The next few blogs might appear completely random and rather depressing. They are. Apparently, there's a whole facet of my trip that needed processing that didn't surface until I went back to work and had to talk to people about my experience. I discovered that people only want to hear a dramatic success story or that I had a great "experience." At first I thought the pressure was on me - that people expected great things of me - but I think that's only part of the story. People, no matter how much they try to hide it, are still racist and think that one white person can swoop in and make an incredible difference in the lives of people in developing nations. Either that, or they don't really care about the people at all and think I went over there to learn a lot about myself and how much I can put up with. Either way, how could my trip have been anything but a success?
But my trip wasn't a success. It was a colossal failure. I didn't swoop in as a dramatic savior, and I didn't find out how strong I was. I broke.
Both over there and after I got home, I felt I had to pretend everything was fine and that things were going well. I guess that pretending everything was wonderful while thinking about all the horrors hurt me more than I could have imagined. So I'm looking for a release - an opportunity to be honest about what happened without people tossing me off as "too religious" or just too depressing.
I failed, and this is why.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment