decided it was worth to make an adventurous move from my beloved London. Now I can see the sun light day after day. No interruptions. As something normal :)

So, in the middle of my life, after many years abroad, with so much interesting and beautiful stories in my back, I landed where it all started. And although, initially, I thought it would be a clean, fresh start, I was SO wrong. 

I have never-ever been as wrong as then. When I decided that changing my life upside-down was the cleverest idea to welcome my forties: with a blank page, in a blank book. That fresh start became a blank empty space that somehow paralysed me.  

Fear

I was freaking out.

Fear of forgetting what it meant.

Fear of the fact that coming back would/could mean being the old me.

I totally liked more the new one, more complex, more full, more experienced. When you leave in your twenties and come back in your forties, there has been so much going on with you all those years that, of course, you can not turn the page, start new chapter that easily.

You came back where you left so many years ago. Some mornings everything is so freaking familiar, old familiar, its looks like the most important years of your life were a dream.

You are back to basics.

And you freak out, because you are not ready to say good bye to all those years, experiences and people till you are hundred percent sure that all those precious memories (a.k.a. your life!) have left a clear print in yourself and hence, they are going to stay with you, wherever you happen to be. Even if that is spending time with mummy and daddy at your old house, surrounded by your old things and being a daughter again. And where everything feels so familiarly odd. 

Reverse Culture Shock

The adventure is not going away. The trip of my life it’s been coming back.

Gathering all you have been and experienced during all your those years abroad and discover who essentially you are now. What remains and what is painfully gone. But it’s a beautiful trip. Because it tells you so much about yourself.

Losing all and replace all. I’m talking about your life, your day to day, replacing your "olds" with "news", your closest friends with many somebodies and figure it out.

But.

But this time its not something new  -brand new, flashy-new-  where you are so busy swallowing all, that you don’t realise what you are leaving behind, because there is so much there for you. Loads. Plenty.

If you were the famous mouse of "Where is my cheese" book. Let’s say, moving to a new country is finding a new room full of cheese. You are so busy stuffing up with all that Cheddar now, that you don’t realise your beloved German cheese is finished. 

Moving back is finding yourself in a totally empty room, and having to figure out so much stuff till you start finding some crumbs. Eventually you find your cheese.

Coming back is all about learning who you are, who you were, and what is next. 

It’s hard and painfully sad, because you have to say good bye to many things that were part of you and that you loved deeply. Parting with your everyday life.  You are broken-hearted. In that terrible shape of you, you see again your old friends, your old relatives and your old life that don’t recognise you any more. They are as well quite confused and frustrated because, whoever came back, it’s not who left. And they don’t realise that they have lost that person too. And the misunderstanding gets close to chaos.

For me all this process, took quite long. 

For me it’s been hell.

 I was so utterly confused in that empty room and so alone and felt so unloved (I mean, my "new me" was unloved and everyone was desperately craving for the old one) that all I wanted to do was coming back to my beautiful English Cheddar cheese room.

But I feel super proud of myself now because I endured it. And in my case it did not only involved the Reverse Culture shock. It was Mid-life crisis there too.

Only when you have endured it, can you realise about the beauty of it. The beauty of being alone and alone and finding what is left of you. And you came up with a new you that is wiser, stronger and has a clear view. And so, you want to replace your "unshaped-just-landed-back you" with your full-in-shape one, to see if people around you start appreciating your new you (they do!) and stop looking for the old one.

Now, I believe all those years abroad make sense in a broader way when you come back. Because you have to wrap up what that meant for you. What they did to you and how they shaped you.

I want to tell you about this last trip. I want to tell you about another happy chapter in my life but probably the most painful.