how to fall in love in europe

a step by step guide to losing your mind and finding it again

step one: get your heart broken. get it broken so badly you cannot imagine it ever healing. get it broken so badly you believe yourself done with love forever.

step two: do everything to unbreak your heart. begin taking ketamine for therapy. stop doing ketamine for therapy and take ketamine for fun. consider fun a form of therapy. pick up extra shifts at work. get a raise. get another raise. think about how fun it is to live alone and die alone and have no one to call to brag about all the money you’re making. spend your money stupidly. go thrifting more than you should. start collecting more cast irons even though you will literally be leaving for six to eight months in several week’s time. throw a series of parties designed to celebrate your life. develop an alter ego to make art to. create things you’ve always wanted to create.

step three: do everything to keep yourself from forgetting how it felt to love and be loved. listen to so much frank ocean your spotify wrapped will eventually congratulate you on being in his top two percent of listeners. listen to so much frank ocean the algorithm has to perform a wellness check on you. spend hours on the couch at the kava bar making memes for an audience of one. collect photographs, songs, fragments that remind you of your heartbreak. place them all in a folder. organize your heartbreak. keep it under lock and key so that it doesn’t spill over into everything else.

step four: pack up, your bags and your life; pack up, everything you’ve accumulated from years of living well. make an inventory of everything you own. give away the clothes you don’t wear enough to justify owning. create a lending library of all the stuff you don’t want to give away forever but have no reason for bringing with you to europe. have your friends over to pick through your stuff. encourage everyone to take one more top. encourage everyone to have one more glass of wine. spill wine on your carpet. break your favorite mug as you’re trying to place it in the appropriate box. pretend you are not upset about this. pretend you are fine.

step five: pretend you are fine so convincingly that your own brain believes it, all the way up until the airport. you are flying halfway across the world to where you know no one. you are not fluent in any language but english. you have one night booked in a hostel and nothing else in your name. begin hyperventilating in the airport toilet.

step six: make it onto the plane. make it all the way onto the other side of the world. wake up. walk off. walk into the unknown.

step seven: make no friends. speak to no one. buy some eggs, and tomatoes, and try to make dinner. discover that all the stoves in europe are different from the ones in america. burn your eggs.

step eight: take your first shower of the trip. discover that, of all the things you packed, you forgot to bring shower shoes. worry for several hours that you have now contracted a novel foot fungus. spend your whole time in barcelona worrying about how you’re doing everything wrong instead of experiencing barcelona. buy some overpriced tapas. drink a beer you didn’t order but that the waitress brought and that you’re too anxious to tell her you didn’t want. pay for the beer.

step eight: wander aimlessly around barcelona. catch your train to valencia and realize you left your watch in barcelona.

step none: wander aimlessly and watchlessly around valencia. accept an invitation to get drinks with some english guys. arrive late, and sweaty, and flustered. arrive to six boys and a shot of tequila on the bar table. take your shot of tequila and go with the boy in question and his friend to the club district. start a fight with a random dutch boy outside the bar. have the english guy drag you away from the dutch guy. make out with the english guy in the cab ride home. sleep over, and then leave in the morning and get into a fight with a spanish woman at the bus station.

step ten: go to madrid. cry, frequently, everywhere you go. cry on the metro. cry in front of the picassos. cry in the royal botanical garden. you are alone, in one of the most beautiful and vibrant cities in the world, and you are spending all of your time crying and alone. accept this as part of the deal. convince yourself it will get better eventually.

step eleven: practice your spanish. practice appearing less american than you are. practice drumming up the courage to actually speak to the people around you instead of doing that thing where you don’t talk to anyone and then you go home thinking everyone hates you. practice trying not to give anyone a reason to hate you.

