On our view on relationships. Or rather, how we are affected by it.

Looking for a document I knew I had on my hard drive I’ve stumbled upon some old texts I used to write when I was younger, when the need of telling my feelings was so great I needed to sit down in front of the computer and type them down, even if it was only to keep them privately. I’ve read a few of them, some of which go back to 2007 or 2008, and some of them are actually really depressing, which brings me to the topic of today.

I don’t even know in which point in my life I am now, but I know I have moved on, at least partially. In many of those texts I acknowledged the need I had for someone special in my life to feel complete, the need I had to love but most importantly to be loved, and how one after the other, all the platonic relationships of love I had (always one-sided) were destroyed, taking a piece of my heart every time. 

Some of them talk about how ridiculously in love was with this or that person, some of them talk specifically about the particular situation of that love, and even some of them talk about my desire for my own death. I look back now and reflect on how desperate I was to think about suicide, when I was barely 17 years old, when I had barely started to live and my whole life was yet to come; and yet I feel biased as to how to deal with it.

A few years ago, when I thought about those two horrible years that I seriously considered suicide, I didn’t want to. I was afraid that if I thought about the reasons why I wanted to die, those reasons would come back to haunt me, and I was afraid of succumbing back to the darkness. Now, a few years later I can look at that in perspective, and I can tell myself that right now, I’m not afraid of that anymore. 

I’ve learned to love myself the way I am, something that has taken me 22 years but I finally have. I look in the mirror, I see things I can’t change and hence I have to live with, and things I don’t like, can change and am trying to change. You see, when I was seventeen I didn’t love myself either internally or externally. I would look at myself in the mirror and be disgusted at what I saw, but when I reflected on my personality, on how I was as a human being, I disliked myself even more. And reflecting on those thoughts, I think it was because perhaps I was striving for perfection.

I’ve always had a problem with relationships because I tend to idealize the person I fall in love with, mainly because usually they are much older than me and therefore have much more experience, and their lives are just too great compared to mine. It’s always been this way. And now I think that maybe that was part of my problem, that I compared myself to people that doubled my age, when they had had twenty years or more to explore and change, to basically live what I hadn’t because of my age. I felt so small compared to them, so unworthy of their love, that I believed that I was worth nothing; and that applied to both my personality and my physical aspect. 

Comparing that train of thought to the one I have now, I see how much I’ve changed in the span of seven years, mainly to myself but also to the relationships with people. To start with, I’ve learned to know my personality, to know when I’m in a good mood or in a bad mood, and not to throw my irritation (usually) to people who have nothing to do with the cause of it. I’ve learned to look in the mirror and, if I feel disgusted about what I see, do something to change it. That change started barely a few months ago, but I feel empowered enough to say that at least I’m doing something to feel happier about myself.

Thinking about suicide was my way of coping with stress. My family relations were reaching a turning point and the tension was palpable, that added to the fact that I was (or thought I was, now I’m not so sure) madly in love with someone twenty-something years older than me who didn’t give a damn about me, made a breeding ground for me to feel incapable of carrying on. Yes, I had my friends and I always have, but I didn’t see it at the moment. So, thinking about disappearing from this earth was a much easier way of coping with it all than stopping for a minute, close my eyes, think, and then talking to my parents, or taking the reins of that love that took me nowhere, or say enough is enough. 

I know I’m rationalizing things here and in that situation I was definitely not rationalizing things, but I have to frown at the texts in front of me and think way back in time to actually understand what was going on in my mind to think that, for some reason, dying was better than living. Because I feel so much different now.

I still don’t like some things of me, but I’ve learned to accept them or try to change them. I feel more at peace with myself and hence with everybody else. And I finally don’t feel that void in my chest, as though I need someone else to feel complete and perfectly happy. I’ve understood how terribly confused I was about relationships and about love itself: that you don’t need anyone else to feel complete by yourself. 

Our culture of today tells us that, for some reason, you must have someone by your side to feel completely happy. That’s why we look awkwardly at people in their forties or fifties who have never been married or never had a relationship we know of, that is, if we can find someone like that. It’s not the usual. If you ask teenage people let’s say, about 17 or 18 years old, about their plans for the future they will likely tell you that they want to study, get a degree, work in the field of their likes… and later on get married and create a family. Some of them may even have a long-lasting relationship from when they were 14 or 15 that is still going on today. 

