A void

No matter what I do, I just can’t blend in with other people.

I went to Pepe’s house, the guy I met at the milonga, Teresa (also from tango) was also there and the most amazing thing happened – a home tango lesson and practice, for free. This is what I miss in Poland – people are interested in tango but not interested enough as to do something like that.

Yesterday, Pepe texted me, asking whether I’d like to go with him to milonga to Alicante and I did something typical of me, I panicked. I mean, I barely know him, he’s a lot older than I am and I just want to dance tango and I knew that neither Teresa nor Carmen were going to go with us because they weren’t in Murcia at that time. To that I have to add my previous experiences with men, who turned out to be thinking about one thing only and with one part of their bodies and that part wasn’t the brain. In the end, I came up with a lame excuse and I didn’t go. The good thing about it is that I don’t feel remorse or anything.

At the same time, I was at the official opening of the academic year for the Erasmus students, hoping that maybe I’ll be able to bond with someone. I couldn’t do it either. People were already in groups, I didn’t recognize any familiar faces and besides, to me they seem to be like 16 and not 20. They want to get drunk, get high, fuck and do all the stuff they couldn’t do in their country. They live with other Erasmus students, using English, not Spanish, which doesn’t make sense to me, and I’m still counting the days left or the days left till Monday because this is when my tango classes are (even though the classes are pretty impersonal too).

The day before yesterday I went to visit N and D who also came here from my university and who happen to be living 6 minutes on foot from my flat. I thought it would be more… personal, that for a moment I would feel like home. It wasn’t and I didn’t and I felt the odd one out, not wanting to smoke weeds and expressing my doubts about my being here. I bet that when I left their place, they went on behaving as they had been when I was there because, in fact, when I was leaving they were a bit high.

In consequence, I’m not in Poland, but I can’t pull myself together being here, I just don’t feel it. I’m not sad because of that, I’m empty. I left my friends and family, people who matter in Poland; my hopes and expectations related to my stay here shattered, or maybe something less dramatic – they just died; I am here alone hardly knowing anyone, being in love with no-body, and with a whole volume of things I would like to say but I can’t because of my language inadequacies, so I might as well have written that I am here only partially, because only a part of me is externalised. Yet, somehow, it doesn’t matter. I just feel empty and tired.