I found that once in a routine, you truly find what you value in life. For me, it was work. Not an occupation to make money, or status, or success. I need to be on the field. I was caught off guard when I came back to America. I had a lot of things to do, people to meet with, classes to sign up for, the list goes on and on. But now that I'm in somewhat of a routine, I am greatly missing it. I find myself getting lost in the thought that I just have to be somewhere else.
This may be a selfish thought, but when people ask me how the summer went, sometimes I just want to tell them how hard it was. How I have never been immersed in a society that felt such loneliness, that I constantly pray for the students and families that I've encountered. That I have to relinquish my love for them to God. It was not easy. In fact, I can say in my 20 years of living, that it has probably been one of the most, if not the most, difficult three months of my life. I wish I could let those, who asked out of courtesy, step in and see the pain in some of these lives. What's odd is that, the emotions were unending. People who honesty walked around emotionless, bared so much. I don't know how to explain it.
As hard as it is, it is also dangerously intriguing. I couldn't help but pass someone and wonder what has happened in their life. Or even go as much as analyzing. Not in a judgmental way, but just out of pure curiosity. Curiosity that streams from this emptiness that seems to be inescapable. Then, I go back to when I felt lonely, empty, hollow. And at my deepest point, I wondered if it is even near to how they felt.
After moments of secretly peering through a stranger's eyes, my immediate reaction is, that I have to help them. Whatever that looks like. I know that my hands are worthless, but with everything that I have, I desire to help; to be a conduit. I cannot get the faces that I passed, the conversations that I had, or just the ground that I walked on out of my head. It is like an movie on replay. No title, never skipping, a pause button does not exist, and the ending has yet to be written.
So, I leave with this thought. What is the ending? The next scene? I'm not the writer, I'm simply an extra. How do I help, allow myself to be used as that conduit, an ocean away?