And that’s why I was so confused at how I should deal with relationships. I thought that, if I wasn’t happy it was because I felt alone and I needed someone to love me. That’s a perfectly understandable train of thought, but then what? The relationship finishes for some reason, and then what? You go back to being a living zombie, until you find somebody else to complete you? That’s not how it works. It’s not about the other person making you happy; it’s about the other person making you happier. There’s a big difference. It’s about complementing each other, not completing each other. It’s about loving somebody but still having time for your friends and other acquaintances, not becoming a pack all together. And finally, it’s about loving yourself first so that somebody else can love you and, most of all, respect you. In the whole wide sense of the word.

And that reflection gives me even more food for thought. When you’re a teenager you believe what other people tell you, what the media tells you, what films and books tell you, and what our culture and society tells you. We need to conform to an ideal to feel accepted, and that makes you accept ideas and concepts that a few years later make you say: what the hell was I thinking? And in my case was suicide, but it happens with a whole lot of other circumstances, for instance eating disorders like bulimia. 

So, with that in mind, that’s some food for thought for you. What do books like Twilight, where Bella is left by his vampire boyfriend Edward and then all she does is sleeping, crying and throwing herself off a cliff just to see his ghost? Or 50 Shades of Grey, which I haven’t read (couldn’t get past the first 4 pages…) and which, as far as I know, there’s sadomasochism involved? What do these books that are tremendously famous and best-sellers, tell us about our culture and our way of seeing relationships? Having in mind, as well, that these particular books are intended for young adult readers…

That’s something to think about…

Carlos Núñez: retrato de un sueño.

Ya sea que hayan pasado unas cuantas horas o semanas, cuando has vivido algo que sabes en tu interior que es único y que no puede volver a repetirse, da igual el tiempo que pase. Aunque lo pienses en frío. No te entra en la cabeza que tú estabas ahí, viendo ese espectáculo que te llevó a un sitio totalmente distinto del día a día y de las cosas cotidianas. Eso es lo que yo he vivido en el concierto de Carlos Núñez.

No puedo describir lo que me ha hecho sentir durante esas dos horas, no solo él, sino los magníficos músicos y bailarines que había allí con él: Jon Pilatzke, Pancho Álvarez, su hermano Xurxo, la excelente bailarina Cara Butler (esposa de Jon, por cierto)… todos, absolutamente todos, se lucieron en un concierto memorable. El escenario no podía ser mejor que el del Palau de la Música, creado con una acústica inmejorable, lugar en el que este espectáculo para los oídos y para las emociones tendría lugar.

De Carlos, no puedo decir más que es un genio, tanto en la música como en su parte más humana. Y es que Carlos es de esos artistas que, a pesar de llevar muchos años en la música y haber tocado miles de conciertos (el de ayer era el número cien, solo del 2013), es una persona tan sencilla y humana que después de dos horas de regalarnos la mejor música, no se le ocurrió otra cosa que mezclarse entre la gente, haciéndose fotos y firmando autógrafos, charlando con nosotros a pesar de que el tiempo apremiaba y los organizadores nos decían que no nos entretuviéramos demasiado, que tenían que cerrar. La vida diaria, la cotidiana, la de los trabajadores del Palau que solo quieren ir a descansar después de un duro día de trabajo; y la de Carlos, a quien a pesar de ello no le importó quedarse con nosotros un ratito más.

Las dos horas de música han sido un regalo para los sentidos, absolutamente todos. Nos hizo reír, nos hizo bailar, y a mí me hizo olvidarme de quién era y qué problemas tenía en mi vida. Ahí solo estaba él, sus músicos, y todos los fans que nos reunimos allí para disfrutar de algo inolvidable. Era mi primer concierto de Carlos, después de ser fan de él desde muy pequeña, gracias a aquella joya que mi padre encontró en una tienda de segunda mano llamado Mayo Longo. A partir de ahí comenzó un idilio entre Carlos, su música y yo, que culminó anoche en el Palau de la Música de Barcelona. Allí cumplí un sueño: ver un concierto suyo, verle en persona, conocerle y hablar con él. Y no ha defraudado.