step twelve: buy an overpriced iced latte and spill it all over the floor. buy some overpriced flip flops and wear them in the shower. buy a ticket to an overpriced pub crawl where you’ll have to buy more overpriced drinks and then finish the night with an overpriced snack, since that’s what everyone else is doing. spend the night talking to a morrocan boy, or more specifically, letting him talk at you. let him buy you drinks. let him talk to you about whatever it is he keeps talking about. nod when he tells you that he wasn’t attracted to you at first because you’re very strange. nod again when he tells you that he would normally never go out with someone like you, because you’re so strange. this is your fifth night out and your fifth time hearing that you’re weird from someone you just met. wonder what exactly about you is so weird that five men from five different continents have now made it a point to tell you how weird you are.

step thirteen: drink more than you planned to and bitch out the morrocan boy when he asks you to go to the prado with him. start loudly monologuing about how you don’t want to spend your time with someone who’s spent the night insulting you and telling you he’s attracted to you against his better judgement only to realize everyone from your hostel is listening. become extremely aware of your american-ness. resolve to stop speaking entirely until you can figure out how to do so without starting arguments or drawing attention to yourself. finish your vegetarian hot dog as quietly as possible. walk home with the group. go to bed hoping nobody will remember how insane you are in the morning.

step fourteen: make friends, as best as you can. accumulate small kindnesses from strangers like the precious gift they are. feel your knees start to weaken every time someone extends a hand in your direction. you are living, even if it’s somewhat clumsily. who cares if you don’t know what you’re doing? at least you’re not completely heartbroken anymore.

step fifteen: get heartbroken again. fall in love, just a little bit, with an israeli boy, against your better judgment. convince yourself he is too pretty for you. convince yourself you are an amusing diversion from the real game of the night, of the weekend, of your lifetime, which is to go home with someone prettier and softer and less strange than you. you are fun to talk to, when you’re not picking fights with strangers. you are interesting. you are funny. you are, the israeli boy tells you, verifiably strange. you are his mejor amiga. you are the only american he’s ever met that he liked. you are not the one he kisses at the end of the night. that would be someone else. you end the night by getting into a fight about abortion policy with an irish guy and crying alone in the street.

step sixteen: wake up. force yourself out of bed. force yourself to put on eyeliner. force yourself into a skirt. you are sick of being the strange girl. you are sick of being unkissable. go out with the boy you wanted to kiss and the boy you got into a fight with at six am. lose them in the crowd. lose yourself. lose the reason you came out here to begin with. what the fuck was the reason, anyway? forget why you’re here. forget why you were born to begin with. order una cerveza y uno chupito de tequila con sal y limon por favor and down them both. watch the dancers kick their heels into the air. watch the bottle girls light their sparklers. watch everyone dancing with someone else. watch your life slip through your fingers like the grain of sand it is.

step seventeen: see the israeli boy on the other side of other bar. decide to do the only brave thing you’ve done in months and go straight up to him and tell him that you like him. have it somehow come out as “am i still your mejor amiga?” instead of “i might be a little bit in love with you.” have him say yes. have him say of course. hear yourself ask the most pathetic of all questions, one that miraculously tops even the whiny, wheedling tone of “am i still your best friend?” to someone you’ve known for less than twenty-four hours; say, to your eternal mortification and embarrassment, what every child fears saying most to the other children on the playground — can i hang out with you? luckily, he say yes. actually, what he says is, “of course!” and then he pulls you in for a hug. okay. take another shot. say something funny, or endearing, or just to say something. walk to the next place. dance with him, for a song, or two, or ten, and then look at him in the neon lights of the club and feel the old familiar tug of longing and do the thing you always do, where you convince yourself no one you want to fuck would ever find you fuckable. pull away. tell him you’re going home, tell him you’re sorry, tell him you know you being there is making it impossible for him to meet the kind of girl he actually wants to meet, the kind of girl you go to madrid for in the first place. babble to him about how you don’t want to be annoying, or pathetic, even though you’re keenly aware that this very speech may qualify as both; and when he doesn’t seem to understand what you’re saying explain that you’re just gonna leave, making the universal hand motion for i’m getting out of here. and then, stunned, watch him kiss you in the middle of your long apology for existing. watch him kiss you like you are not even in your body, and then watch yourself slam back into your body when you feel what him kissing you does to you. arrive home. kiss him back. kiss him again. kiss him until you cannot remember why you ever thought he wouldn’t want to kiss you in the first place, when you were so obviously meant to be kissing. kiss him on the dance floor. kiss him between cigarettes. kiss him in the common room, in the staircase, outside the bodega you go to for one last beer. kiss him and kiss him and kiss him, and keep kissing him, and then kiss him, and kiss him, and kiss him, and kiss him again. and then say goodnight. and then never see him again.

