He regresado

I am back in Buenos Aires, arriving just in time to celebrate Kati reaching her 29th year of being alive. Hope it's a good one! I myself am more than happy to be back. As much as I enjoyed Montevideo, I think I might be getting too old to travel alone. I would enjoy everything so much more with someone familiar--not that I didn't have a great time with Javier and his friends. I couldn't help but feel, sitting outside the El Verde bar in the gloaming with a gaggle of Uruguayans, that I lead a charmed life. But that does not mean that I don't wish there was a witness to it, that I didn't feel like I was going through it alone. That's the odd feeling that hit me yesterday, the loneliness that comes when you're surrounded with people, but no intimates. It was hard, the last day, because when I feel lonely, I prefer to be alone. And putting on a face and speaking Spanish is exhausting.

So it's good to be back. I've been fighting a bit of free-floating anxiety lately, something I haven't felt in a long time. I upped my medication today, thinking that might help. The liter of beer cooling in the fridge might help as well... It will at least help me write. I've got 12,000 words so far, I realized today. And the shape of whatever it is I'm trying to write is making itself known. It might explain my melancholy to a degree: I try to write this character, and she just looks more and more like me. So I'm digging through some old emotional boxes long since stored away, and taking close looks at some difficult periods in my life. Anxiety breeds anxiety, so that might just be it.

I am well though, I promise, blessed and fat as a happy mongoose. I plan on holing up and writing for the next few days before I head out to Paraguay, so you might get a bit more interior monologue for a few days, but after that it's back to nominally funny travelogue, so hang in there!