Las anécdotas del concierto han bailado por doquier. Un par de canciones que nunca había oído y que me dejaron con ganas de más, las canciones de Amanecer y Camiño de Santiago (mis favoritas) y que me hicieron temblar de pies a cabeza, la competencia sana entre Xurxo y Jon a ver quién era el mejor percusionista (uno con la caja de resonancia, otro con los zapatos de bailarín), el beso de Cora y Jon, la canción que no esperaba de Cotton Eyed Joe… y sobretodo la gente que no se iba, que tenía ganas de más. Nunca he estado en un concierto en que la gente no quería irse, cuando un concierto se acaba, se acaba y punto, los artistas se van y listo. Con Carlos no, la gente aplaudía sin parar, gritando su nombre, pidiendo más, y salió hasta tres veces cuando la gente ya estaba con las chaquetas puestas pero se negaba a irse. Queríamos más, y Carlos nos lo regaló.

Y por supuesto, ir a un concierto de Carlos Núñez implica aprender un poco más de historia de la música celta, pues con casi cada canción nos cuenta de dónde vienen esas melodías, qué instrumentos se usan y de dónde son originarios. Un deleite para todos los sentidos. Y es que hay muchos, muchísimos artistas en el panorama musical actual, muchos de ellos tienen pasión por la música y eso es lo que los mueve. Pero estar delante de un hombre de 40 años y verle reír, con esa sonrisa que tiene de niño, te conmueve el alma, y es que Carlos parece que no haya perdido esa inocencia e ilusión de vivir cada día. En esas dos horas no paró de reír y hacernos reír con él, mostrándonos esa sonrisa infantil que me hizo salir del Palau con una sonrisa pintada en mis labios de oreja a oreja. Eso es lo que hace Carlos, hacerte ver la vida con positividad, y eso es algo de incalculable valor.

No tengo más palabras de ese concierto, sinceramente no puedo expresarlo. Sólo os digo que si os gusta la música celta, id a ver a Carlos Núñez. Os dejará con ganas de más, mucho más, y ya no podréis olvidaros nunca más de un concierto de un artista de tal calibre como él. Dejo el 2013 con un sueño cumplido. Un grande Carlos, gracias. 

Declaration of principles: I don't want to grow up.

This morning I was talking to my mum and she told me something that got me thinking. I’ll put you in context. I was just scrolling down my Twitter timeline on my phone and I saw a picture of the actor Peter Capaldi as the new Doctor in the TV show Doctor Who, something that got me really excited, and she asked me about what I had seen. When I showed her she just looked at me as if I was some sort of alien and whispered “you really need to grow up”. She repeats that phrase many times a day; that I need to grow up and be mature, that I’m not a teenager anymore and this sort of stuff is just for teenagers whose only problem in life is what they’re going to wear the next morning to school.

And I find myself highly disagreeing with her for a number of reasons. First, teenagers and young adults do have problems; the only difference with adults is that their problems are different. For an adult, the loss of a job or an argument with the boss is really important, but for a teenager an argument with a friend is as equally important as it is for the adult the argument with the boss. At that age friends are the most important thing in our lives, and sometimes parents don’t seem to get it, they seem to have forgotten what they felt about their friends when they were teens. Many adults (at least in my family) have forgotten what it’s like to be a teenager, what it feels like, how confusing it is at times, and that disdain or contempt they get from adults, as if adults know everything about life and teens still know nothing, is not the best answer they could have.

I have been at the receiving end of those looks of contempt that many times, even now, when I’m a 22 year old woman who’s finishing the degree and is working to get enough money to, at least, pay for the things I want but don’t need (concerts and that sort of thing). The point is that my mum thinks that because I like watching TV shows and music so much, I’m not mature enough. Every time this past month I told her I was excited because I was going to see the Doctor Who special at the cinema, she would just look at me strangely and say “you’re wasting money for nothing”.

I don’t intend to defend myself here; it could be true that I need to grow up; everybody is different and of course everybody has different opinions. But as I see it, all I’m doing is live. And I don’t really know about other adults but I’ve observed my mum for long enough now, and I know she’s not passionate about anything at all in her life. She just… is. She wakes up, goes to work, saves some money to go to the beach in summer… but that’s it. It’s like she’s watching her life passing in front of her eyes but does nothing about it. She doesn’t feel marveled in front of a piece of art in a museum, she doesn’t feel emotion when a really good and emotional song is on the radio, she doesn’t watch documentaries about curious things on telly… when she’s not working she just sits there, watching Belén Esteban and other people talking about celebrities’ lives and problems or gossiping about the people in town, as if that made her feel better about her own life.

