4 years

It's been on my mind lately that it's May 2011 and in a few weeks it will be four years since I graduated high school.  That wonderful, brutal, fascinating experience I'm still shocked I ever got out of.

Four years ago I found myself working three jobs, in dance team, three bands, and god-knows how many other extracurriculars, taking five AP classes, working on my TEFL certification, and running from one office to another, signing one paper or the other determined to get me out of high school, to China and back, and into college. And looking back on it,  I guess I really did it.

On our last day before high school graduation, our last assignment was to write and address a letter to ourselves in four years.  This summer I will receive that letter, and it's really something exceedingly surreal to reflect on that time. *

I don't remember much of what I wrote in that letter, I just remember there being a lot of questions. Facing the mounting reality of leaving to live in another continent by myself as everyone around me planned their college dorm decoration and criticized my decision either silently or openly.

Choosing to take a year off was something I needed. As insane of a decision as it was (and it really was insane), I know that I would not be here if it wasn't for it.

China was the time I locked myself away from everything I knew, just me and my head and forced me to work through every issue plaguing my mind.  I learned to be confident, resilient, patient, and open beyond what I thought was humanly possible. I developed a passion for teaching (and a hatred for children), a hunger for learning-real learning beyond books and classes, a love for people- all kinds of people, and finally came to peace with my self.


Sometime after my major suicide attempt.  It was junior year of high school and I found myself in the ER. (The ER is the worst place to be after a suicide attempt. Not only is the realization that you've failed at what you set out to do, but there is nothing more annoying to ER staff that a person who ended up there because of their own doing when there is a room full of people needing help, and they never let you forget that).  I was visited by the psychiatrist on duty, of course, and after speaking to me for about 10 minutes he looked at me and said, in this very epiphany-like tone: "I know what your problem is, you're just too smart for your own good".

At the time I remember only nodding politely and being surprised at how much my very distraught mother and sister agreed with him. (My family had absolutely no idea that I was depressed let along suicidal.  I can only imagine the horror of a day this was for them). But in the back of my mind I could only think, "That's helpful. What do you propose I do? Bang my head against the wall until I'm dumb enough to not want to kill myself?".

I've met multitudes of people and have heard all kinds of crazy things, but for some reason this one has always stuck with me. Maybe I am too smart for my own good, God only knows. But as corny as it may sound, I've discovered that I'm not too smart for the good of others.  I'm not one that ever makes anything of my intelligence, I've always known I'm 'above-average' in that sense, but why should I brag about it? I did nothing to deserve it. As Jane, Mrs. Roll, a very devout reader of this blog and my incredible sophomore year English teachers used to say: "The real measure is not your intellgence, it's what you do with it."

Some people go to college and lose themselves in the bottom of a bottle, or at the couch in a coffee shop trudging through exams and essays. I went to China and lost myself amidst lesson plans and 3,000 screaming children. And then amidst condoms,  guns, drug factions, and the brutal reality of slum life in Rio- the sounds, flavors, and amazing people and stories that made me fall in love with public health and dedicate my life to the betterment of entire communities.

It was a year that changed the way I viewed education, myself, my faith, the world, for ever. It, ironically, brought me closer to my family, made me realize the wonderful blessing of a support system I am. I know that Ghana would've never happened if it wasn't for all that I learned and changed in myself that year.

Coming back was undoubtedly beyond difficult, I realized that I would never be a normal 18-year-old again, (not that I ever really was in the first place), that no one would truly ever get why and how I did that, and that I was doomed to a kind of loneliness that I would simply have to come to terms with.

In all those travels I certainly did my good share of stupid and crazy things, ie: normal 18-year-old things, and in some seriously exotic places and with some truly trippy people, but the reality in which I'd placed myself in could never be just 18 ever again. I had 36 classes per week to teach, I was seeing people die of AIDS in front of me, having incredibly eye-opening conversations about back-ally abortion, death, drugs, prostitution.  It was the greatest challenge I ever faced, and everyday I am thankful for the strength to have gotten through it.

I wish I could say that traveling was this incredible fix-all that colored my life a peachy rainbow for a bright future, it wasn't. It was brutally difficult and unfortunately the battle for depression is a life-long one, but that year was the best step to learning my own mind, and my own ability to care for it.

My reasons for coming to Ghana were vastly different than the ones that took me to China. A childhood dream to realize, new things to come to terms with, a beef to pick with God, a study abroad opportunity to take advantage of (and more debt to accrue), but really if it wasn't for that first leap four years ago, I wouldn't be here today.

As my high school friends walk their college graduation stages this weekend and the next and enter the 'real world', I have to reflect and realize that the 'real world' is something I entered a long time ago, whether I like it or not. Whether I ever really entered the college world, that I'm not too sure of. But I'm okay with that, I've learned to own my life in a way most people never do and always long to. It doesn't take a trip to Asia or anywhere but your own mind to do that, but I know that it's a challenge too many struggle with. Four, eight, twenty years, I will never seize to feel so lucky for all that I've been blessed with, for all that has brought me here and keeps me moving forward.

Six days left. And then on to new adventures and challenges. There's no place like home.



*And to think that Cristina, aka Ms. Cabrera, now Mrs. Bauer, who is sending those letters is due to give birth this July. It's crazy how life changes, the last person I would ever imagine to have children, the lasting words I remember from her class was her rant against Disney that finished with: "fuck the children, you gotta tell kids the damn truth!" And now here she is having a little girl....I'm guessing no Disney princesses for her. Congratulations Cabby. You're going to be a wonderful mom, and hurray for more well-read intelligent women in the world.