What happens next?

Well, it happened—I missed a day of posting. Some days you have to just turn it all off for your own well-being, and yesterday was that day.

I was overwhelmed this weekend. Between email misunderstandings, rent stress, and the isolation that comes with moving to another country alone, it all just caught up with me. These are the very real lows that don’t get much airtime when people talk about moving abroad. After the excitement of landing in your new country, the settling-in phase, and the thrill of starting over… there comes this stage no one really warns you about: what happens next?

What happens when a problem you could have solved easily back home suddenly feels like cement boots dragging you under? What happens when you crave comfort food—BBQ ribs and coleslaw—but instead you’re staring down yet another plate of fish? What happens when the friends you thought were your support system disappear—or worse, sabotage? What happens when you reach for a hug from someone who loves you and there’s only empty air?

Yesterday was the end of a rough week for me, and everything seemed to crash down at once. So, I didn’t post. But today I’m back. I’m looking for work again. I’m hunting down copycat recipes to recreate a little taste of home. I stayed in bed an extra 30 minutes this morning because my cats knew something was off and curled up close, purring like they were trying to glue me back together.

Writing this is an act of resistance against the spiral. It’s how I turn a bump in the road into a jolt, instead of crashing straight through the guardrails on the mountain. That’s the difference between “overwhelmed” and “derailed.”

So thanks for listening. And I’ll throw this out to anyone reading: for those of you who cope alone, how do you do it? What’s your method for turning cement boots back into something light enough to carry?

Hotel Casa Fuster suite in Gracia, Barcelona, back when I first arrived and things were very, very different.