step eighteen: go to bilbao. have your camera stolen. spend the whole time miserable. spend the whole time acutely aware of just how miserable you are. try to reconcile with the fact that you are the one making yourself miserable, just like you are the one keeping yourself in the cage of your own loneliness. do not actually reconcile with this fact, but continue to judge yourself for not reconciling with it.

step nineteen: go to bordeaux and drink wine alone. feel sorry for yourself. buy an overpriced pair of pants just to feel something. convince yourself you’re fine.

step twenty: go on a date with a french boy, even though you feel hideous and stupid and about as funny as a cancer diagnosis. attempt to present yourself as slightly funnier than that. be a good sport when he makes fun of how you talk. you can be a good sport, right? walk with him to the trolley stop where you’ll catch the last tram home, and then turn around to say something only for him to announce, “well! i’m not going to wait. goodbye!” and walk away without another word. sit at the trolley stop with a dead phone and a headache for ten minutes until the tram arrives.

step twenty-one: go to london. cry on the tube. cry on the bus. cry at the pub where no one will talk to you.

step twenty-two: have someone fall a little bit in love with you, the last person you were trying to make fall in love with you. have this person accuse you of making them fall in love with you. try to tell them no, you really didn’t mean for that to happen; whatever they feel, anyways, isn’t actually about anything related to love or affection. it’s just possession, and ego, and all those other old bullies you thought you’d finally gotten beyond, but here they are again, animating a man’s corpse to lecture you about why you should be with him and not the kind of guy you always end up with in the end. remain as composed as you can on the second floor of a red double decker bus as he blames you for what he’s feeling. try not to think about the fact that everyone on the bus is actively listening to your breakup conversation, that whenever you speak (intentionally, with your voice lowered, as privately as you can keep your side of the conversation) everyone else on the bus stops talking. nod along as he drunkenly tears into your character and past. keep your mouth shut as he lists all the reasons why he never should have thought you’d like him, a pity party he is throwing for himself that you are supposed to do the emotional labor of validating. but why should you? he says “you would never like a guy like me.” he’s right. why is it your job to soothe his ego with a lie that both of you don’t believe? why should you have to say “oh, i would, oh i want to, oh if only — ” just so he doesn’t have to brush up against rejection in a world built to confront him with rejection as infrequently as possible? it’s your job to be the punching bag. it’s your job to reassure him that he’s still manly even though you don’t want him. it’s your job to be rejected, which is why he has to go on this spiel about how you would never like a guy like him, and you’re supposed to disagree and say that you would, he’s a great guy, you’re just going through something, and then he can either blame you for being the whore that led him astray, even though you didn’t sleep with him, would never sleep with him in a million years, or else nullify the argument by presenting an alternative where he isn’t actually rejected, you just don’t know what’s good for you, that’s all. but you’re not playing your part. you’re not even listening to him anymore. let him tire himself out until you can just get of the bus and go on with your life. but he doesn’t like that you won’t play the part, doesn’t like that you refuse to do the oh so womanly work of tending to his bruised little ego, so he says what he knows will hurt you the most and brings up your ex. your ex, strung out somewhere on the west coast. your ex, half dead with a needle in his arm. your ex, bad for you; this guy, good for you. but you only like the bad boys. you don’t know what’s good for you, really. and if you would just let him be good to you, just let him show you how wrong you are — the bus stops. you get off, aware that everyone has been listening to the drunk american guy cry-fighting with the girl beside him for the entire ride. he continues talking, behind you on the stairs, to the stop where you’ll catch your transfer, talking and talking and talking about how wrong you are for not wanting to fuck him until finally you just burst into tears.

