The Call That Turned My World Upside Down

It started with my phone vibrating on a sticky June afternoon in Santiago. I was sitting in my favorite café, elbow-deep in edits for an anthology on Latin American love poems. The memory is crystal clear because I had just spilled an alarming amount of papaya juice on a poem I stupidly hadn’t saved to the cloud. My concentration fizzled as I hurriedly wiped the mess off the page, just in time for my long-forgotten Nokia phone to buzz—cutting through Violeta Parra’s “Gracias a la Vida” playing from the café’s radio like a sign I didn’t yet know was coming.

The number on the screen wasn’t one I recognized, and my initial instinct was to let it go to voicemail (after all, 97% of unsaved numbers are either scams or dentists reminding you of an appointment you missed three years ago). For some reason, though, I pressed answer, and my life—my carefully edited, footnote-filled, poetry-soaked life—turned a corner.

Love in the Time of an International Call

It was a friend from Madrid, a book editor I hadn’t spoken to since our chaotic grad school days when we’d argue over translations of Neruda versus García Lorca. “Are you still obsessed with impossible romances?” he asked, as though this was the kind of question one asks after years of radio silence.

I wasn’t sure where the conversation was going, but I humored him. After all, yes, I was still editing poetry about impossible romances for a living, though probably drinking less wine than I had back in Madrid.

He explained: Someone—an author he worked with—was looking for a cultural consultant for his forthcoming novel. She needed someone who could help shape the cross-cultural dynamics in her story. Someone who truly understood love, heartbreak, and human connection through the peculiar lens of being both Latin American and...well, hopelessly romantic.

I felt flattered but skeptical. Consulting for a novel wasn’t exactly my day-to-day work. My wheelhouse was taking Neruda’s fire-laden lines and helping them survive in translation. But the project was tempting: a story bridging Santiago and Madrid, exposing all the grand beauty and bungling awkwardness that happens when two hearts collide from worlds apart. How could I say no?

There was just one catch—this wasn’t a “consult from a cozy spot in Chile” kind of job. I’d have to move to Madrid for six months.

Santiago Roots, Madrid Dreams

Fast forward two weeks, and I was standing in front of my parents’ bookshelf, facing an argument. My mother gestured toward Gabriela Mistral’s collected works with one hand and a calendar with the other, telling me how irresponsible it was to abandon my projects. My father, quieter as always, went about grading his students’ exams, occasionally looking up to subtly say he thought the risk might be good for me.

Santiago was my anchor, my cocoon. It was where I’d perfected the art of calling clients back after long siestas and knew every weeknight music venue within an arm’s reach of my heart. But Madrid—it tugged at me in ways hard to articulate. I craved the marbled chaos of its narrow old streets, the hum of conversations bleeding from crowded tapas bars, and the promise of an adventure unknown. But was I running toward a dream—or just running away?

I couldn’t shake what my friend told me that day on the phone: “Sometimes you have to do the thing that doesn't make sense, Carmen.” And so, I did.

The Fine Line Between Letting Go and Holding On

My six months in Madrid turned into a year. And that year turned into something more. It wasn’t just about consulting on that novel, though that work consumed countless afternoons spent sipping espresso on terrazas, debating authenticity with the novelist, and pouring over cultural nuances like an anthropologist lost in translation.

No, Madrid became something else for me. Something between a heartbreak and a rebirth.

I met someone there—a steadfast contradiction to my carefully curated world of words and restraint. He was blunt where I was measured. Spontaneous where I was cautious. A walking metaphor for the unpredictable universe I’d hesitated to invite into my life for so long. We laughed about the time difference calamities that once plagued us across continents. We fought over things like whether the train or taxi was faster to Chamartín Station. And when the time came for me to leave Madrid and return to Santiago, we both learned what it meant to let someone go.

Here’s the thing people don’t tell you about a life-changing phone call: it doesn’t just change your trajectory; it changes little pieces of you. Even when the project ends, even when the romance fizzles out, even when you’re back where you started, you’ve evolved. Connections—whether professional, romantic, or fleeting—leave their fingerprints on you.

How to Handle Your “Big Call” Moment

Now, not every life-changing phone call is going to sweep you off your feet into the middle of a Spanish plaza lighting sparklers beneath string lights. But when opportunity knocks (or buzzes, or annoyingly beeps when you’re in the middle of juicing papayas), it’s often more about your response than the initial offer. So before you hit decline, ask yourself:

  • What scares me more: saying yes or letting this pass me by?
    Fear shouldn’t dictate every decision, of course, but there’s a good kind of fear—the one that tells you you’re about to learn something.

  • Who am I waiting for permission from?
    Spoiler: It doesn’t need to be your mother. Or your partner. Or the version of you constantly worried about being “practical.”

  • What’s the worst-case scenario?
    We tend to catastrophize our decisions. Will you really explode into existential despair if you mess up? Likely, no. Worst case, you regroup and learn from it. Best case, you grow more than you thought possible.

  • What’s the story I’ll tell myself later?
    I like to think of life in narrative terms (no surprise, given my history editing love poems). What would the Carmen of five years from now think of this moment?

A Call Worth Taking (Even if It’s Messy)

When I sip my café cortado these days, back in Santiago’s warm embrace, I think of that phone call from Madrid. The one that threw my calendar, my career plan, and my comfort zone into the blender and turned it into something I never could’ve scripted.

And maybe that’s it—the best calls, like the best relationships, don’t arrive when we’re perfectly poised and ready. They show up when we’re distracted, hands sticky with papaya juice, unsure if we even have time for the conversation.

But we answer anyway. And that, I think, is when life starts.