[Click to read Part 1 and Part 2]

Making friends was hard.

In fact, doing anything that wasn’t staying at home was often illegal.

First, the government restricted movement outside of Madrid due to rising covid cases.

Then, there were curfews and limits of how many people could gather in a group at a time.

Imagine you can only have four people at your table. Would you fill one of your previous spots for a girl from Michigan you don’t know instead of your friends? Of course not.

Then, I couldn’t even leave my neighborhood, which was around a 1-kilometer radius, due to rising cases.

And, just because things weren’t hard enough, my roommates started to get covid. One by one, falling ill like dominoes. I couldn’t even leave my bedroom.

On top of that, I had to re-learn teaching. It was my first time teaching elementary school, and I was teaching drama. “I hope you’re not a shy person!” the coordinator said when she e-mailed me before the school year started. Oh, if only she knew.

No one prepared me for classroom management for a room of 8-year-olds who don’t speak English after being cooped up at home during lockdown for the past three months. “Only speak to the students in English,” my colleagues told me. How was I supposed to get the students to listen to me if they didn’t understand me? And how was I supposed to teach drama if the students couldn’t see half of my face?

“Just look up some videos on YouTube,” one teacher told me, as she sat in the back of the room while I tried co teach 20 third graders. But videos of…what? I wanted to ask, but she’d already left the classroom by then. And the videos would have been useless; covid-friendly ESL drama content hadn’t been invented yet. I felt like a fish floundering on dry land.

So, I was re-learning my job during a pandemic, and I didn’t have any friends to talk to about it.

To make matters even harder, I was dealing with culture shock for the first time.

During my first year in Spain, I was in a bubble, spending time in offices and discotecas and with other foreigners. Now, I was seeing and feeling Spanish culture for the first time. The culture was very different from Colombia, and I kept finding myself homesick for Colombia.

In Colombia, I was never lonely—not for one moment. In the United States, I spent so many lonely Friday and Saturday nights in my room, a reluctant homebody. And now, in Spain, I was completely and utterly alone.

Unlike Colombians, who will tell you in an afternoon of meeting them their life story and invite you to their grandma’s neighbor’s son-in-law’s birthday party, Spanish people stick with their friends they’ve had since preschool. Which is beautiful. But that’s often it. I’ve had Spanish people tell me, “I have my childhood friends, so I don’t need any more.” People were cordial, but they were acquaintances and nothing more.

I didn’t know that this type of loneliness existed, where you feel so alone that your bones hurt. Your body feels hollow, like an eggshell, trying to not break. Where your muscles are sore from all of the sadness that you can’t express, because when you’re a drama teacher, it’s your job to act like you’re fine and put on a smile, because no one cares.

If a tree falls in a forest, does it make a sound if no one can hear it?

And if a girl cries alone in her room night after night, does it matter if no one can see her?

I felt like no one on the side of the world I was living on gave a damn about me. And that’s a loneliness I hope no one ever has to know.

I was still working online, but living paycheck to paycheck, barely affording rent and groceries. The only good thing about not having friends was that I didn’t have to tell anyone that no, I couldn’t go to that restaurant because I wanted to be able to afford groceries.

I was sad and tired from the moment I woke up, to school, to going to bed. No one knew how bad I was feeling. I didn’t dare tell anyone how much I was struggling. I’d given up so much for my dream, and I was determined to make it work, no matter how miserable I was.

I spent Christmas and New Year’s all alone–such a stark difference to 2019, when I was in Prague and Sol. My roommates had gone back to their hometowns. I had nowhere to go; in fact, the government only allowed travel if people were visiting family.

Every night, my heart clamored, and I wondered if this was as good as it was going to get. I’d traveled across the world to be happy, and I was reeling night after night.

And dear reader, if you think this sounds bad, you may be wondering, “Why didn’t you go back to the USA?” I couldn’t even leave Spain because my visa renewal was still getting processed. And even if I were to give it all up, how I’m feeling in this blog is still not as bad as how I felt before I left for Spain. Even isolation was better than what I’d left behind.

