Hello everyone,
I’m making myself write today not because I necessarily want to but because I know I probably need to. Every week, I make mental notes about what I’ll write about. I get all excited, and then, the weekend rolls around, and suddenly, I’m too overwhelmed to write. There’s too much to say or I don’t know how to say it. Time gets away from me, and then, it’s a new week, and the cycle repeats. It’s also hard because some of the things I want to write about will be best expressed fictionally or in my future memoir published a decade from now when the things that are important today don’t matter as much.
Since you last heard from me, I turned 23 and spent my first major holiday away from home. Surprisingly, I felt mostly fine about it all. I expected myself to break down crying when my family called or alone in my room later that night, but the tears never came. It turns out it’s hard to be sad when you’re lucky enough to be surrounded by people who care about you. On Thursday, my students made my day by telling me, “Happy Thanksgiving, teacher!” and wishing me happy birthday a day early. They were disappointed that I wouldn’t be coming to work on Friday because Friday was my day off—my birthday gift from the universe, allowing me to sleep in and spend the whole day in bed. Not in a depressed way, but in an if you know me, you know that my bed is always my favorite place kind of way.
I was also lucky enough to attend not one but two Thanksgivings: one hosted by my roommates and the boys upstairs and another hosted by my wonderful Fulbright mentor for the Fulbright community. At both celebrations, I was lucky enough to be surrounded by people who wanted to celebrate my birthday as well. My roommates brought me a bottle of wine and balloons at midnight. It was a magical moment because as they did this, my family Facetimed me from their Thanksgiving dinner and everyone got to sing “Happy Birthday” to me together. How lucky is that? And at Fulbright Thanksgiving, I got candles and a birthday crown. I couldn’t ask for a better way to be welcomed into my 23rd year.
Lucky, lucky, lucky, lucky. I am so lucky it’s crazy. I think about it every day. On the metro. Out to eat with friends. Laughing in the living room. Before I fall asleep. I applied to teach English in Spain because I had no idea what I wanted to do after graduation, and moving to Spain was the only option that felt right, which is crazy because I was never going to study Spanish. I wrote my college admissions essay about how I was destined to become a playwright. A dream that was immediately put on the back burner when the Kenyon playwriting professor wouldn’t let me into her class. At the time, I was heartbroken, but now, all I can say is thank you. Because if she had let me in, I probably wouldn’t be here. I replaced drama classes with Spanish classes and the rest is history.
How lucky am I that she told me no? How lucky am I that when faced with the uncertainty of life postgrad, I applied to Fulbright expecting nothing and managed to win the award? How lucky am I to live in this apartment? To know these people? To have a room of one’s own that I can pay for with the money I make?
When I was in Bilbao with Hannah and we’d eat a good meal, we’d joke, that we must’ve been saints in a past life to deserve this. Because for real, what are the odds that we—two people who should not know each other—end up in Bilbao eating tortilla with a view of the ocean? Hannah was the other teaching assistant at the school I was originally assigned to and had to leave because they didn’t have the Model UN program I had to teach for Fulbright. We met by cosmic mistake. She’s the one who suggested I live in my current neighborhood, who booked the trip to Bilbao (the one place in Spain I wanted to visit) because I told her I wanted to go the first time we met. And I couldn’t be more grateful.
In Bilbao, she gave me one of the best compliments I think I will ever receive. She told me that she was texting her mom about how well we were traveling together and how they admired my ability to show gratitude. If you knew me at my worst in 2020 pre-Finding the Pony, you would know there was a time when I was so angry and upset with life that I didn’t know how to see the glass half full. So hearing that meant a lot. A reminder of how far I’ve come.
I’ve been trying to channel this gratitude into positivity and kindness as a teacher. I want to greet my students with these emotions before I teach them, and they can listen if they want/if they’re ready. I’ve realized that I love teaching because I feel like I can see these kids. I can acknowledge that if a class goes poorly or if they aren’t listening, it’s probably because when you’re 15, there are so many more important things to think about than my presentation on how Americans celebrate Halloween. But as the year progresses and as I grow as a teacher, I can see a shift. I can see them opening up to me, trusting me, listening to me. We have our first mock model UN conference on Monday, and I confessed to two students that I was nervous because to be honest, if I could teach this semester again, I would format my lesson plans completely differently! But they looked at me and shook their heads and said, “You’re doing a great job.” Let me tell you, at that moment, I could have cried. Wanting to do things differently is a part of learning and growing, but hearing that compliment from them showed me that I must be doing something right.
And maybe I will get the chance to do things differently because I’m pretty committed to finding a way to stay here in Spain at my school with my students next year. It’s hard to be away from my family, but I know that a) I’m not ready to say goodbye to this chapter of my life and b) I’m not ready to go to grad school. I’ve only just started to miss writing and being on a college campus, and I know that I have to miss both things a lot more before I’m ready to apply for an MFA.
For this week’s playlist, in honor of Spotify wrapped, I thought I’d link my top five songs. I could have sworn that “Delicate” by Taylor Swift would be my number one, but it’s not even in the top five! Receiving my top songs from the year was incredibly jarring because it reminded me that when 2023 began, I was still a student at Kenyon College. I had different roommates and a completely different life. Things moved so quickly from graduation to the summer to here that I forgot about who I was for the first half of the year. So thanks Spotify wrapped for making me remember and for making me cry a little as I did.
“Crop Circles” by Odie Leigh. How could I have forgotten driving to Walmart with this playing on loop? Singing at the top of my lungs?
“No Drugs” by Pinegrove. When I was healing in 2020 and learning to find the pony, this is the song I would listen to every morning. Fitting that I returned to it as one chapter ended and another began this year.
“A Month or Two” by Odie Leigh. I just love this song. When it ends, I can’t help but play it again.
“True Blue” by boygenius. This song is on here because before I knew I was moving to Spain, I thought maybe I would move to Chicago with my Kenyon roommates, and there’s a line about Chicago in the song. Ever since I saw this song on my wrapped, I’ve been feeling homesick for the city, for a place I’ve never lived in and of course, Lake Michigan. So hopefully, maybe we’ll get there because it was a great dream.
“Appaloosa Bones” by Gregory Alan Isakov. Happy to see Greg in the top five and impressive he made it here because this song came out in the second half of the year. For a while, this was my in my feels on the metro song, haha.
And just for fun, here are my top artists:
Taylor Swift. (Of course. After seeing her in concert, I could not stop listening.)
Gregory Alan Isakov. (I’d expect nothing less.)
Julia Jacklin. (She was my girl when I first got to Madrid. Her music helped me get settled here.)
Young the Giant. (This was my spring, my finishing my theses music.)
Pinegrove. (They went to Kenyon, and in my final days there, this was all I listened to.)
P.S. On a fabulous birthday shopping trip with Allison, we passed this massive Netflix ad that basically confirms we are living on the set of the new hit TV show “The Only Living Girl in Madrid.”
Note: Views are my own and do not reflect those of The Fulbright Program or La Comisión Fulbright de España.
lovely lovely lovely maddie