step twenty-three: fly to budapest. eat a strange pre-packaged pesto pasta on the floor of the airport terminal. add prepackaged pesto pasta available for only three pounds at the airport to the list of things different between the states and europe. get on your plane, where the male half of a straight couple immediately confronts you to ask if you would please take his seat so he could sit next to his girlfriend. give him the seat just so he doesn’t have a reason to keep talking at you. drink a jack and coke even though it’s seven am, because that’s what everyone else is doing and there’s no way you’re going to get any sleep with a bunch of beer-pummeled brits on their way to their next drinking holiday. lose your sweater once you land, somewhere between the airport and the bus station. become flustered with everyone speaking hungarian around you. stand up, quickly, at the first stop because you’re convinced the old couple to your right is discussing how much they hate you in hungarian and even though you know this is improbable almost to the point of impossibility, because you are simply not that important, you have not slept and you have not ate and you do not know how to keep the tigers at bay. get off at the wrong stop. walk a mile, or two, or three, hauling your luggage the whole way. have your phone die. have it all fall to pieces, again and again and again and again. why not?

step twenty-four: buy a chimney cake. eat your chimney cake. walk around the streets aimlessly holding a brick of bread and sugar. wonder why you feel horrible all the time, even though you know very well you are not doing any of the things you’re supposed to be doing to not feel horrible. cry hysterically in your hostel bed when you get back.

step twenty-five: cry so much and fail so spectacularly at disguising this crying as anything else that a french girl interrupts to ask you if you’re okay after she spends forty minutes trying to pretend like you aren’t sobbing in the bed above her. tell her, “oh, it’s just one of those days.” miraculously, become her friend.

step twenty-six: go on a date, officially. discover you don’t know how to date. bring your date and the french girl and a boy from turkey who knows your date to one of the ruin pubs and proceed to get drunk to make up for the fact that nobody’s in love with you. go downstairs, with the french girl, to get some wine. walk back up with your glass of hungarian wine. say to her, “i didn’t know hungary had such an interesting wine scene.” hear a voice from the floor say, in what may or may not be a cruel mimic of your voice, “i didn’t know hungary had such an interesting wine scene.”

step twenty-seven: look down at the staircase. there is a blonde boy sitting with his date on the stairs below you. squat down so you’re eye level with him. ask him, “do you feel good about yourself?” ask him, “do you feel like a big strong man now?”

step twenty-eight: somehow end up going home with the boy from the staircase instead of your date.

step twenty-eight: go out with the boy from the staircase another night. go home with him, and then go out for coffee, and breakfast, and then go back to your hostel, and say goodbye.

step twenty-nine: take the train to frankfurt. but take the wrong train. end up eight hours out of your way. end up in poland. end up on the edge of the world. spend twenty-eight hours getting from budapest to antwerp. accept this as the price of adventuring alone. pretend everyone else is as incompetent as you feel, or conversely, that you are more competent than you imagine yourself to be, at least until someone else treats you like you are incompetent. discover a new sense of rage at this accusation. how dare you, a part of you thinks, and then you realize somewhere in the last however many days you made some sort of switch. you are no longer just “person wandering around europe with a broken heart aimlessly and incompetently.” you are now person who is capable of surviving alone six thousand miles away from home and everyone you’ve ever known. no one is allowed to call you incompetent. no one is allowed to take what you have found in yourself from you.

step thirty: feel alone. feel more alone than you’ve ever felt on this earth. feel so alone you may have to be euthanized. reek of your loneliness. emanate it so strongly that people down the street can sense its strange, desperate pulse and accordingly steer clear of you. accept your loneliness as a totality, as an inevitable. keep going to museums and cafes and strange little art galleries anyways. or don’t. give up completely. keep doing the things you came out here to do, even if you have no idea what they are anymore, or do nothing at all, or vascilate wildly between trying to make the most of your one wild and precious life and feeling like a shell of a human being. just don’t get a plane home.

