The slump arrives

I had a feeling this would happen, but not so soon.
The travel slump.
Last visit I only experienced the slump for about a week. It snuck up on me only after about two months of near constant stimulation, infatuation and novelty began to wear off.
Maybe because this time I'm not starting from scratch, the slump kicked in a few days ago. It's the feeling of already missing home, already missing the very things (technology, work) I expected to need a break from.

I found a good casa particular, but the weather has been stormy the last few days and I found myself holed up in the room with the curtains closed. A sort of dampness seemed to permeate all corners. Although the room is clean, the guava I've stored in the fridge makes everything smell like the signature pink fruit. It seeps into the water, the sheets, the old wood. It's not a bad smell, yet I feel oddly angry at it, newly frustrated by my situation.
And what is my situation? Well for one, that I'm still getting my bearings. I still haven't decided if I want to stay in this casa, the price is decent but the kitchen is shared and I feel confined to my room so as not to impose to early on the family.

Then there's the bigger question: what exactly am I doing here? Why did I come back to this place?
The fact that money has been tighter than I anticipated--(the exchange rate takes 20% on the US dollar, and in my budgeting I conveinently overlooked this detail) makes me imagine alternate scenarios. For all this money, why didn't I go somewhere new? Somewhere more comfortable, somewhere where the national motto isn't "No es facil"?

Well I came because I think I wanted this to happen. I wanted to take the rose colored glasses off. I wanted some closure with Cuba. With Jose.

And certainly now, I feel I will have it, but why? What has Cuba, or Jose done to me besides treat me like a queen?

Jose shows me around, his mother cooks for me in her home, and he cooks for me in mine. And yet, I feel undeniably, painfully, American.

I find myself telling him I need space--(to do what? That's what I'm trying to figure out) and he says he understands but I can't help feeling like I'm kicking a puppy that only wants to please me onto the street.

I spoke with my friend Sarah here about my sudden need for space from Jose, how I felt that after a week his constant presence was almost making me sick, despite the fact that he's done nothing but act completely devoted and wonderful to me.

Sarah is a few years older than me and is leaving Tuesday for a rare opportunity to study abroad in Spain. When I began to speak, she immediately nodded and knew what I meant.

-That's why I haven't been able to date Cuban men in a few years. Only foreigners living here. Cuban men, they're so sweet, but they're on top of you. After a week, you're living together. Two months, you're engaged. If you're going somewhere, he asks, casually, where? He thinks, why is she going? Who else will be there? What am I not giving her that she needs?

I nodded, glad that someone else understood my situation. And yet, when I ask myself why now, why did I feel the need to return to Cuba, I can't pretend Jose wasn't the reason.

Jose's my key inside this strange place, this place that makes less sense the more familiar it becomes. His friends, for the most part, become my friends, his language becomes my language. And I think that's what's begun to infuriate me--the feeling of being so utterly dependent on another person, even if I take a day like today to write, see other friends, visit the old folks home.

Like a puppy, I know he'll always come back, offer to cook me dinner, act generally like most people's dream man. And a sense of panic, or at least dull dread, for my future overtakes me. I sense that somehow no matter who the man is, or how much space he gives me, to live with someone else and to continue to love them may be one of my life's greatest challenges.

My body's been achy, almost as if I'm sick, but I have no symptoms beyond a feeling that the dampness is everywhere. I've begun to dread the smell of guava fruit, once so delicious to me, it now seems overpowering.

The real challenge of this journey, I see now, will be learning to carve out my own space, my own work, my own pleasure. It will be the challenge of not taking people or places for granted just because they are no longer new. No longer cast in a hyper-romantic light.

As Sarah finished our conversation:
-You'll figure it out, it will become a compromise. But after all, if you came to Cuba to live as an American, what would be the point? You came here to experience Cuba in a new way, and you will.