God. I leave tomorrow. I hope P at least did something nice for when I get home because his last email to me was shitty. He puts no effort into me anymore and it hurts. I never realized how lazy he really is. Maybe lazy is a bad word. Maybe more so than anything, he doesn’t know how to prioritize. He doesn’t realize the benefit of investing in anything like a relationship, or a home that belongs to him, or a better job. He has this really great job and everyone loves him, and he’s so damn cute and loveable. But he doesn’t put any effort into it. He’ll go through mild spats of indignation and want to change things, but that’s as far as it goes. He’s a stoner at heart. And I think that is what bothers me so much about the pot. Not that he’s smoking it and enjoying himself. But rather, what pot symbolizes and what it does to destroy a person. It renders a person without feeling. Without motivation to live or love.

Anyway, enough about him. He’s already driving me nuts. I called him last night to find out where he was, believe it or not because he still hadn’t written me back, and here he said he had more dental work done and that he was “in and out” of work. Come on. You never went back to work again. “P time” sure is crazy time.

So, I had this insane dream about C that he confessed to having sex with Jackie (P’s niece) while they were in Germany together. I was so angry at both of them, disgusted actually, that I ran away from C and Jackie came running after me saying, “I’m sorry Aunt Tracy, I love you!” I grabbed her and told her that when you love someone you don’t have sex with their ex out of respect. And that that was a huge mistake. But, because she is who she is I was willing to forgive her, I just wasn’t willing to forget. I found all this out because I was hanging out with C and he showed me this video of him and her and all these crazy sex scenes with her dressed up in goth clothing, thigh high black boots with thick, porn star heels. I was angry with him because he took advantage of an 18-year-old, and I called him a dirty old man. It was a miserable dream.

• I am angry at P for his lack of effort.
• I am angry at C for not being the man I wanted him to be.
• I am angry at Jackie for being so young and beautiful.
• I am angry at my kids for being so spoiled and demanding.
• I am angry at all my friends for ignoring me in a time of need. I’ve never felt lonelier than I do now.
• Oh yes, and I’m angry with R for years of bad treatment, not possessing a sense of right or wrong, and for being a rotten father.

My childhood anger is coming back. I used to have so much. It went away for a while but now I can feel it welling up inside me. It’s coming out because my expectations of people are higher than what I should realistically expect. When I depend fully on others for my happiness I am only screwing myself. Plain and simple. It’s the whole Debi and Kristy thing all over. I expected them at my house on Christmas eve and they never showed. I took it personally and it hurt me deeply. Now, I realize people have busy lives and cannot always be at my beck and call. And yet, a part of me still expects a boyfriend or husband to treat me nicer and put in a little more effort. And I really don’t think I’m asking for much.

I told P last night that I thought no one understood where I was coming from in my obsessive complaining of this place. And I then I imagined what I must sound like to others. “Poor little rich girl who doesn’t have to work for a month and is stuck in Madrid (leaving out the part about the slums or the fact that there’s bars on the window). Poor girl! Having to teach her two sons the language and the culture of Spain. Being forced to go to Granada and Toledo and Aran Juez and Segovia and Valencia! And having someone wait on her hand and foot and cook all her meals!!! And all she has to do in consolation for all that horror is shop and buy expensive stuff for herself and her boyfriend who doesn’t even write to her every day because he actually has a job…”

Get over yourself, Tracy. Get out of your egocentric, narcissistic, big, fat head and stop fucking complaining. Maybe you need to re-read Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning one more time to know what real suffering is.

When our lives have no real suffering and pain, we create it. A hang nail becomes excruciating. A stubbed toe, disastrous. Is this a disorder? That we create drama because we find it so difficult to live in peace? Or is it merely part of human nature? Some people avoid pain and suffering at all cost and go off and live in a bubble of happiness. Others don’t know how to survive without misery. Scrappy people who thrive off chaos.

Is that me?

Am I, sadly, one of those people who need pain and suffering or at least drama and emotion in order to feel alive? Me, at rest, is an anomaly. What does she look like?

Once the drama of this vacation is over I am sure I will look for something else to bitch about. What, I do not know. I might be completely at peace for a while and then suddenly my brain will create an issue with that peace and turn what could be beautiful into something ugly. Terrorists will attack my home town. I’ll turn it into that.

So, how do I change this? How do I start enjoying things and stop expecting the world to meet my needs? How do I stop creating drama, chaos and negativity in my life?

How do I stop seeing P as lazy and instead, see him as a great boyfriend who treats me very well, but has a life of his own?

I do not know yet. But, I am willing to find out and try to meditate on that idea today. For starters, cutting back on coffee is a good idea!

So, yesterday’s train ride was long but relatively pleasant. I took the boys to the pool in the morning and let them swim about an hour, until Liam cut his sore open again and started bleeding all over the place. It was cloudy and cool with no sun whatsoever, and we sat on the rooftop in what seemed to be the most depressing part of our journey. I thought that Valencia must know that we didn’t approve of her rundown city, so, a cloud hung over our heads the entire time.

We bickered in the room after the pool, and then packed our bags and left for the train by noon. We had a horrible lunch at Café y Te and their bathrooms were so disgusting that even my boys complained (note: the bathrooms all throughout Spain are typically immaculate). We sat in the station awhile, caught our train at 2:40 and rode the three and half hours back to Madrid in one of those four-seaters. After a stop in Albacete, we muscled some girl out of her seat and convinced her to sit elsewhere. Angel and Liam were a little embarrassed but I explained that I did nothing wrong. We never actually took the seat from her. It was still open. Thing is, who wants to sit facing a mom and her two kids when there’s all these open seats? We were back at Abuela’s by 6ish where she had a wonderful dinner of patatas fritas and chuletas de lomo. Eventually, I called P wondering what he was up to. He said he was looking around for those “Welcome Home” banners, but couldn’t find any. It’s shit like that that bothers the hell out of me. I was going to do this really great thing for you, but now I’m not because I can’t find what I was looking for. THEN DON’T TELL ME. Or, do something else for God’s sake. I hate “intentions.” Anybody can think something up. Doing is the hard part.

Ick. I am definitely jaded and miserable and so ready to go home. I woke up at 5:15 a.m. and could not fall back to sleep. And now, after all this writing and coffee and a small bottle of over-processed Danone liquid yogurt, my stomach hurts.

I will spend the day packing and trying to make sense of the luggage situation. Did I mention that I am so fucking ready to come home?