However, in every dark night of the soul, there is a moment of light.

Mine came in the form of a snowstorm.

Madrid rarely gets snow, and it usually melts quickly. But in January 2021, a historic snowstorm, called Filomena, wreaked havoc on Madrid, covering the metropolis in white overnight.

While the snow caused a lot of chaos, it was also beautiful. As I walked around, I forgot how unhappy I was for the first time in months. And then, in the midst of the cold and the flurries and my internal fury, I received an internal message:

Even in the bullshit, there is still beauty all around you. Keep going.

My problems were far from over. But this message was enough to give me hope that I may be happy again.

My other moment of light shone out of, oddly, irritation.

My college-aged roommates dealt with the pandemic by inviting their friends over and having parties until 2am. Weekdays and weekends.

And then one of my two roommates got covid. Now, if a roommate got covid, would you invite your boyfriend to quarantine in your covid-infested apartment for a week? Would you think that’s a smart idea at all?

I’d been patient for a long time, but when I saw them both in the kitchen, there was no more Miss Nice Girl.

“DO YOU KNOW THAT IF I GET COVID I DON’T GET PAID FOR SICK DAYS?! AND I CAN BARELY AFFORD RENT!! WHY THE HELL WOULD YOU INVITE SOMEONE ELSE INTO OUR APARTMENT WHEN SOMEONE HAS COVID?! WHAT IS THE MATTER WITH YOU TWO?!!”

My roommate and her boyfriend looked at me as if I burst a few capillaries. Which I probably did.

Needless to say, they left the apartment during the rest of quarantine.

But wait, it gets worse!

We ended up getting several new roommates at once. Suddenly, dirty dishes piled up in the sink. We’d look at the same grimy glasses and frying pans for days. So now, I couldn’t sleep, and I had a dirty kitchen.

And then, one Saturday night at 2am, I woke up to frantic doorbell ringing, pounding, and shouting. Another party, are you kidding me. I woke up, ready to call the police and make a noise complaint. I got out of bed, walked to the apartment entrance, and couldn’t believe my eyes.

Seven guys laying in the entrance, halfway outside, halfway in the property, and stacked on top of each other like pancakes. My roommate was limping, walking to the bathroom to get some tissues for his bloody nose.

Holy shit, I thought.

Watching the aftermath of my roommate and a bunch of other guys getting beat-up at 2 in the morning was the last straw. I never found out why this had happened, and I didn’t want to know. I just wanted to get out of there.

My landlord moved me to another room in the building, and a bigger room for no extra charge. A month later, I befriended two roommates. Having friends again felt like drinking water after wandering in the desert. Even though we now live in different cities, we are still friends to this day.

Months went by. I started to dream of traveling, even though I couldn’t go anywhere due to government restrictions and money. I kept dreaming of the beach.

I realized that, if I didn’t have anyone in Madrid, I could go anywhere.

I asked my teaching program coordinator about schools near the beach. “There’s Valencia…Galicia…or the Canary Islands,” she said cheerfully.

Hmm…the Canary Islands?

I knew the Canary Islands existed, but I didn’t have any desire to go to them. Why would I visit an island when I had the whole continent of Europe to explore?

But I also thought, why not go?

If I go, I could be even more miserable.

Or just as miserable.

Or maybe…happy?

Misery once again gave me the freedom to leave.

When it was time to renew my teaching placement, I requested to be placed in the Canary Islands. A few months later, I received the fateful email: I was to live and teach on the island of Gran Canaria.

Within months, I packed up my suitcase again. I said goodbye to the two friends I’d made as we each went our separate ways: one, to Singapore; and the other, to Barcelona.

At the end of June 2021, early in the morning, I looked out the window of the plane that took me away from Madrid. The city of my dreams. The city that broke me. The city that transformed me.

Sometimes, all it takes is a three-hour flight to change your life.

My flight took me to a Spanish island off the coast of Africa.