I miss Madrid so much.

All the time in a myriad of ways.

Sometimes (often), I miss being able to get cheap, nutrient-rich, yummy food more or less any hour of the day.

Sometimes it’s the Culture I crave. The Prado calls to me softly, wondering why I haven’t been parked in front of a Goya, wondering about brush strokes.

I miss Real Madrid, the rowdy crowds of fans, the sharp comments of professors who rooted for other teams.

Other times, it’s the accessibility I crave. The metro so I can nap or read while I get where I need to be from home. The cheap flights all over Europe and Northern Africa, so I can get to where I’m interested in visiting.

Oddly, I miss my host mom SO MUCH. I have literally never in my life had such good care taken of me, and it was a treat as much as it was a retreat from my real life. I’m sure that’s a huge chunk of why Madrid felt like home in a way nothing ever has before.

Some days I just miss being where I felt I belonged.
I live in the very top of Texas, the panhandle it’s called, in a little university town that is charming and sweet, but often feels very empty and alienating.
It’s in one of the more conservative counties in possibly the most Republican state in the continental United States. I am… not conservative.
I feel lonely 90.5% of days in Texas, and my lifetime close, close friend (my “person”) whom I lived with in Spain just left for grad school in Germany.

I miss loud discotecas, I miss packed pubs, and cafés where everyone shared one super huge table, and I miss the structure of college courses (*gulp* never thought I’d say that).

 

I have missed Madrid like I have missed no man I have ever felt for, and I have cried for missing it harder than any quasi-breakup I have ever been a half of.

So, that’s my warning for studying abroad: you may well fall in love with a land you can’t stay in, and it may feel like it’s killing you when you get home.
It may feel like it’s carving out your insides for long, long after you get home.
Many of the students I studied abroad with have returned, most of them as English teachers through the notorious auxiliarias program. We do what we must to get back to what we love, no?

I am no suggesting you guard your heart from paradise, by all means love Spain, and Madrid, and travel with a bigness unprecedented in your own heart, but when you are home, and you feel alone, know there are many others that mourn the loss of paradise with you.