A house on my walk to work. He listens to the radio all day and sells bag juice for $15 (about 20 cents) to kids. Bag juice is well, bags of juice that are sealed and you bite the corners and suck out the sugar and syrup water. Secrets...I don't really have any. Not really. I hate how they make me feel. I feel like of all the people I have and know in my life, if you put them all together, they would know everything about me. I just can't seem to hold them in. I tell people things I don't even want them to necessarily know, because I love and trust them. I wonder what it would be like if everyone was like that. I think I might even have a case of TMI. I know there are a few things I have been told that I wished I never knew.
BrainI was talking to someone the other day about how I don't wear my emotions on my sleeve, as the saying goes. Instead, they live in my gastrointestinal tract. My tummy has caused me so many problems here, and I know why. Even when I was little, every time I thought I was doing something wrong, I would get nauseous. Maybe the years of wear and tear on my stomach has created weakness. Now I get nauseated, diarrhea, wake up in the middle of the night with my chest on fire, terrible pain like someone is scooping my insides out with an ice cream scoop. Not all in the same day of course. I think I would have to kill myself of that was the case. Sometimes just reading the news gives me an upset stomach. Thinking about the little boy I saw get run over by the car last week makes me sick, but what is worse is that it is business as usual in Kingston, in Jamaica. Sometimes I wonder since I am exposed to so much poverty and a culture that is difficult to understand, that I dwell on more bad then good. So I decided I need to learn to be more in the moment. I don't try to feel everything at once, I just do. I need to work on that. So in the morning, after taking my crazy pill, I need to take the 'don't give a shit so much' pill. I wonder if Pfizer makes that.
Work. Trying to turn glass into money in a country where the market doesn't exist and you work with egotistical- power- hungry Jamaican males all day=not always fun.
Lately, I have felt like I could never be in International Development as a lifelong career because I am tested so much at work. No one is testing me, I am doing it.
I am forced to work with an organization that makes me a little sick. I can't leave, unless I really push. And even then, I am too invested in all the work I have done here so far. Instead, I am taking this opportunity to learn. I am learning about a culture that seems so ass backwards to me in so many ways, but they also run things, or fail to run things in ways that seem so obviously set up to fail. Anyways, my point is that I don't have a choice. This is my assignment. I am stuck, so I am learning. When my boss shows up and is a business man who carries around a gun and is on a power trip and a pig who tries to screw me every chance he gets, I realize that this is not the choice place for me to work. But I am here. I am standing up for myself, and my colleagues, and my work. I am admitting fault and failure when I mess up. I ask if I can take on responsibilities and projects that I am interested in, and I accommodate as best I can when I am asked to do things that I have no interest in. I have put my foot in my mouth a few times here and have dealt with it pretty well. Last week I accused the President of the Chamber of Commerce of funneling my grant money that I got for our project fair and square(!!), into the Chamber administration because they are so broke. He did not like that one. I did not play that one right. I learned. I grew. Today we had a three hour staff meeting where the prez ran off his mouth like he knew everything about everything, even though he only spends about an hour of week in the office. We all have full time jobs. We are all busy. He was piling more and more new work projects on everyone. I am supposed to start training one of the employees on grant writing and we suddenly had 3 grants to write that are due in the next couple of weeks. This is impossible. He is leaving in a few days for a 2 week long business trip. We were being asked to do something gargantuan without any support. We cannot create projects and build collaborations with other organizations and the writers that have no actual say in the project! Absurd! So no one was standing up to him. I did. I did and I didn't back down. He through a little temper tantrum which I have not seen. So far in the last 7 dys I have gotten him to yell at me over the phone and hten hang up on me, and throw a grant across the table and yell and pout. I am on a roll. But I stood my ground and people started backing me up and we got our point across. I learned there too. I was expecting something like that to happen. But I was also expecting my anxiety to turn into insta-diarrhea all over the office. Instead, I think I gained some respect from people in the office and I didn't even feel like I was going to throw up! Wohoo!!! Sometimes I have to remind myself that courage comes when you are afraid and you do something anyways. Like that quote that goes something like, "Speak your mind, even if you voice shakes." Even if it is a little thing. If you are nervous or afriad and you take that leap anyways...you grow. I grew a little today. Afterwards I felt like I was standing 10 feet tall so maybe today I grew a lot! So, in short (joking), I wonder if I was in a position that was different, I may be able to continue this kind of work. But I would have to be a little higher up on the totem pole. Here, I am just a student of life, love, pain, beauty, and suffering. Oh, and procrastination, and excuses, and a people that I don't understand. Only time will tell where I land, but my feet are definately off the ground right now.
The kid in me. There are some places and some things that invoke certain emotions in me. Some people bring out the best in me. Some places bring out the worst. My grandmother always brought out the best in me. Even when she wasn't around. I used to get these cute little packages from her when I was in college. I remember once there was a pair of leopard print panties that were several sizes too big. I remember calling her and laughing about that one. They were on sale. She didn't remember how small I was (even though I am more of a medium). Man she could make me smile and she made me feel so loved. I felt truely adored by her. When I visited for Christmas, I was happy to see everyone, but I soaked up every minute I could have with her. She brought out the best in me. Jamaica does not have the same effect. I feel like Jamaica has brought out so many things in me that I don't like at all! I feel like I am emotionally high maintainence. I am on a roller coaster on my roller coaster. All over the place. And it is like sometimes I can't even control it. I will wake up one day and feel so good and nice, and the next I won't want to leave the house. I know what it is and it is to be expected, but it doesn't make it feel much better. I walk down the street and am harrassed. I go to work and nothing gets done, and I am harrassed. I try to be nice and get to know people and I am already so jaded by the Jamaican people that it is exhausting coming out of my house, so it is jsut added stress hormones that are pouring into my body and random intervals. Being sick more than I am well is also difficult. Even though I may not like myself in some ways here, I have also been able to identify many things about myself that have changed. I am more insecure because I am more emotional, but I am also more confident in my own skin and who I am becoming as a human being on this earth. I am more standoffish to most Jamaicans, but I can also be compassionate and kind to those who have disarmed me. I fight the need to work all the time, everyday, which causes me stress and anxiety, but am not able to reconcile my actions as a volunteer and the importance of my mental health. As for the men situation/relationships...I have no words, except the emotional cocktail that is my life, my face, my smile, and my tears, in Jamaica are something I feel is best carried alone. I don't like feeling like what I am going through is not ok, or that I am overreacting, or that I am just some babblyboo. If I am, I am. That is ok. I am the stronger for it, and nobody should be subjected to dealing with me in this state! I am the Tamahawk Cruise Missle!
Ashley and I
Liza, Me, Ashley, Megan
Keith is tough!
Blowholes!