I don’t want to judge her because this would be neither my place nor the suitable place to do it, but it got me thinking as to how we see life itself. In this context of crisis, and not only economic crisis but also a crisis of values, where in Spain we see that people are put in jail for stealing food but bankers and politicians who’ve lied and have stolen the people huge amounts of money are set free or even protected from the “bad people” who want them in jail; I think it’s very important to manage to feel marveled. To feel excitement running through your veins, it doesn’t matter if it’s due to a song, a TV show you really like or a novel you're writing as it is my case right now. To be able to wake up, look at the people surrounding you and be able to smile, even when everything seems so grey. When we see people who can’t pay for the rent of their flats and are evicted mercilessly; when we see our rights as workers and as citizens being reduced every single day, with the shadow of Francoism planning over our heads and with the memory of the dictatorship still so raw in hundreds of people’s minds; when what we hear from politicians and what we see in the streets is as opposing as day and night… in these times, it’s more important than ever to stay strong and not letting go of life, the real life, that life where every morning we felt excited about the day ahead. You could say is a denial to growing up, a desire to stay as a child where worries were lesser and it was easier to be happy. You could also say is simply ignorance, that once we know what the world is like and what we’re doing to the world and to the people in it it’s impossible to feel happy or excited.

But I don’t see it that way. I see it as a leitmotif, the way you want to live your life. A declaration of principles, if you like. And in this time, if I can feel excited, marveled or happy about my life, even if it’s because of a TV show, I’m glad I haven’t grown up yet. Because if growing up means stop feeling this way,  and feeling that every single day for the next 50 years is going to be exactly the same, I never want to grow up. What's the point in living if you aren't alive, anyway?

Start a diet: a positive state of mind. Yes, I can!

This week is being a roller coaster, and I think it’s time I tell you why. Last Thursday I finally decided I want a change in my life. I’ve been overweight for the past 10 years, and I’m tired of the looks that every person that I see on the street sends me (remember that I live in a very, very small town where everybody knows each other). I not only see the looks that strangers give me, but also the looks of my family and friends, specially the former group. I know they care about me and when they repeat each and every time they see me that I should start losing weight it’s for my own benefit, but I am fed up with it, especially at how they tell me that I am fat. I know I am, and I don’t need my extended family to remind me every single day of that (and most of the times in awful ways), do I? To prevent my anger from exploding in their faces and from shouting all kinds of insults at them I’ve followed the strategy of ignoring them when they talk to me about weight loss for the past five or six years.

But no more.

I finally decided that I want this change. I’m aware that I’ve tried hundreds of times, always with a nutritionist (it’s dangerous to do it on your own, especially the first times and especially if you have a small willpower), and it always failed. Or rather, I always failed. I made up excuses, justified myself, kept thinking “only this one time” when the temptation to grab a piece of chocolate or to eat a piece of bread with Nutella was too strong to keep it under control.

I am also aware that this is not only an issue of losing or not losing weight, it’s also a change of attitude, which I never cared about before. I’ll explain. For many years (ever since I started doing diets when I was around 12) I’ve believed that I have such a small willpower that I get tired, bored, and lose interest in diets after a few months. Also, for many years I’ve been constantly insulted by the people who, apparently, loved and respected me. Both family and acquaintances looked down on me and kept repeating me how hideous, unworthy, fat and disgusting I was. That was a long time ago and I don’t let that consciously affect me anymore. But I have the suspicion that, unconsciously, these thoughts are a great barrier that prevents me from getting my goal.

And I also think that these horrible thoughts connect with the apparent small willpower that I have. Perhaps it’s not that I have small willpower, perhaps is that these thoughts are acting as an unconscious barrier against what I really want (whatever the reasons, I don’t know). Every time I try a new diet I get those horrible feelings and thoughts of how unworthy I am and how incredibly I’m going to fail, and not only in this aspect but in several other aspects of my life. Failure has become something both terrible and usual in my life, and that, I think, is the proof of how unworthy and unlovable I am. All of this happens unconsciously, but I think these thoughts are getting stronger and stronger with every time I try to do something and I don’t succeed; and I have the proof when, before taking a shower, I look at myself naked in the mirror and I have to take my eyes off it because I can’t stand the sight. In these moments I ask myself how do I have the shame to go out and let people see the mess I am, and how people can stand the sight of me if I can’t even stand it myself.

