“Now I become myself.
It’s taken time, many years and places.
I have been dissolved and shaken,
Worn other people’s faces…”
-May Sarton
But I am able to sit under a rustling tree showing off and dancing in all its leafy glory and eating crunchy homemade granola and listening to a band of acoustic guitars…and it is all ok. I can melt into the beauty of this moment. It is easy to nestle into this place with its eternal spring weather, it’s tasty heaping portions of salty goodness, and these lovely Cochabambinos (people from Cochabamba) who always speak in diminutives (viejito, gordito, pancito, etc). This means that everything almost always has the perception of being small and cute…even bread and people both fat and old. Clearly I’m falling in love, no? :)
I think everyone has gathered from this blog or conversations with me that Kenya was very challenging for me. Whenever somebody here asks me, “So how was Kenya?” I find myself saying the most vague, but truest answer I can muster, “Great. But incredibly hard.” Truthfully, it broke me. Shattered really. To the point where people who loved me were telling me to get out of there, telling me that there is a big difference between surviving and thriving. I had worn myself to the point where I could not take another step forward. Despite this struggle, Kenya got into my blood. I find myself mentioning it whenever I can here, perhaps reminding myself that I was actually there, which is strange considering everything from my anatomy to my spirit and all of the in-between spaces shifted while being there.
I was talking to a wise friend over lunch the other day. He had read my article for the Catholic Volunteer Network and wondered aloud how I came to have learned all of that in less than two years. He concluded, “This sort of wisdom can only be garnered through deep suffering.”
However wonderful this place and however happy I am here now, I know in my heart of hearts that I absolutely had to go to Kenya before arriving in Bolivia. Kenya brought me closer to my truth than I ever could have believed and I am so thankful for that. It forced me to reckon with the hard things about myself, my assumptions and biases. It forced me to be more independent and stronger, forced me to reflect on my actions and the motivations behind those actions, and perhaps most importantly, it forced me to quit. I'm still reflecting on what quitting means to me, but it felt so much like a reclaiming of myself. Strange, isn't it? It felt and continues to feel, like the truest thing I could have done; a proclamation that my life and needs are important too.
I'm rebuilding myself here, piece by piece, conversation by conversation, taste by taste, and laugh by laugh. What a gift, to rebuild oneself over and over again, to be born and die again and again, trusting that life will always return to us once again.