໑ ON COMING BACK TO PLACES AND GRIEF

22/08/25

Not a lot has been going on since my last blogpost. My family from Barcelona came to stay at our home for a few days. its something they do yearly. something that i hope doesn't become a yearly occurrence is my aunt's husband asking me to paint shirts for him. i already did once like two years ago i think. this year the first thing he said to me once he got here is that he wanted me to paint him another. he rambled on a bit abt how he wanted it to be an "original design" of mine and insisted i show him my drawings so he could choose my favorite as if it was some stock photo gallery from which u can print out ur fave lol. i tried to explain to him that it wouldn't work bc what i make on the regular isn't fit nor intended to b on a tshirt at all. im not sure he understood.

We went to the mall together. I think it had been a year since my mom and i last went. We've stopped going as frequently as we used to when i was a kid. or maybe it just feels like we went more frequently back then bc it actually was fun. They've gotten rid of a lot of the funky furniture along the halls, even the decorative ceiling art is different now. it used to be green and leaf like. i dont even remember what it looks like now. Last time i went they had already shut down the fountain that used to be in the entrance- the structure is still there, and im not sure if ive only noticed now but there used to be like stations where kids could play with consoles and ipads while their parents shopped. a lot of my gaming experience as a kid came from those kiosks. those are gone now too- i think theres only one and no consoles can be found. I guess consoles have gone full cycle and become "not toys" again. boring. lame. I have a lot of fondness for that mall and it made me sad. i began thinking about my dad. im not sure what prompted me to start thinking about him but once i did everything reminded me of him. maybe its because his birthday is this month. but on the like mechanical ramp going to the parking i got reminded of how i'd use to "surf it" with him. and then i thought "oh god. im so sad" and then i thought "this moment of catharsis would make a great comic" and then i didnt make it at all.

another day, we set out to find the house my mom and aunts used to live in as kids. its a countryside home in the middle of nowhere, but near enough my town where we can drive to it and take like 30 mins to get there being no roads to it. id always heard stuff about the place, so i tagged along. in extremadura, summer is really hot, and nowadays even more so than it was 45 years ago when my mom still lived there. it was an impressive sight, the lawn was all dried up. im sure i wouldve found it a lot more endearing if we had gone there during springtime when it was greener. its a small modest house, because i guess its all they could afford. im not sure they owned it- i know they didnt own their previous home. my grandpa was a farmer and some sort of sheriff. im not sure how to explain it. my grandma had 7 kids to take care of lol. my mom always rants about how it was to grow up poor in the 70s. knowing all of this, somehow i still didnt expect to find such a small, pathetic house. even my aunt, who realistically hasnt been there since she was 14, expressed the same sentiment.

my grandpa planted 3 eucaliptus trees when they still live there. only one is still standing, and its massive. the house barely is- apparently it caught fire last year, according to my uncle. the roof has largely colapsed. whoever owns the house now has at some point changed the old wooden door for a metallic one, so even if there was something worth seeing, we couldn't enter. it was kind of a depressing sight to see the state of it compared to how my mom and her sister talked about their time there- i learned so many new stories and im not sure how to tell any of them. despite it all, it seemed kind of idilic, to have lived there at all. i always catch myself conflicted as if it is right to feel that way at all. my mom was poor. for the longest time they didnt have electricty or running water in that house, not even a toilet- it was built long after they moved in. fascists in this country - and in general i feel - love to rave about how things were "better back then". because they werent constantly bombarded by information that challenges their views online and things were cheaper, i fucking guess. but to romanticise Spain's past can only be done by aesthetically gloryfing the stories of those who were - or at least felt - invigorated by the regime, and refusing to listen to testimonies of those victimized by it, even if i wouldn't say my mom's family was "victimized" by it. but her situation was a direct by-product of how the dictatorship stunted Spain's development as a nation for 40 (i would dare say 60, even after franco's death) years.

Ofc ppl in the city had it better, at least in comparison. My dad's family came from Barcelona, and as my mom lived in that raggety house, my grandma bought land near a lake close to where i live and had a country side home of her own built. just for fun i guess. we visited it as well. we do, semi-regularly, my mom and i. bc we're kinda obligated to- i legally share ownership of the house with my uncle, ever since my dad and grandma died, and its been a point of tension since. atp im just waiting for him to buy it from me. weve been waiting for that to happen since they first passed. its been 6 years now, and the house is falling apart. im sure hes doing it on purpose o pay me less. hes apparently always been stingy with his money like that. it makes me sad. we used to go there a lot when i was a kid. my 10th birthday was celebrated there, a lot of summers where spent there. there still is a plaque my mom made out of plastiline with my birthname on it in one of the rooms. a while ago i had a thought like "wow. one day ill never step foot in this place again. maybe itll be a completely different place by the time it happens. maybe ill forever remember it as it is now. only time will tell", and boy it told.

Apparently, there was a pretty decent storm that made the wooden front door soak so much humidity it at some point unlocked itself. some cat, or something, must've taken the opportunity to wreck havoc in the kitchen. we found one of the cabinets had fallen off the wall, with all the stuff it had inside shattering with it. also a dead rat. we found a dead rat. again, it just made me kind of sad and angry that this is the way things are. its hard to see places you loved fall apart. even harder to when you are grieving. it feels weird to say that. its true, but for so long i dont think i was able to. i was depressed for so long i just felt numb to it all. now that i think im coming out of that hole and feeling happier, i feel it so sharply within me, only by contrast. i think its healthy for me to feel this way, but its hard, and shit like this makes it harder.

every year, on my dad's birthday, there is a meteor shower. me and my mom usually go out into our balcony and watch the shooting stars. when he was alive, we'd usually be in the aforementioned country side home. blackberries used to grow in the backyard. we'd pick them up and my mom would make cake. then, after he ate it, we'd lay on the porch and try to see the stars. i always fell asleep before i could see them lol. this year we couldnt see them. its was too cloudy.

i didnt mean for this entry to be so venty when i began typing. but its been hard. ive had fun these days too though. i went to a party with some friends and it was awesome. jumped so hard my legs were sore for 2 days after lol. i ended up having to paint TWO shirts for my aunts husband bc the motherfucker bought TWO of them. whatever. ive been chilling. im not as miserable as this entry is lol. but its hard. i guess i just needed to talk abt it