step thirty-one: go to hamburg, to see annika. let her pull you into her world, the bedroom full of light, her sister and childhood best friend laughing at the halloween party, her sweetness like a thing you’d forgotten existed. breathe deeply next to her at the pier. consider the fact that your loneliness is not eternal. consider the fact that you only met her because you both went out into the world alone, several years and what feels like lifetimes ago. consider the fact that you are only reunited now because you were willing to be alone again. hug her tightly when you say goodbye. remind yourself the whole rest of the weekend how lucky you are to have a friend like her.

step thirty-two: take the train to berlin to check out the club scene. miss your first train because lucie has asked you to braid her hair before you leave and you can’t pass up an opportunity to play big sister to someone. miss your second train because your suitcase has broken and you are incapable of making trains on time anyway. text your couchsurfing host in berlin that you are running late. “the trains are always late in germany,” he tells you. “at least you guys have trains,” you reply.

step thirty-three: kiss the german boy in the club he has brought you to, sitting on a wooden swing that hangs from the ceiling on the second floor over the trance dj. go home with him as planned, but as a lover, not a house guest. it is eleven am when you leave the club. take a nap, and then order curry for dinner. eat it in his room. stay there for the next two weeks.

step thirty-four: take the train to zagreb. miss your connection in munich, because the train is late once again, so now you have to buy a bus ticket for a bus that leaves at three am. eat a weird salad on the floor of the bus terminal and watch the pigeons hopping around near the elevator. board your bus to croatia and feel like everyone is staring at you. realize that this is not just a feeling and that they are, in fact, all staring at you. make your way to your seat sheepishly, mortified to be alive, and sit down next to a balkan man who speaks no english. pass out with your phone on ten percent and wake up in croatia with no idea where you’re going.

step thirty-five: wander into your hostel on three hours of sleep and discover that they have set up a tattoo parlor in the living room. an australian man of around forty is getting his ass tattooed in broad daylight. the australian man has evidently legally changed his name to cracker, which is supposed to be slang for awesome in australia. feel completely unable to take someone named cracker seriously. allow cracker to bully you into day drinking. begin the day with a jagerbomb.

step thirty-six: wake up next to a boy from new zealand with a hangover to end all hangovers. resolve to stop letting australians convince you to drink when you shouldn’t.

step thirty-seven: take the train to split. go to the old manor house filled with sculptures. go to the medieval palace built out of marble. go to the cathedral protected on the coast. meet no one. speak to no one. enjoy it.

step thirty-eight: rent a car in albania. get the car stuck on a mountain road and inflict $300 worth of damage on it. put it on your credit card and walk away with your tail between your legs.

step thirty-nine: meet a boy, in tirana. spend the night eating dinner and wandering around the city. meet up with him again, the night before you leave. get beers and play pool and spend the whole night staring at him. say yes when he asks if you want to go to his place.

step forty: leave the albanian boy behind for greece. read the poem he has written you in the six hours since you left. tell him maybe you’ll come back through albania.

step forty-one: go back, for the first time. watch him come through the rain to take your backpack. tell yourself this is it. tell yourself this is real.

step forty-two: this is not it. this is not real.

step forty-three: cry in the albanian boy’s room at three in the morning. feel stupid for crying. feel stupid for thinking just because you had one good night with someone that would translate into something deeper. feel stupid for feeling stupid and stupid for caring and stupid for being the kind of person who takes a ten-hour bus ride to see someone they met twice only to get their heart broken. feel stupid for even thinking your heart is broken. you know it’s not broken broken. but it’s a little broken. a little heartbreak for a little love. feel stupid for not speaking up sooner. feel stupid for having committed the deadly sin of wanting someone who does not want you. let him fuck you one last time even though you know he doesn’t give a shit about you, because he has the body of a greek god and he knows how to fuck joy and you don’t feel so fucking terrified when he’s touching you. let him touch you. touch him back. resolve to stop being so fucking scared of people leaving you. and then leave, and block his number, and figure out what the fuck to do next.

