So I haven't written since I got home from Uganda about a month and a half ago. Honestly, that's because I feel like I have spent every waking moment since I got back trying to figure out where to go from here. I have been running around Columbia, South Carolina like a damn chicken with it's head chopped off. Grad school? MPA? MPH? GRE? Just one giant never-ending alphabet of confusion and hopes and dreams and frustrations and what nows.
Finally, however, I've found a job in Columbia. It gives me space to breath and space to think. I can stop running around blindly grasping for any opportunity that is thrown at me and really sit down and figure out what it is that I want next. And in order to figure that out...I know that I need to take the time to really reflect back on what I experienced over the past year.
Reflection is something I have yet to do but know that I desperately need to do. I saw and experienced and felt things over the past year that most people never encounter in their whole lives. I had my first truly close encounters with death...the death of others as well as my own mortality. I saw what starvation looks like. Not the kind of starvation where you had to skip lunch so you're 'starving' but real sunken eyes, distended bellies starvation. I rocked malnourished babies in my arms. I had my first encounters with HIV and TB. I felt teargas for the first time. I felt true independence for the first time. I discovered how it feels to be really lonely, to only have yourself for company. And I even learned how to enjoy having only myself for company. I learned how to be healthy and respect my bodies in ways that I used to not.
All these things have left profound effects on me. However, I haven't quite yet discovered what this means for where I'm going in my life and what direction I need to take from here. I've had so many different ideas come and go in the past few weeks. One day I am determined to adopt my own child from the region...to be a mother and caregiver and to let that be the small difference I make in this world. The next day I want to study public health and move to Haiti to work for Paul Farmer for a year. And then I want to just go to seminary and work on deepening my own faith and that of those around me. It never ends...I'm just all over the place.
So for now...I've paused myself.
Finally, however, I've found a job in Columbia. It gives me space to breath and space to think. I can stop running around blindly grasping for any opportunity that is thrown at me and really sit down and figure out what it is that I want next. And in order to figure that out...I know that I need to take the time to really reflect back on what I experienced over the past year.
Reflection is something I have yet to do but know that I desperately need to do. I saw and experienced and felt things over the past year that most people never encounter in their whole lives. I had my first truly close encounters with death...the death of others as well as my own mortality. I saw what starvation looks like. Not the kind of starvation where you had to skip lunch so you're 'starving' but real sunken eyes, distended bellies starvation. I rocked malnourished babies in my arms. I had my first encounters with HIV and TB. I felt teargas for the first time. I felt true independence for the first time. I discovered how it feels to be really lonely, to only have yourself for company. And I even learned how to enjoy having only myself for company. I learned how to be healthy and respect my bodies in ways that I used to not.
All these things have left profound effects on me. However, I haven't quite yet discovered what this means for where I'm going in my life and what direction I need to take from here. I've had so many different ideas come and go in the past few weeks. One day I am determined to adopt my own child from the region...to be a mother and caregiver and to let that be the small difference I make in this world. The next day I want to study public health and move to Haiti to work for Paul Farmer for a year. And then I want to just go to seminary and work on deepening my own faith and that of those around me. It never ends...I'm just all over the place.
So for now...I've paused myself.
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