OLE!!!!!!!!!!!

Hi friends and haters alike!

On behalf of #TeamMexicanGeordie (me), I'd like to thank you for being here today, on this memorable occasion, in which your eyes shall feast on the beautiful words flowing out of my nonsensical brain AND also feast on my booty-licious body, because--hear, hear!--there's a VIDEO at the end of this post.

Now, don't be a jackass and skip to the video. I know you want to see my face, but listen to what I have to say!!

Honestly, it has been so long since my vacation that I don't remember much. And I didn't take any notes, so...

But let me see what I can conjure up.

Ah, yes, let's start at the beginning, which also happens to be the most interesting part.

Ugh, it's so tacky...

I arrived to Spain in a state of mind that I can only described as the most incongruent, contradicting, and heart-breakingly fragile. I had been wanting to go to Spain for such a long time, so it was a dream come true in that respect, but at the same time the fact that this was a change of plans in my original itinerary would never leave my mind. I was keenly aware of the "should haves" and the "would haves" and it was at times such a sharp pain that it left me breathless. Nevertheless, I had spent hundreds of dollars changing my trip, so I had to make the most of it, and Spain seemed like the perfect destination to distract myself from what was not to be.

Anyway, cryptic as shit, but I'm sure most of you have figured out things have happened in my life in the past few months... and I rather not talk about some of the crippling, debilitating effects of--let's move on.

I HATE to ask strangers for photos... worst part of traveling alone!

MADRID

1. Intensely gorgeous.
Small, clean, and with beautiful architecture. Everywhere you look you see a beautiful building. La Puerta de Alcala. The Royal Palace. The Prado. El Parque del Retiro. I MEAN CAN IT BE ANY MORE BEAUTIFUL? I got to take a night bus-tour of the city and enjoy its cultured buoyancy and powerful majesty. There were several points during the three days when I told myself this was my goal city to live.

2. Feeling of safety.
I was walking alone well after midnight, roaming around like thousands of other people, enjoying a pleasant summer night (the temperature really does drop a ton... but the days are horribly hot and dry). I didn't feel in danger at any moment, and I saw many families out with their children strolling around.

3. FOOD GALORE.
You really can't go wrong. There's food for everyone. I found me a fantastic taqueria one night, and the night after I had Subway. I mean, YOU CANNOT LOSE (weight).

4. No sleep for you.
Between jetlag and anxiety, my sleeping schedule was shattered. I was going to sleep at 4am and waking up at 9... and if I decided to stay in bed, it was a lost day because...

5. HOLY HEAT, BATMAN!
I'm talking well over 40 degrees Celsius (that's well over 100, America!). I was melting like delicious yet sticky chocolate Popsicle under the dry Madrid sun. I had to come to the hotel room every day from 4-6 to just shield myself from the radiations (and I totally did not wear sunblock the first couple days so I was a nice crispy toast color by day three... not to mention with the most bizarre tan lines in the world, including a perfect circle in the middle of my chest caused by a combination of camera straps and the shirt I was wearing that day. I don't know... don't ask me how.

BONUS: WROTE A POEM ABOUT MYSELF:

Caught the ocean in my hair,
Gumption for the ages,
Freckle constellations,
Lava in my veins.
Crystal joints, shifty knees,
Samson-with-hair strong,
Pearly whites, hips don't lie,
Honest to the core.
Story-telling eyes,
Voice made to speak aloud,
Piano hands, football feet,
Nuclear-hot heartbeat.
Unquenchable, unfathomable,
Unending 'spite the storm,
My heart's still afire,
And You. Will. Get. Burned.


AVILA

1. St Teresa everything!!
I mean, isn't that self-explanatory? Museum, church, another museum, convent. Guess what, though? St Teresa's relics... NOT THERE! #KILLME

2. Death by exposure to heat.
This was the hottest day. 45 degrees. Pretty sure I was delusional as I waited outside one of the museums for them to come back from lunch.

yikes... gory!

3. Beautiful Medieval town!
I climbed up to the tower and walked on the city walls, beholding the red roofs and stone houses.

ZARAGOZA

1. Our Lady of the Pillar
Need I say more? Walked through the Door of Mercy, got confession, communion, AND got to kiss the pillar where Our Lady first appeared to St James. First Marian apparition in Church history. Catholic Universe implosion! The priest I confessed with was holy and gentle, and he knew exactly what I felt and what to say in response. It was like having a personal face-to-face with the Man Upstairs Himself! God's mercy at work!!!