All these thoughts are dangerous, especially when this is the only body I have and I have to live with it my whole life. That’s why I know that I need to commit in heart and soul for this. Not only to actually lose weight (which implies eating smart and staying active, something that I’m not used to do), but also to stay positive and motivated no matter how hard it gets. I have a long way ahead, 30kg (or 66lb) is an awful lot of fat to reduce and this is not going to be accomplished in two or three months. I know that and I know that I need to work both on the weight loss and the new positive state of mind that I need for this to be accomplished.

So this is my commitment to you, person who is reading this, and to myself. Because I deserve better than these awful thoughts of myself, and because I deserve better than the disapproving looks people give me, both stranger and non-stranger. I deserve better than that, and I need to believe in it.

Thank you for reading,

Melissa.

PS: Visit Dan Flatt's blog about how he's doing with his own diet. He's great! Keep it up, Dan!

Spain is different: Why are we so affraid of showing off?

This post comes after spending a whole week watching old episodes of a TV program that I very much enjoy. Its name is Cuarto Milenio, presented by Iker Jiménez and Carmen Porter, and whose impact on the Spanish audience is bigger and bigger each year (they’ve been on since 2005 on the telly and since 2002 on the radio with their program Milenio 3) regardless of the subject, sometimes frightening, of some of the reports shown there. Many people think that the program is only about paranormal incidents and apparitions of ghost and UFOs. It has indeed some reports and discussions with specialists of this kind but the kind of subjects it covers is much wider than that, including science, archaeology and history.

I’m not here to discuss and argue in favor of the legitimacy of the topics discussed in the program, since many people seem to think that it is all a farce; but to discuss and tell you what has aroused in me the need of writing this post. I’m 22 years old, not old enough and without the enough money to have visited the whole country of Spain as I would like to do someday, but I’ve visited a bit of it: I’ve visited the northwest of the country (Galicia, Asturias and Cantabria mainly), Valencia; Segovia, Salamanca, Ávila and surroundings, and the whole autonomous community of Murcia. 

Castle of Lorca

There are many places in Spain that I haven’t seen, but after watching Cuarto Milenio I now know that there are literally hundreds of places undiscovered, unexploited (in the good sense of the word) or closed to the public. I’ll give you an example: everyone knows about Stonehenge, near Salisbury, in the south west of the UK; which it is considered to be one of the biggest groups of dolmens in all Europe. However, what about the dolmens of la Menga,in Antequera, near Málaga? It is even BIGGER than Stonehenge, with inscriptions that are (always apparently, I have no idea of archaeology and I tell you what I’ve found on Google) exactly the same that appear in some dolmens of Stonehenge and which the archaeologists don’t know what they mean yet. I repeat, they are even bigger than Stonehenge. But everyone knows about Stonehenge and few people have ever heard about la Menga. Why is that?

Dolmens de la Menga, Antequera.

Last year I spent some time in the UK under the Erasmus grant, and although I was there only nine months I made the most of them and visited many places (there are still several that I left unvisited, though, for next time). After visiting all those places and comparing the ones in the UK with the ones in Spain that I know and I’ve seen, one question strikes me: why on earth are we so afraid of showing off the historical and cultural heritage? I now think, for example, Nottingham Castle. Nottingham, as we all know, is famous for Robin Hood’s story but barely anything remains regarding his legend; there’s only a sculpture at the entrance of the castle and little more. However, the castle is able to show off its presence in First World War with an impressive display of weapons, uniforms, and pictures of the heroes that lived (and some died) during that tragedy. The castle is in perfect shape and perfectly maintained even though if you go there with high expectations you may be a bit disappointed.

