One of the hardest aspects of being home is
telling my story. I’ve found myself going to silly lengths in order to avoid
meeting up with friends and family just because I don’t want to talk about my
life. Catching up always seems to involve me telling dramatic stores about the intricacies of my life
abroad. And yet, each time I tell my stories I’m left with a betraying
emptiness. It’s as if in the telling I’ve not only cheapened my own experience
but somehow violated a sacred truth. It’s not that my stories are false or embellished.
They aren’t…they really are intense and life altering. They are every bit as
scary and vibrant as the way I tell them. I've come to realize that it’s not the stories themselves that lend to
this hollow feeling but why I've chosen to tell them.
Why do I choose the most extreme examples of depravity or
danger to describe my experience? It's as if I'm trying to justify the path I chose. I'm trying to validate myself and my decisions in the eyes of my loved ones and peers. I'm telling my stories so I feel valued, accepted...loved. That’s why it feels empty. It’s empty because I'm peddling a cheap knock-off
version of the real me. It’s a me trying
to make everyone like me by telling them what I think they want to hear. I’m crippled by a desperate need to please.
The past 2 years
abroad were part of an incredibly intimate journey into the deepest part of
myself. It was a process of unlearning and rediscovering the essence of who I
truly am. I had moments of profound loneliness. The kind of loneliness where you truly are alone. Times without any distractions from home, no internet connection or even phone service; moments when you don't recognize one familiar face or smell or sound. It’s moments like this you experience that “stripped to the bone truly ALONE” loneliness. It's in these times I learned how to feed my soul amidst what felt like a desert.
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| Guwahati, Assam |
I thought I went to India to help others. I was going to
help “fix” little boys and girls suffering from devastating facial deformities
and babies starving to death. I did help…to an extent. But the honest reality
is that I was the one who really needed help. I was the one hiding from my deformities. Like our patients who show up to clinic with
rags or veils covering their face to hide a part of themselves they are taught
is too ugly to show the world, I too was afraid to show the world who I really
was. My veil wasn’t physical; it wasn’t a piece of cloth draped over my mouth.
My veil came in the form of accomplishments, acts of martyrdom or good deeds, a
pretty face, a kick-ass resume, or a willingness to say what I thought others
wanted to hear. The real me, the naked boiled down, make-up-less me wasn’t good
enough to share with the world.
Ironically, surrounded by true physical starvation and
poverty, I realized my soul was in a similar state. I might look healthy, laugh
readily and smile on demand…but inside lives a terrified little girl looking
for acceptance everywhere but within. The reality is life didn’t drop me in
India because I was exceptionally prepared to offer my talents or for what I
could do for India, but for what India would do to ME.
India taught me one of the greatest lessons I’ve learned in
my life. I am and always will be a contradiction. Humanity itself is a
contradiction. India is a breathing, living, incredible land of contradictions.
It’s an impossible dichotomy of breathtaking beauty and profound tragedy.
It’s vibrant and dull; it’s deeply spiritual and soulful and painfully cruel and discriminating. One moment you are walking past a starving child and the next you’re senses are filled with rich smells of curry and dhal. Women dressed in brightly colored jeweled saris to sweep dirt streets.
It’s life, it’s real, it’s raw, and it’s an imperfect beautiful tangle of contradictions.
It’s vibrant and dull; it’s deeply spiritual and soulful and painfully cruel and discriminating. One moment you are walking past a starving child and the next you’re senses are filled with rich smells of curry and dhal. Women dressed in brightly colored jeweled saris to sweep dirt streets.
It’s life, it’s real, it’s raw, and it’s an imperfect beautiful tangle of contradictions.
I spent mornings bicycling through dauntingly dangerous traffic
to the clinic where I was greeted by twenty to thirty mom’s and babies
wearing their best clothes and sitting for hours on dirty clinic steps to see
surgeons. I found so much joy at the clinic. Not by saving lives or making a
big difference on any lasting level. Honestly it was the little things. I
played with babies and made them laugh. They touched my face with their grubby
little fingers and studied my skin. I spoke in the only language we shared,
love. I embraced scared teenage girls. I hugged worried mothers.
Together we
shared in something so universal, so primal, so real. It wasn’t because of my
education, the decimals in my bank account, the brand of my shoes or clarity of
my skin that I gained such exclusive access to the souls of strangers. All I
needed to make a profound connection was my humanity. The rare, raw,
sacred ability to connect a heart that needs to love and with one can loved is an innate instinct.
That’s the real story. That’s what India is to me. It
grounded me, but not before it stripped me and in so doing taught me that I am
so much more than what I’ve done. I am not my degrees, I am not my bank
account, I am not my area code, I am not a girlfriend or a wife, I am not a
mother, I am not a saint or a sinner. I don’t need you to love me because I'm wonderful. The reality is...I’m ok. I’m just me. That’s enough; it’s all I need.
