What I Hoped to Find

Okay, I really am feeling really awesome right now but I guess nine days ago I wasn't feeling so...awesome...but anyway, that's just a slice of island life, isn't it?...

March 21, 2009

When I sat down to write that’s what came out.

So I guess we have to talk about that now, don’t we?

How depressing. I started this evening cleaning my bookshelf, and with the past two years of my life spread out on the floor I decided to take a break and write.

I should have kept cleaning, I guess.

What I Hoped to Find.

I guess...

A certain peace of mind and generosity of spirit. An all-pervading love and deep compassion in my heart. Strength. Endurance. The capacity to rise above the trivial. To be driven by inner vision. The ability to lead by example with...grace and charm. Spontaneous forgiveness. Divine inspiration. Purification. Release.

What I Found.

A rage darker than anything I knew existed. An infinite capacity for hatred and judgement. Resentment festering in the smallest wounds like clotted, sour blood. A pain that can never disappear completely, that can only wrap itself in the guise of tolerance until it bursts at the seams. An oppressive bitterness. A venomous bile capable of sweeping the greatest of intentions away in the undertow. The overwhelming grief at discovering all of that must have been inside me the whole time.

And so I weep for what could have been.

Who I could have become here. If only...if only I hadn’t got so lost in the darkness. If only I had had the strength to climb out of the well.

Cleaning my bookshelf was today’s attempt to pull myself out of my current pre-menstrual, probably malarial depression (more about that in a second). How many times have I been through this sorting process? It varies only mildly. The piles begin. What to keep, what to take, what to destroy, and what to give away. You can get lost in the stories, not the ones inside the books, but the ones that brought each particular item to that particular shelf. And I’ve only lived here for two years. And I only got my bookshelf a year ago.

This is all I would like to say about Peace Corps and malaria: that of all the trials and tribulations I have experienced over the past two years, nay, even the past twenty-six --the absolute worst thirty minutes of my life was spent having to prick my own finger about seven times to generate enough blood for a slide and Instant Malaria Test Kit. (Negative, if you’re curious, although could be a false negative because of the high amount of my prophylactic antibiotic in my system, which had I been taking faithfully prior to the fever I would probably not have been in this predicament).

I am twenty-six years old! I should be living in the suburbs agonizing over an at-home pregnancy test, not a friggin’ malaria kit! They say you just have to pee on those. They don’t require a self-mutilation of flesh.

In the end, it ended up being quite a cathartic experience. With every stab I was overcome with a fresh wave of tears, ejected from the very depth of my being. The kind of silent scream that twists your face in agony. Not for the pain, because it is only a finger...but at the horror of it...the injustice! No human being should ever have to draw their own blood. It is just so deeply unnatural, and I cried for the karma that brought me to this moment.

Someone just came over. I was unnecessarily rude to her because I wanted to get back to writing. Why?

Because I am leaving and there is no point in being nice to people.

That seems like a strange answer. Where did that come from?

Because I’m not going to be here for very long so everyone may as well start getting used to it now.

That also seems warped. One more time?

Because that’s just life, isn’t it? People coming and going and being nice to each other for awhile. Because I am the Goodbye Expert in a land where people don’t really do goodbyes, and I may as well start showing them how it’s done. And it all starts with the pre-departure froideur. Everyone knows that. Trust me, it’s easier on everyone in the end.

When I am honest, I feel only slightly more dysfunctional than when I bury my head in Sudoku and pretend I am crying from the heat and mosquitoes, and not because life as I know it is disintegrating, and because though I know it is virtually impossible for anything that follows to be worse than anything that has already happened, it is still going to be a long, long time before I belong anywhere, and that to me is the hardest thing to bear.

I simply do not know if I’m up to this, this Building A Life Again.

Perhaps a change of climate in New Zealand is all I need (oh, how Victorian!). I have been through this whole tropical season-change several times, and there is a distinct pattern. The hotter it is the more I conclude there is no point to living, that life is an endless wheel of pain and suffering that will never get better. As it cools down, the the more alive I feel, the more in awe of the beauty and wonder around me, the more grounded, capable, and...

I think it is safe to say I wasn’t exactly born for the tropics.

My mind is a broken record of negative thoughts. I don’t know how to turn it off. All I want is to put an end to the guilt. All I want is a selfish life. (Does the cultivation of a selfish life really lead to the eradication of guilt? I don’t know...but I may as well try it!)

All I want is a life of luxury and simplicity, where my only obligations to others are contractual and...clearly defined, preferably with a monetary value attached to all interactions, just to keep things tidy. I don’t want any pressure, and I don’t want to have any opinions, I don’t want to care about what happens to anyone else. I want to eat chocolate and have bubble baths and know if I am too lazy to do anything else that is my own damn business and I alone will reap the consequences.

When you hang out with yogis and Peace Corps-types long enough, you start to believe that there is no greater sin.

But isn’t it a greater sin to live the lie?

And yet...don’t all my shining stars make it worth it in the end, even if they are few and far between? Because in between the tears I see them, lined up in front of me...a battered woman, one in a hundred, leaving her husband. A teenage boy taking a condom to a party. A young woman practicing Yoga in secret when she is supposed to be washing her father’s clothes. A one-year-old child humming “I’m washing my hands” to himself while he plays in the dirt. These diamond-studded sequins to my memory, my shining stars...compared to all the failures, there are so very few of them.

And yet doesn’t that make them all the more precious? Aren’t they enough? And not just because they have to be. Because they are, anyway. And because the book closes here, and there’s no point in getting sentimental about it. I refuse to make a Vanuatu-style exit. I am completely uninterested in the fanfare. The pomp & circumstance. The speeches, the fake tears, with an extra round of applause for whoever wails the loudest. The demonstrative gift exchange, the promises to return. I dread it all equally.

Maybe if this was my first big Goodbye I’d be up for it. Or my second or my third. But when you’re in my line of work, or at least my line of life, you become something of a professional. You just pack up your shit and get on with it.

And you tell yourself that one day there will come a time when you won’t have to pack up your shit anymore. One day, you will have a bookshelf that just...stays there gathering dust. The books will be your own, gathered or given to you along the way, each one telling a part of your story, the story of here, of how you became someone with her own bookshelf and...and her own matching plates and her own bathtub and...and.... unopened organic toiletries artfully arrayed in the guest bathroom.

I never thought I would be someone who dreamt of matching plates, but in this moment I can’t think of anything more beautiful...