be honest, she says

after a disgruntled shopping experience where everyone stares at me and i buy juice and bread and palta and wonder where my appetite went, afton and i share a plate of greasy fries at a little typical chilean restaurant where the tv blasts chile's recent win over honduras and i get to thinking.
the people who say traveling abroad will be the most amazing experience of your life are usually the people who studied abroad, who traveled with money, who were unattached, who were running from something. they are usually not the people who chose to leave everything they love to live somewhere alone. who move somewhere under a certain impression, with expectations, with promise. because i feel like there would be such a different story. i want to hear about the hard parts. the scary parts. the long, long nights. the attempts at a new language, at new customs, new friends. i want to hear about when you fell apart, when you questioned everything, when the people who were supposed to be your family, your support turn their backs on you. i want to hear about how living abroad is the most difficult experience in the whole world. thats the story you never hear about. i guess ill just have to keep living it and let you know.
today there are riots in the street at 10am and i sit on my window seat and take photos and smoke cigarettes even though i shouldnt and i dont want to but i dont have any reason not to. i cant breathe anyway. the streets are littered with paper and carabineros throw tiny explosions, making popping sounds echo across the courtyard of the university and when i do finally leave the house, the sting of pepper spray makes me sneeze for blocks. i feel anxious and restless, i feel lonely and ugly and like someone i dont know.
today i had plans and they all fell through when tanks rolled down alameda and made it impossible to run any errands. and its cold, like really cold, and i dont have the proper clothes as usual and all i want to do is stay in my apartment and look at santiago from above, like a cat and plan my next move.
all my plans have been ruined and i cant bare to face the idea of having to make new ones that only include myself. i shouldnt have been so sure, so giving, i shouldnt have. i couldnt have helped it though.
in my classes i am teaching about regret and i try to tell this woman who is going through a divorce and has a 6 year old daughter what regret feels like, that its such a heavy word and when she asks for an example i want to say, where do i begin.
but i cant regret. i can only adjust, i can scour the past two years for where, when, why things went wrong. how all my previous choices led me here and what i would have done differently but it doesnt change anything. i am still living in some crazy city where french fries are a food group and my heart is broken. i dont see any way i could have escaped this. the choices i made were ones i stood behind at one point, i thought i had gotten so good at seeing clearly, at thinking with my head and my heart. and maybe thats your problem, maybe things got too confusing in one area or another and so you just chose. you just made a decision. i cant judge you for that. i can be angry though. and confused. and i can only hope that at some future point youre not sitting in some far away country counting all of your regrets. or maybe i hope you are. i dont know.
people say when you leave you will change, that you leave to go find yourself. but i just keep thinking about the changes here. how as of late i am becoming someone i cant look at in the mornings. someone i dont trust alone with myself at night. it has been a series of days of waiting, of being quiet, of staring out this goddamn window. and this is not to say that i am not living. i am fully packed every day. i am embracing everything, i am trying here, i really am, i am sitting with myself, i am learning, i am growing, i am changing. but i am resistant. i liked the girl in san francisco. most of the time.
shell be back, in phases, in stints.
right now shes looking out the window of a strange city that shes trying to make her own. alone.
and everyone says san francisco will always be there...but you said youd always be there for me too. you said you werent going anywhere...and well, i dont see you. are you there?
so maybe san francisco will sink into the sea while im gone. and maybe i couldnt care if that city burned to the ground. its dead for me...save a few monumental places, face and streets i kissed you on.
but if anything, this has been good for the writing. but people dont tell you that, no ones honest anymore. no one tells you how this will really be. no one tells the truth.