2. Food poisoning
Just when I had finally gotten over my jetlag. Three days of torture courtesy of a Tapas Buffet. THAT'S why I always look for Subway.

BARCELONA

1. Crappy hostel.
Broken AC, LOUD PIPES running water at all ours of the night, tiny-ass bed, shared bathroom.
SPEAKING OF SHARING A BATHROOM. So one day my jeans got soaked, and they were fairly new, so they dyed my legs and bum dark blue. Then my body dyed the toilet seat dark blue. Then I panicked and thought of ways to fake my own death but I figured, 'Hey, it's a shared bathroom... no one has to know it was my tainted butt that did this." I regret nothing.

2. MASSIVE PLACE
This city is huge. Unless Donald Trump's hands. ANYWAY, it's big like London so you have to use transportation to get around, or else you end up walking a marathon, like I did. Why do I always do this to myself? Sigh...

At least I got to see a lot of the city, even the uninteresting parts!

3. SANGRIA!
Met some whinny Americans (from California and Florida.. DUH) and they bought me some sangria, which honestly I had never tried before. The stuff is delicious and quite cheap. I drank it like Kool Aid. I stuck with the Americans for a few hours and then we parted ways amicably.

4. ALTITUDE
Having the privilege to see the city from above was just priceless. I went up to mount Tibidabo and made myself nauseated with the height. I also went to Montjuic, where I paid 8 euros for a Cable Car trip down (instead of having done it going UP, so I didn't half-die on the climb... well, you live, you learn).

This is Tibidabo

5. I LOVE BEACHES!
As a beach-lover, I had to make my way to La Barceloneta, the main beach of Barcelona. On the last night of my stay in Spain, I walked to the beach and decided to take a dip... fully clothed! Besides almost drowning and looking ridiculous, I'd say it went pretty well.

There's a moment I do want to share...

After getting into the Mediterranean fully clothed, I came out and sat on the sand to try to dry. As the night began to fall, I started shivering because the temperature after sunset was quite cool and I was drenched. I knew there was a way to stop shaking so violently: I could just take off my shirt. But I kept thinking "HOW? I CAN'T DO THAT... I'm not like... well.. I don't look like someone who should take off their shirt in public..." So I sat there, trembling, cursing because I had not just brought a bathing suit and a towel.

But then, I started to think. Well, first, I started remembering what the last few months had been. Then I started thinking about who I was, and the poem I had written a couple days before. And I asked myself... "who? Who says you can't take off your t-shirt? You're at the beach. That's what people do at the beach." Of course, one is prone to think that flabby bellies with stretch marks are not what beach-goers want to see. But then, for just a moment, I thought...

"Who the hell cares?"

Who cares if I sit at this beach in my jeans and sports bra? Who cares if I have three levels of rolls of fat? Who is going to come tell me to cover up? Or laugh at me? Or scoff at my grossness? No one.

Not a single person. Because they won't dare. Because I am going to sit here, and breathe the salty breeze, and look straight ahead at the Mediterranean, and smile, and push my shoulders out, and keep my chin up, and none of these people will dare to break me because they can't. Because the only one telling me to cover up and to hide my embarrassment of a body is me. It's that high-pitched voice of the insecurities passed on to you generation from generation, the immature comments of your high school friends, the rude remarks of annoying older women who don't know any better. But I have the power to drown that voice. I have the power to punch that voice in the face, so to speak. And hear my own, my very own voice tell me, "Who the hell cares? You are who you are and you're cold and you need to take this shirt off and don't give a fudge about the teens over there. No, they are not laughing at you. They're smoking pot, they're laughing at everything. No, that lady didn't look at you, don't mind her. Sit here. Feel the breeze. Breathe. Enjoy not shivering to death."

I sat there, God knows for how long, and watched the waves come and go. And I felt like I was almost gazing at myself from outside my body. And I told myself that, even if he'd gone, even if he'd taken my poetry, my secrets, my dreams, and my favorite songs, he hadn't managed to take me completely. I told myself that I still had me, broken and raw, but alive and breathing. I told myself that if everyone else failed, I'd still love me. Always and forever. I'll love me even after everyone else is gone.


