I feel like bits of who I used to be are falling away.
Moving to Thailand has made me appreciate and miss my mom in new, sad ways. It also makes me feel closer to her in a way I can't yet explain, and I'm not sure I'll ever be able to. I've found pieces of her in both of my Thai host mothers. It's nice to have a mother again... to have someone who takes care of you the way a mother does. I'm grateful for that. But more than anything, I have found bits of my mother in myself, in memories I didn't realize I still had, in the literature I am reading now - that I realize with increasing frequency my mother read to me when I was a little girl. So much of me was carefully crafted by her gentle hands long before I knew she was laying the foundation I would someday build my Self, my life, and my career on. I wish everyday I could still share my life with her. She is a void I will never be able to fill, and I am still learning to live without her, every day.
I am learning to be alone. I always thought I was good at solitude. Things change when you have no other option. My support system is on the other side of the world. There have been many moments when I want to call someone and tell them about a great victory, or I want to vent about something so frustrating I'm left in tears. 90% of the time, everyone back home is asleep. When I say I'm learning to be alone, I mean I'm learning the meaning of lonely, and I'm learning how to accept its presence in the same way I have learned to accept it when my skin breaks out (even though you'd think I'd be done with that by 26). I am learning to call myself beautiful, even when I feel ugly. On the outside and within.
I am learning about patience. And empathy. And being gentle with myself... but even more so with others. Yesterday, I had a student who refused to participate in class, even after I tried to make him laugh a few times. He sat alone, quiet, visibly unhappy. He left before I could ask him after class if he was okay. Today, I had a student beating up another student in class. I stopped him and firmly but gently told him that was not okay. The boy he was beating up was trying really hard not to cry. I asked the boy to leave the room with me. He wouldn't move. I rubbed his back until he let the tears fall, and then I just sat and held him. Another student came over to see if he was okay. Part of me was unsure if he wanted to be touched, and I didn't have the language to ask him for consent, but I acted according to his energy and body language. He came and stood by me after class until everyone else left, then he left without saying a word.
I am learning. I am learning so much about people and children and humanity and Thailand and Thai culture... but I think most of all, I'm learning about myself in previously inaccessible ways.
This is hard. But it's beautiful. I am exhausted in the same way I am exhausted after running a race. There's an exhilaration that's dormant behind the fatigue. Yes, there are days I sit alone in my house and cry. I suppose that's part of this. But even on those days, I want to be here. And I suppose that's part of this, too.
This feeling of being ripped apart, into little pieces, and being sewn together again, into something new... but something that's also not new at all, because the pieces are all the same bits of me... they're just put together differently... this is all part of it - part of Peace Corps - and I have 21 more months ahead of me.
Maybe I really will be something - someone - entirely different after I've completed these 27 months in Thailand. Who's to say?
Today, I'm still me. I'm still a hodgepodge of who I've always been. I'm a little gentler with myself. I'm a little less gentle with anything I see as unjust. I'm learning more from these kids than I have ever learned from anyone before. This feels like a beginning of so much more than school, than my service... this feels like the beginning of the rest of my life, and I am grateful. I am grateful to walk into the dawn of my life amid a crowd of so many brilliant, bright lights.