Joshua Hackett: A Sad but Beneficial Experience

I’m gonna be honest with you, chief: my breakaway didn’t feel like the amazing transformation that loaded my mind with wisdom and culture that I thought it would. It was difficult and saddening at times. Still, I’d consider it a breakthrough, especially with my social sense and self-image, yet the thing I took most from being abroad was the feeling of homesickness. Having never felt homesickness before, I can’t say for sure that it’s what it was. Perhaps it was more of an appreciation for what I have at home, like bountiful water, for instance.

Out of the three of the Lander students that went to Madrid, I think we can all agree that my girlfriend, Mekensie, got the best host family. But where Mekensie’s hostess was kind, patient, and understanding, I felt that my hostess was maleducada, rude. She was interesting at first, but over time, I felt the undue sense of dissatisfaction or hatred from her. It wasn’t directed, but more of a general hatred. My guess would be that her fury was directed towards men, possibly due to a poor marriage. She often said that love has no sound place in relationships: not the kind of thing that a young man in a relationship with the woman he loves wants to hear. It wasn’t just in my mind, though. Mekensie can attest that Montse was extremely rude, especially to me. I’m sure my roommates and I, if I ever saw them outside of dinnertime, could have had a long conversation about how demeaning our generous hostess could be.

Mekensie and Josh at the Alhambra in Granada, Spain

On the first morning in Spain, our school contact, María Jesús, and the other hostesses were shocked that I had bought my own metro pass and made my way albeit late to our agreed meeting place on my own when both of my comrades from Lander had been escorted. It wasn’t necessarily difficult for me (I learned in Spain that my navigational skills are pretty darn good), but I was given a hand drawn map of how to get to the metro and one of the metro route to Sol itself and had to get there alone. I’ll take it as a compliment to my aura of intelligence, but more likely, she simply didn’t care enough to take her tenants to the meeting point. However, Montse’s demeaning attitude and tone deafness during conversations provided a daily stressor at home—my apartment, rather. Home is much more comforting, but I wasn’t there for comfort. It was just the opposite, actually.

One night, I invited Mekensie over for dinner. She wanted to come to dinner, and Montse wanted to meet the young lady that I came to Spain for. I could feel the pressure against me rise, being the only guy at the table. I remember wishing that Montse’s boyfriend from Holland was there: he was pleasant. That wasn’t the fault of the girls’ presence, but Montse turned it up to eleven to make me look bad at the table that night. She wouldn’t stop going on about how women are better than men, and men being weak.

Tandem Students cooking Spanish cuisine

At one point, after Mekensie told Montse about her plans to go to Italy, Montse brought up the fact that I wasn’t going to any other country while I was in Spain, on which she would later be saying that men have less “cojones” than women. I didn’t have a thousand dollars to spend in Spain or anywhere else. I had about $500 that I wanted to hang on to. However, like I said, I wasn’t the only subject of Montse’s offensiveness. When Stephanie responded to Mekensie’s mentioning of a trip with her own, Montse quickly turned the excited atmosphere to a somber one by insulting the people and policies of the place that Stephanie was going.

The dinner continued with Montse insulting me while occasionally taking a break to condemn the girls’ vacations. I just slumped down in my chair and kept to myself. As much as I would have loved to give Montse a piece of my mind, I didn’t think that was a great idea. I just avoided her as much as possible, and when Stephanie and Madeline left for a week on their respective trips, I didn’t go to dinner at all.

After that disaster of a dinner, I had my breakdown. Honestly, it seems like the dinner and the subsequent crying occurred on totally different days. Mekensie was there, and she was comforting me. As I cried, I realized that I had not let myself cry in a long time (and I mean bawl, not just the teary-eyed blinking that I couldn’t help), likely not since my Great Granddaddy Lonny’s passing. Not that it’s that big of a deal, but for the most part, males are expected to have limited feeling and compassion, brushing emotions to the side for a colder, harder aura that would eventually lead to a ruining of our mental and emotional states and of those around us (even just now I felt like I had to write, “Not that it’s that big of a deal.”).

De pequeño, or “as a child,” I had anger issues. I would always lash out at anyone that I felt wronged me within a few boundaries: I didn’t go after people who weren’t family as family members are more liable to forgive you when you throw a tantrum, I didn’t go for adults (I was no fool), and I didn’t fight for no reason, although I’ve always wanted to have a good fight. It didn’t help that everyone called me a crybaby whenever I tried to resolve disputes by calling on an adult. After a while, I cooled down and my fuse got longer. Either that, or I just shoved the dynamite into a plastic bottle far enough that the fuse wouldn’t catch so easily.

Bottling my anger and sadness didn’t lead to much except for me never expressing how I feel and then lashing out in anger whenever I’m at the breaking point. I even punched my brother in the face once for saying something I didn’t like. He was recovering from a fractured tibia, but that didn’t go through my mind: I was at the breaking point. In Spain, my breaking point was in my studio. No anger and no one to blame, I was left with tears. I was drowning in stress and unforgiving self-doubt, and I reassured myself that everything would be okay. Mekensie assured me as well.

That became my motto for a time: “It’s okay.” It’s okay to cry; it’s okay to be upset; it’s okay to be angry. Just keep in mind that all things need temperament and governing, and everything will be okay. The following days, I continued to tear up whenever that moment came to mind, though I still couldn’t muster the courage to cry in public. I felt free, like an overly-used, cliché weight had been lifted off of my shoulders. I remember asking for it, too. A night previous to the break(down)through, I had asked for Spain to break me. It was as simple as that, and sure enough, it happened.

So, no, my breakaway wasn’t the glimmering, Sailor Moon, 60-second transformation that I thought it would be. It was a three-month period with its share of bitter and sweet moments, including a pathetic realization that involved me sobbing on a bed that was six inches too short in a cramped studio with Mekensie comforting me as best as she could. I would do it all again if I could. I might do some things differently, but overall, I’ll take the good with the bad because even that was beneficial and constructive. No pain, no gain, eh?

Mateo (Denmark), Chris (US, Lander), Mekensie (US, Lander), Theresa (Germany), Josh (US, Lander)

Joshua L. Hackett is a junior history major, expected to graduate in the Spring of 2020. He did his breakaway in Madrid, Spain. After graduating he plans to go for his graduate degree in history.