In Barcelona, I Can Express Myself. In America, It’s Complicated.

My story on some differences between the two.

Today we’re having another family gathering.

Yes, the same Floridian family that hosted a barbecue on a day with over 4,000 new COVID cases thought it was a good idea to throw a birthday party today. Should I expect any better?

A few points on this.

One, if you’re in a situation similar to mine, then you could potentially benefit from my precautions. I’m wearing a mask as I’m writing this, and I’m not letting people get six feet within me (at least what looks like six feet). Just because someone in your family or your living situation is being inconsiderate does not mean that you can’t be vigilant. Because you can. Every man for himself.

Secondly, I will not whitewash my writing. I’m still going to write about interesting things in my life (such as what this title says) but I’m not going to pretend that I’m not living in a pandemic epicenter, because I am. If you want to truly be in my experiences vicariously, you must know the conditions that surround me.

Alright, let’s get started.

Yesterday I was sitting on the front porch bench with nothing but the sun and a cup of Moroccan mint tea. It was bliss. I spent my day writing, reading about Radiohead, swimming, playing guitar, and sitting on the bench. I couldn’t have asked for a better Saturday.

While I was sitting on that bench, I was imagining what my neighborhood would look like if it were in Barcelona. The bench is by the door, and the front porch doesn’t end until at least ten feet away from it. Then there’s the driveway, and after the driveway, there’s the sidewalk. Couple that with grassy patches of front yard, and in front of those is the street. Then the whole suburban cycle repeats.

This is completely different from what I got used to in Barcelona. There, I live in an apartment building. I have to go all the way down and cross the street to sit on a bench. It sounds like a lot of work, yet it’s not. It’s what you get used to. In my living-in-an-American-suburb perspective, that is a lot of work. It takes me less than thirty seconds to walk from my bedroom to the front porch bench here in Florida. In Spain, it takes me at least double that.

When I’m in Spain though, going to sit on a bench outside doesn’t seem that much work. That’s because everything else is more work than that. Here in America, if I want to go to the grocery store, I simply walk to my car, drive to a parking lot, and stroll from the parking lot to the store and repeat. In Spain, I walk to the grocery store and walk with all the bags I bought.

My trips to the grocery store are completely different in Spain and Florida. In Spain, we don’t buy much more than the food for tonight, tomorrow, and the next day. The food in Spain is incredibly fresh — good luck trying to eat a two-day-old baguette. In Florida, my grandma buys bread made multiple hours before it was sold, then she sticks it in the freezer and we eat it for two weeks. It’s blasphemy in Spain to eat bread that is more than a day or two old. In Florida it’s the opposite: it’s what everyone does. I guess that’s what happens when there are more preservatives than actual ingredients.

Life in suburban America is a life of convenience. We go to the grocery store and buy food for weeks so we don’t have to go back. We drive everywhere so we don’t have to walk.

It’s also convenient to not talk to your neighbor.

My grandma’s house in Florida is right on an intersection (neighborhood streets, not main streets). The amount of land that my grandma’s house is on would take up at least one or two whole apartment buildings in Barcelona. In this house, only three people live in it (my grandmother, my grandfather, and myself). In Barcelona apartment buildings, it’s usually way more than that.

When I go out of my apartment building in Barcelona to sit on a bench, I can do so in anonymity. That’s how I want it to be: I adore my alone time of sitting and observing and jamming to music. Tens of people would bypass me in a matter of minutes.

Here in suburban Florida, it’s different. I sit outside and play my guitar or drink my tea and there’s less than one person per ten minutes walking by my intersection. When someone does walk by, I don’t want to say hi to them — not out of rudeness, I just enjoy my alone time. So I don’t say hi, and they don’t say hi back. But it’s weird. It’s weird because I have conflicting feelings. Do I acknowledge them and interrupt my alone time, or do I not? The suburbs make this much more complicated.

Even when I don’t acknowledge their presence (which is 99% of the time), I still feel like I’m not in anonymity. I’m really not. It’s just the pedestrian and me. No one else. In Barcelona it’s different. I feel like I can bop my head while jamming and no one will give a fuck. That’s because I’m not the center. Barcelona is a place full of character. There’s literally nothing remarkable about me — many do weirder things and bopping one’s head in public isn’t even that weird.

El hombre over there is just enjoying himself!

Here I can’t do that. I feel like I’d be judged for being weird. In a country that circlejerks itself around the freedom of expression, here in America I feel like I’m unable to express my true self. I can’t be weird. I have to conform. Or else people will know this house as the house with the weird guy in it.

Just picture yourself in that scenario: you’re the only pedestrian and the only person outside with you is bopping his head like a freaking maniac. How could you not look at him? I’m probably overthinking it to a certain extent, but it’s not overreach. I just want to enjoy my alone time — alone. In anonymity. In my own world. In Noah’s lalaland.

Oh, how I miss Barcelona. I miss the happy people walking on the streets screaming in Catalan or Spanish. Believe it or not, I miss the cigarette smoke. I don’t miss it for what it is, I miss it because it reminds me of Barcelona. It reminds me of a lifestyle centered on socializing with others and expressing our true selves. There’s nothing to hide in Barcelona. People just are, you just be.

I miss being.

I’m getting better at that. As mentioned before, June has been a weird month for me. I think that the more I lost my guard, the less I was being. Now that I see my own behavior for what it is, I’m getting back on track to simply being.

Don’t mind me drinking my tea, playing my guitar, and bopping my head: I’m being.

P.S. If you liked my story, here are some of my favorite personal essays I’ve written!