trading dreams

what comes after you get what you want

Spain has held an inexplicable grip on me since I was a little girl.

It was the promised land– though what it promised I wasn’t sure. All I knew was that I needed to go. 

“Mom, how did it start?” I asked last Thanksgiving as we sat around the kitchen table. 

Perhaps when the Cheetah Girls went to Barcelona, we mused, or some combination of the Lizzie McGuire movie and hearing my dad talk about his childhood growing up in Mexico City. 

I looked at her expectantly, hoping for its inception to be pinpointed exactly, and she shrugged. Its origin, she didn’t know; but she confirmed it had always been there. 

From eight years old, I saved my money for a trip to Spain that existed only in my dreams. Every birthday, I’d give her the gift money for safekeeping. By twelve, I spoke about my future life in Spain with near-prophetic conviction. Though I’d never been kissed, I told whoever would listen that my Spanish husband was waiting for me. 

At seventeen, I went to Spain for the first time. It was a high school class trip– the only reason I joined the Spanish club. On the flight over, I wrote in my journal: “Hopefully I will fall in love…Falling in love would be super fun.”

I had the idea that in Spain I would be liberated and loved.

ten years ago

It was a short trip, two weeks maximum, and we ripped around the country at warp speed. A few days in Madrid, one day in Sevilla, a three-day stay with a host family, a sprinkling of days through various villages that concluded with two days in Barcelona. It was short, but more than long enough to confirm that this is where I belonged. 

When the trip ended, I cried on the plane ride home, refusing to speak to the students on the plane with me. I closed my eyes tightly, praying that if I kept still enough, the vibrancy and beauty wouldn’t leak out of me. I vowed to return.

I chose to go to college in Michigan, at a university that was affordable enough to ensure I could do a semester abroad. When it came time to choose the location, I didn’t hesitate: Barcelona. There was no consideration of another location. I would finally experience all that I knew was waiting for me.

The beginning of that semester, I arrived in Barcelona with two suitcases and no coats, not realizing that the Mediterranean could be cold in January. That was only the beginning of my disappointments. 

Spain was supposed to be heaven, but I made it hell. 

I got caught up in the wrong crowd, lost in a sea of alcohol, drugs, and desire. There was so much access, invitations to VIP parties and backstage passes, and so much attention. I couldn’t say no, I thought this was what I had always wanted. To be invited. To be wanted. With alarming alacrity, I came completely undone. 

When the semester ended, I returned from the promised land sicker than when I had left.

Down nearly 60 pounds, I refused to eat and everything I did eat, I didn’t keep down. I had an internship at Goldman Sachs starting in two months, but I could hardly walk and talk. My parents were terrified. How had I fallen apart so quickly? 

I begrudgingly sought eating disorder help, convincing my parents I was okay enough to go to New York. I threw myself into my internship, making the only goal to get a job offer. I didn’t think of anything else. 

The longer I was away from Spain, the more I realized with horror how lost I had been. I started to eat again, and think again. In hindsight, I saw my nightmare semester abroad had nothing to do with Spain and everything to do with me. I was a monster. Images from the months there haunted me. 

Job offer in hand and about to graduate college, I fell on my knees and offered the universe a bargain. I would wipe away the person who had destroyed herself. I’d use a great job as an identity and no one would know how worthless I was. If I was perfect, then maybe my wreckage could be contained. 

I didn’t think I would ever go back to Spain. I couldn’t go back, at least not in the same way. I wanted to bury that person, once and for all. 

Three years into my time in New York, I began to connect back with myself. Through therapy, exercise, meditation, writing, and sobriety, I was forced to re-examine what had happened there. 

The idea came to me that I needed to go back to Spain. The same voice from when I was a kid, but stronger and louder than ever before. It was no longer a desire, but an urgent need. Go back, the voice commanded. Go back now. 

The opportunity came– or I made it , I’m not really sure. I quit my job and joined a company where I could work from Spain. I booked a flight. 

When trying to explain why I had to go, I tripped up on the words. It was still for love, I knew that, but not what I longed for when I was seventeen on the plane dreaming of a Spanish suitor. 

I needed to love myself. Fuck, I needed to forgive myself, but I couldn’t ask that. At most, I thought, maybe I could remember myself. I could go walk about the place of ruin and try to understand, conjuring some compassion for the girl I was.

So I came with my suitcases to an empty, unfurnished apartment I had rented over a WhatsApp video call. I poured myself into that place, decorating it with treasures I chose one by one from markets and picked up from the side of the street. I started to dress in bright colors and bold patterns, louder than I had ever dared to dress before. I came alive and immersed myself in beauty. 

This has to be what I was always seeking, I thought. Joy in solitude. This is love.

That was only the beginning. 

I made extraordinary friends, with such ease there is no explanation other than divinity. Talented, generous, wonderful women who helped me see myself. They brought light into my life. We gathered for dinner parties that ran late into the night, sharing our dreams long after the candles had burned all the way down.

Now this must be the love I was always looking for, I concluded.

But that wasn’t all that was in store.

About a year ago, I met G, who knocked me off my feet by being every single thing I dreamed of and every single thing I never knew I needed. We fell into a magical, mystical, miraculous relationship that still to this day moves me to tears if I consider it.

Over the months, I retraced my steps. I walked on the same streets I did at twenty. I revisited the places of my destruction. I cried a lot. I wrote about some of it and finally gained the courage to talk about it. 

Perhaps, hell was what brought me back to heaven. If it hadn’t been so bad, if I hadn’t needed to rewrite the story, maybe I wouldn’t have come. Maybe I would have missed each of my wonderful friends, perhaps I would have never met G. 

At this conclusion, I imagine my eight-year old self beaming.

“I was right!” she’d proudly proclaim. “Spain is the place of love after all. You can never leave.”

So when I tell you that I am leaving Spain, I want you to know that I got what I came for. 

Spain has always been my dream, but it is not my only dream. The desire beneath it was always acceptance. I got it in so many ways. It came first in glorious friendships, then expansive, otherworldly romantic love, and finally, quiet forgiveness.  

I want to gather all my past selves around a table. Me at eight, twelve, twenty, twenty-five. I’d lean across the table and tell them. 

“You did it, girls. You got me here. You found the love you always knew was waiting for you. You can rest now.”

When I get on that plane next week, I know that I’m not abandoning a dream. Rather, I’m making space for the next one. I got love and gave love, and it returned to me a million times over. Overflowing, I take with me everything I got and more. 

I thought it was always about Spain. I see now it was actually about love. The miracle here is that the latter stays with me wherever I go. Once found, it can’t be lost.