step forty-four: miss your bus, which by now you have noticed is a reoccurring theme. get a hostel, get a beer, get a good night’s sleep. get up early, get up late, get up when you feel like getting up. get ready, get going, get moving. get on with it, get a life, get your shit together. get a coffee. get some wine. get a day pass, get the tourist card, get the app. get a disposable camera. get a travel credit card! get health insurance. get some sleep. get there before the crowds. get out of the city. get a new job. get a grip. get hungry. get humbled. get sick of yourself. get your teeth fixed. get a haircut. get a better car. get a metro ticket. get the monthly. get the audio guide. get a new watch. get a backpack. get a knife. get a gun. get mace. get ready. get harder. get in shape. get skinnier. get prettier. get your roots dyed. get a brazilian. get a new tattoo. get a souvenir. get the best price. get a better deal. get the spa package. get an upgrade. get a latte. get a therapist. get your shit together. get healthier. get a juicer. get a yoga instructor. get a personal trainer. get a job that gives you health insurance. get a job in general. get up on time. get to work early. get your groove back. get results. get abs with just these six easy steps! get an espresso machine. get a ring light. get the new iphone. get it in gear. get the case. get the fries. get one more glass of wine. get the subscription. get the class pass. get a facial. get a massage. get some head. get it, girl! get a better hobby. get a better life. get a hobby you can monetize! monetize your life. monetize it. get a better camera. get a job doing what you love. get a job that pays the bill. get a college education. get a scholarship. get some loans, you’ll figure it out. get a house. get a wife. get some kids. get a second chance. get a life. get a grip. get some good shoes. get this thing on instagram. get this other thing from instagram. get a new look! get revenge. get even. get mad. get better. get a second opinion. get well soon! get something a little more flattering for your frame. get filler. get botox. get red nails. get a nose job. get your teeth fixed. get a man who will take care of you. get a house with a good mortgage. get a waist trainer. get preseason tickets. get a job that lets you work remote. get a job that lets you travel. get a promotion. get a new cast iron. get everything you ever wanted! get better. get over yourself. get your ass out of bed. get out. get over yourself. get over it. get help. get whatever your heart desires, on sale, but hurry! while supplies last only. get lucky. get fucked. get more. get everything. get what you want. get what you deserve. get your shit together. get your shit together. get your fucking shit together.

step forty-five: get up, at a reasonable hour. eat a reasonable breakfast. smoke a reasonable number of cigarettes and drink a reasonable number of cappucinos, the threshold of which is higher the further south you go in europe. spend the day doing reasonable things, like updating your newsletter and responding to emails you’ve been letting fester in your inboxes for weeks. “sorry for the late reply, i was experiencing the delusion known as romantic love.” “sorry for the late reply, i constructed a narrative about someone i barely knew because i liked the way they touched me.” “sorry for the late reply, i don’t know how to be a human being.”

step forty-six: sorry for not responding, i am simultaneously over and underwhelmed with the entire experience of being alive. sorry for not responding, i just don’t know why i’m alive anymore. sorry for not responding, i no longer know what i want. i hope this email finds you well. i hope this email finds you frolicking in a field lit by sunlight and daisies. i hope this email finds you the happiest you’ve ever been. i hope this email finds you, and that you find this email, and that i may one day find myself. i hope i never have to stop moving. i hope i never have to leave again.

step forty-seven: buy the ticket to skopje. buy the ticket to istanbul. buy the ticket to ankarra. apply for the job in the vegan cafe, apply for the job folding towels and pouring coffee. go to the resort town in the south. go to the adriatic, go to the aegean, go to the mediterranean. stare at the sea until you remember you don’t have to be earth if you’re not earth. remind yourself you are water. remind yourself you must flow. get a hostel gig. spend a week doing nothing in the middle of nowhere. go to every museum in the city. go to none of them. go, go, go, wherever it is you go. take yourself with you. you have to, after all. no matter how much you thought you could leave them behind. but aren’t you glad you finally made friends with them? aren’t you glad you don’t have to do this all alone?

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