Thank you, España. You were exactly what I needed.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EnfOT34X5bc&feature=youtu.be

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EnfOT34X5bc&feature=youtu.be

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EnfOT34X5bc&feature=youtu.be

GUESS WHO IS BACK?

Howdy.

I can't really say that it has been ages because that would be saying the same thing I say in every other blog post. So I won't say it...

This post was going to be about something else. I'm sure you are all dying to know about the summer (or are you? I'm not entirely sure anyone is still reading these...), but that's just going to have to wait until another time because... the thing is...

I almost (sorta) died today.

I was driving home this afternoon when I had to stop at a traffic light. I was the first car in the row of cars waiting for green. It was hot and I was a little distracted with picking a song to listen to (the car was, after all, not in motion). Before choosing a song I instinctively looked up as the light was switching to green, so I let go of the brake and stepped gently on the accelerator.

It all happened so fast.

As I was going under the metal structure of the traffic lights, I noticed a blue object from the corner of my left eye. It was a car going at full speed, coming out of nowhere. It didn't really register though. I didn't react quickly enough. I just kept my hands on the steering and continued stepping on the gas pedal.

My lack of reaction saved me.

From my rear-view mirror I saw the blue car crumple like paper into a white SUV that was right behind me, a mere 10 yards away. There was a loud boom that rippled through the air as pieces of debris floated around. The small car, going at full speed, managed to push the SUV a good 10 yards off the side of the road, then proceeded to give a full 360-degree-spin-around.

I watched the whole thing as my car moved away from the collision slowly, my mind unable to react. It was like watching a movie in slow motion. People immediately got out of their cars to go help. I kept driving until I lost sight of them.

Then my soul came back into my body. I started shaking, blinking, breathing heavily, cursing, crying. I thought about pulling over on the side of the road. I started slowing down. There was nowhere to stop. Just go home, I told myself. Get home. I picked up the phone. I called my best friend. Crying, cursing, shaking, breathlessness.

Nothing had actually happened to me. Yet...

Yet it was going to. It would have. It was going to be me. A second, maybe two, made the difference.

Why them and not me?

It was a strange reality-check, considering the things I was (and have been) thinking: If I were to go tomorrow, what would I leave behind? What would have been the purpose of my life? And constantly feeling like the answers to those questions were disappointing and frustratingly unsatisfying.

But those questions, they've always been around. When I was a little girl, I mean LITTLE, I would go every day up to my mother's room to check if she was breathing during her nap. I would stand there and watch her chest rise and fall and breathe with relief because I didn't have to think about "what will I do now?" Mortality has always had a terrifying grip of me. Probably in part due to my vivid imagination and also because of my natural disposition to pessimism.

So I think about these things. What would happen if tomorrow I'm not here? It's silly and I'm sure people wonder that all the time then quickly dismiss the thought, as if it was bad to think about it or as if it was actually inviting Death in. But I dwell on things, so I dwell on this, and most of the time it brings me incredibly low.

But today, faced with the fact that this car would have hit right on my driver door and would have probably crushed me to death, my mind started racing with these questions:

If it was over right now, what would your legacy be?

The initial response is a dry "nothing". I wasted my talents in an unfulfilling career. My writing never amounted to much. I wasn't a particularly benevolent person, nor a good daughter, sister, teacher. I didn't do anything remarkable. I complained a lot. I cursed waaay too much. I felt sad the majority of the time.

But there was a flash of lightning, a light bulb turned on in the dense dark. I had no success according to the world. Heck, I had no success according to God (I am far, far, FAR away from being close to my saintly role models). The only thing I did sort of right was... to love.

I've loved.
I've loved until my bones have ached and my joints have snapped.
I've loved until my heart has sank on the ground.
I've loved until it's broken my soul and has made me questioned if I'm wrong.
I've loved because I'm sick, insane, incorrigibly stubborn.
I've loved with the rage and the fire and the storm.
I've loved with all the tenderness and care and meticulousness of a poem.
I've loved ephemeral like the stars and mighty like a meteor shower.
I've loved in all seasons and in every hour.
I've loved intensely and fiercely and silently and pathetically.
I've loved against exhaustion, reason, indifference and practicality.
I've loved until the wound gushes no more blood.
I've loved until numbness has dried up the flood.
I've loved with stomping feet and held up fists and fits of laughs.
I've loved with sunshine in my eye but also well into the night.
I've loved so hard, so rash, so tough, so fast, so natural
That I've yet to stop and think twice before I'm quickly falling down.

