Out of great suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars.
E. H. Chapman
I'm in a really happy mood today. I've been thinking about dong a post like this for a while...I'd wanted to hold off until later in the trip, but I'm feeling so full of good feelings today, I want to get it on paper while I feel so happy...
Basically I came on this trip pretty broken. I am someone who lives to the extremes: when I'm happy, I am truly the happiest girl in the entire planet. Unfortunatly, the opposite is also true: when I am down, I feel like the saddest girl in the world.
Without getting into too many details, I had a really sad month before I came. I had basically been dumped by a guy who I still consider one of the most amazing people I've ever known. I fell pretty hard and pretty fast, and when he decided it wasn't going to work, it both shocked and really hurt me. I spent the month of April in tears for more time than I'd like to admit.
When the opportunity for this trip came up, I basically saw it as an chance to get as far away from my pain as I could. It was a way for me to run away, and hope that the distance would be enough to make it better. My biggest fear was that I would arrive here and my sadness would follow me. I didn't think I'd be able to be so far away from the amazing support network I have and be able to handle being down.
I mentioned in an early post how being here has managed to both heal and break my heart, and I can't stop thinking about how true it is. Being away from home has given me the distance to see that maybe things just weren't meant to be in that relationships, and now I can see that that is ok. I get now that if I want to be with the wrong person so badly, it'll be so amazing when the right one finally comes along. An experience like this shows you just how many great people there out there, people you can really connect with so quickly and deeply. The world is such a huge place, and everywhere you go and everyone you meet will touch you in a different way. I just want to see more and more of the world, I feel like I have so much more to see and do, and I can hardly stand how lucky I feel because of it.
Being here and seeing the poverty and desolation can break your heart if you let it, but you have to dig deeper than what you see on the surface. When you go to the orphanage, you can focus on the kids ripped clothes and lack of school supplies, or you can choose to focus on the smiles and hugs from the children that just radiate when you walk through the door. When you are walking through Kibera, you can focus on the raw sewage flowing down the roads, or you can choose to admire the men who are working so hard to provide for their families, or women who are happily watching their children play from their doorsteps.
I realize I've been pretty mushy and sentimental lately, but I really just want to remember this feeling forever. I want to remember how it feels to be so happy on a day-to-day basis, and not revert back to old ways back home. I don't want to worry about small things so much. Money, fancy clothes, those kinds of things just don't matter in the long run, and I am so scared of coming home and falling back into that sort of lifestyle.
This carefree happiness, this compassion for others, I just don't want to forget how it feels. Nat and Heather pointed out to me that I was just happily humming to myself the other day as I was puttering around the house. I hadn't even noticed. I want to be that kind of person all the time, one who radiates happiness. Unkind words, gossip, crankiness: those are habits that I hope never to revert to again. I have my health, amazing friends, the best family in the entire world. What more could I ever need?
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