Switzerland is quite a weird country. And after a couple of month living here I’m realizing that being Argentinian doesn’t help at all. We are use to the chaos, things not working, the survival of the fittest, we are use to not being bored, to go out until dawn. Tons of concept that here don’t exist.
Living in other country is not always very easy. Being far away from your family and friends sucks. Understanding that the other is different than you, that cames from an other country and that they have other costumes is not always the easier. Because I’m a foreigner in this country but they are foreigners in my life. So, my question is what can we do when your mother in law comes from another planet? I know that talking about the in laws is a cliché. And I don’t want to be mean but sometimes is just too easy. At first our relationship was not very easy, I was talking Spanish and English, she was speaking only French so we didn’t talk too much. I thought for quite a long time that the only reason why we didn’t talk was this idiomatic bareer between the 2 of us, but now that I am some sort of fluent in frech I realize that no. she is like that, not very talkative. To be fair with her, a lot of swiss people around her age are like tkat. I was more used to the idea of having dinner with the family of your boyfriend and everyone asking you stuff. You are the new one, so where do you come from? How did you meet with eachother? Also, living here, I got used to very weird questions about Argentina like if I dance tango? Or how much money does it cost to buy a cow? Or how many hectaries do you need to be a millionaire? Like if every Argentinian were walking clichés. Sadly, my family doesn’t own any land, so I have no idea. And no, we don’t dance tango. That’s the thing, when you live abroad you are super conscious of where you come from. Way more than if you were living in your own country. Everything happenes or doesn’t happen because you are Argentinian. I’m fine with this idea, and I’m in peace with the idea of being Mica, the Argentinian. Then I have to explain them that not all argentinan people are as crazy as me.
I’m sure that if you ask my mom, she will tell you that I was the bad influence among my friends. I have to be honest; I was always a precocious girl, that was flowing on my veins. But that didn’t make me exactly a bad girl. At least I think. Also my mom thought for a couple of months that I was a drug addict. My relationship with drugs came on an early age, and yes, I guess that now with the distance, that habit of doing recreational drugs doesn’t seem so nice. Anyway, I was convinced that the drugs were not gonna win me. Especially because since an early age I knew that the only thing I was addicted to was people. Nowadays, trying to quit smoking, I put in question all of my theories but at that time I was fervently sure that I was not an addict so I could use whatever I wanted without being hooked. The truth is that I was not even doing drugs that much. Ok, maybe having a couple of pills every now and then at 16 was a lot, but believe me, it was not. I had friends that took an ecstasy pill per hour, plus popper, plus who know what synthetic shit, plus maybe a little bit of Ketamine and alcohol. So I was a saint compared to them. But of course my mom didn’t know about those things and was probably better that way. I guess I was doing drugs so I would look cool. For me, the look “heroine chic” was great and I always had this image of me in my head.
Usually people who go on a trip are trying to escape. From something, from someone, a shitty job, family problems, routine, ghost of ex boyfriends… That last case was my situation. And I say ghost because he was kind of dead, but not really. For him I was dead, for sure. He had been over me, and apparently quite fast. What are 7 years in the life of someone? Nothing. He, with a new woman in his life and a kid, while I was still crying like a baby. So, when my friends started to plan a lovely trip a round the globe, it felt only natural to go with them. Every one of us was looking for something different and I’m not too sure that everyone ended up finding for what they were looking for. We spent new year’s eve in a fantastic beach in Thailand and we made some wishes while we light some candles and some flying balloons.
I always wanted an epic love, a type of love that makes your world spin. But what Cosmopolitan doesn’t says is that, usually, this type of affairs comes bundled with very unstable people.
I consider myself a copycat, a little bit. The idea of mimics my booty call/lover came very naturally to me. All of a sudden the most stupid band appears like the coolest thing on earth just because my boyfriend has a cd of them. And just in a snap of fingers, I was a fan. Movies that I didn’t want to watch ended up being my favorite ones. You don’t know this just yet, but if someone has to describe me he would say that I’m the Jewish princess type. My father thinks the same. Personally I’m not too sure. Maybe in the past I was one, but now I’m quite sure that I don’t belong to that group anymore. Anyway, you can still call me like that. So it was quite weird when I started using t-shirts of heavy metal bands. Then I dated a guy who loved electronic parties. He was cute, interesting, tall, everything that an easy girl like me would ever want. So we went to parties. Never together, of course, he had a girlfriend, so he was not really inviting me anywhere. I was doing drugs just in case he would see me, so I had to pretend I was having the time of my fucking life. To be honest, I was not having such a blast and I was not technically meeting him at the parties. Ok, maybe is super complicated to “accidentally” meet someone in a party as big as Tomorrowland.
At that time, this guy was a huge fan of Sofia Coppola so, of course, “Virgin suicide” was a must. And since I was a very good follower, I was writing his name in all of my underwear. Thank god my fanaticism was not that extreme and I didn’t copy any of the suicidal girls, obviously, because I was not longer a virgin (oh Lexie, you rock my world). Yep, I was Trekkie for a while. I´ve watched reggae bands and the purest metal. Every single show that I was in was so boring and in such horrible places that my parents can be thankful of not knowing where I have gone (and also that nothing happened to me). But that was the thing, I was always a fanatic of love, and of falling in love. So, usually that means that I was a fan of the person who liked me.
I always wanted my life to look like a movie. I tried hard to make it seems like Notting Hill, but for a weird reason it always turned up to be way more similar to Fatal Attraction. I had been a stalker, before Facebook. Nowadays, of course, is super simple to follow someone. You can look at their pictures and you could catch a very nice obsession. Facebook it’s a wonderful place where you can unleash your inner perv and all your horrible curiosities in a more or less anonymous way. I can’t think about anything better that watching the pictures of the holydays to “Mar chiquita” of the aunty of the new girlfriend of your ex.
I’ll try my best not to write about real people. I’ll try hard so the real names of the real people don’t appear. But, if by any chance you think that it’s you… well, that’s because it’s actually you. No, I’m kidding. All the characters are completely fiction. Or you don’t know that the non-fiction can be fiction too?
Anyway, I say sorry in advance if someone is offended.
And to my mom: really really sorry.