That's all I've done in my life. I've loved sports with the intensity worthy of a stroke (if anything that's always been the way I imagined I'd go). I've loved football like one loves one's first love (forever). I've loved my mother until wishing to go first so I don't have to live without her. I've love food like couples love in rom-coms. I've loved this world: with its colors and its textures and its shades of wrong. I've loved seeing and hearing and touching and tasting in every place I go.

But most importantly, I've loved people. People who have been all sorts of vicious and cruel and selfish. People who are loyal and kind and lovely. Both sorts of people who are easy to love. I've loved them all imperfectly and tragically so. I wish I would have loved them like my God expected me to do.

My blood, they've gotten the worst from me.
My friends, the best there is.
And men... ah yes, men...
If I was going Home today it would be to meet the only one of them worth anything to me (but Purgatory might be a scale for an indefinite period of time).

And I'd go finally having fallen in love with myself. At long last. Despite the deterioration of age, of stress, of heartbreak and tiredness. I'd watch my body from above and behold its lovely form one last time, and be sorry to see it so torn apart in that crash. Because the scales in my eyes have fallen off, and I've beheld the beauty of creation. Who I am, who I've been, it's all a masterpiece. It took me long enough to figure that out.

So what if life's been rubbish (which it hasn't)? What if life has been a waste of time (which it hasn't)? I've loved, and I've been loved beyond anything I could ever deserve. By you, and you, and you. In an equally imperfect, beautiful way. So I thank you, and farewell.

Except... I'm not dead.

God decided today was not the day. Instead, today is the day I say:

   I
Love
 You

I'm not going anywhere.

-Cris

Random stuff, part 2.

1. Acronyms are idiotic. They are confusing and it takes longer to explain them than to just say the words. I just felt like I had to get that out there.

2. The comforting thought of being a national of the World's fattest country living in the World's second fattest country. Who can blame me? I got both Nature AND Nurture against me!!!!

3. Eaves-dropping at its worst:

    Man: have you seen her? She must have been walking around here. She's small and has dark hair.

    Me: Oh, you lost your dog?

    Man: No... my girlfriend. 

Man: she's small, has dark hair. A nice body. Fake boobs.

4. Drinking tea with milk and sugar makes you a douchy snob if you're not in the UK, or so I hear. I'm sorry that I'm better than you and I have traveled the world (sort of) and I appreciate that tea doesn't give me putrid breath like coffee seems to do to everyone else. What's that you say? I'm sorry, I couldn't hear you over the sound of my sipping my delicious Early Grey from my delicate fine-china teacup while listening to Chopin on my 1920s gramophone. Besides, the Countess Dowager was telling me the funniest story about how her silly late-husband shot one of the servants accidentally once.

5. People working in the restaurant industry win heaven by martyrdom of the customer service type.

Man: hello, I'm calling because I found you online and I'm looking for a place to eat. What kind of burgers do you have?

Me: OH, I DON'T KNOW, THE KIND WITH THE DEAD COW AND THE BREAD AND THE FATTY CHEESE THAT WILL BLOCK YOUR ARTERIES?

Me (what I actually said): what do you mean what kind of burgers, sir? 

Man: yeah, what kind? I'm looking for something to eat. Are your burgers good?

Me: SURELY NOT SIR, THEY ARE A MOUTHFUL OF HORSE SHIT.

Me (what I actually said): Yes, they are good. We have cheeseburgers, and bacon burgers, and barbecue burgers...

Man: but how good are they? If I'm going to drive all the way to your restaurant I need to know if it's worth it. I need you to make me want to.

Me: MAKE YOU WANT TO WHAT? I DIDN'T REALIZE THIS WAS A SEX HOTLINE. 

Me (what I actually said): Well, they are good burgers, we've been here for 30+ years, I don't know what else you want me to say...

Man: well, I'm just looking for something good and exotic.

Me: THIS IS A CLASSIC AMERICAN FOOD RESTAURANT, NOT A THAI MASSAGE PARLOUR. 

Me (what I actually said): well, we sell burgers, sir, it doesn't get any less exotic than that....

Man: okay.Thanks. *HANGS UP*