Entrance to Nottingham Castle

Robin Hood sculpture in Nottingham

However, in Spain things change. As I said, three or four years ago, my family and I decided to visit Murcia. We spent ten days there, everyday visiting something different, and only three things of the dozens that I saw were impressive. Only three: the roman theatre of Cartagena, the castle of Lorca and a sort of Roman museum with bits and pieces of the remnants of an old time. And by that I don’t mean that Murcia doesn’t have historical places to visit, in fact many of the towns have an old castle which in ancient times kept an eye on the peoples of the village down below. What I mean is that all these places are incredibly poor maintained, money has not been invested in procuring a good preservation. Of course there are castles and museums, but many of those are closed to the public or have little investment and therefore poorly preserved. It is obvious now that there is no money to invest on these sort of things (now there is no money, literally), but during many years there was enough money. Why then, didn’t we invest on them? 

Roman theatre in Cartagena

I’ve done a bit of Google before writing this and I’ve discovered that, in comparison, Spain has a higher cultural wealth than other places like France or the UK but contrary to what we would think, the rate of cultural and historical tourism is lower, both international and national. The investment of public money is one reason, but I’m sure that can’t be the only one. I refuse to believe that we are fools enough to not care about our historical heritage. I can tell you that one of the summers I enjoyed the most was when I went to Segovia, the number of places to visit was incredibly high, from palaces such as La Granja de San Ildefonso to museums, towns, cities and restaurants with history of their own. In Segovia most of them are well taken care of, but why that doesn’t happen in the whole country?

Granja de San Ildefonso

Spain may be many things, but one thing that remains true is that historically it’s been an important place in the map, and the remnants that we have today show that. Let’s show off what we have, let’s be proud of the historical and cultural heritage, and let’s invest in what we have; so that the future generations are proud of what their country meant historically and what it means now.

Why are there so many branches of literature? How I'm finally making up my mind.

I think I’ve finally found out what I want to do.

Not in a general, wide sense, that I know since I was 14 years old: I wanted to teach English, and more specifically, English Literature. However, if you follow my blog you may recall that I once wrote I didn’t know which of the many areas of Literature I should choose.

However, two things have been helping to make up my mind. The first one was a subject I took this last semester, called “Literatura, Gèneres i Sexualitats” (Literature, Gender and Sexualities). It was the only subject I would take in Catalan since the first year, and I wasn’t really convinced, but the title looked promising. And it was good, oh dear, it was very nice indeed. With this subject I realized that I didn’t really know anything about Gender Studies, and it made me more curious about these studies, masculinities, femininities, Queer Studies, and pretty much everything related to this subject. I also realized that ever since I was a child, I had thought of myself as someone open minded and free from prejudices, but I discovered that I was the opposite. When we talked about transsexuals, the difference between sex and gender, intersex… all of this stuff, I found myself being skeptical and full of prejudices, which started to fall one by one by discussing things in class and by reading the authors that the teacher proposed to us. Not every single subject that you take changes your view of the world and your view of yourself, but to me this has been a turning point in my career (if you can call it that already) since it has opened my eyes to a part of the literature that I didn’t know and that I’m very much interested in. Even though it was the first time this subject was being taught and there are lots of things I would've changed and done differently, I still enjoyed it very much.

The second thing that helped me to make up my mind was the TFG, the project of the end of the degree, or however you want to call it. It is different depending on what degree you are studying, but in my case, it was basically a paper between 5,000 and 7,000 words about a topic of our choice. I chose “homoerotic subtext in Sherlock Holmes”. And with that topic, a whole world was opened to me. Before taking the subject and before thinking about the topic of the TFG I had never heard about Butler, Wittig, Sedgewick, Fuss… I had heard about Michel Foucault but in a very different context, not in the context of sexuality. And although I must admit that it was very complicated to understand and to apply the theory of Queer Studies to my work, I had enjoyed every minute of it. I’m very glad that I know these things now, but I’m aware that I’ve barely scratched the surface of a branch of literature full of authors, works, theories and knowledge that I really want to know.

Therefore, I think I will try to find a MA that follows this direction. I still don’t know how I’m going to do it, where, or how much it’s going to cost. I still have some doubts as well regarding the specialty, because every university has a specialist in Victorianism, or a specialist in Romanticism, or a specialist in Shakespeare. But for some reason Gender Studies is always relegated to a second term: it’s always optional, never compulsory; and therefore, the possibilities of finding a job related to it are narrower. But still, I think I should do as I have always done and go for something I like instead of going for something I’m interested in but not that much. And in any case I still have one more year to think about it because I’ve failed two subjects this year and I will have to take them again next year, but I think I’m moving in the right direction.