long way to happy.

so i know the next promised post was about the economy since i'm taking an econ class and i'm freaking in love but everytime i sit down to write about it, i just get angry and frustrated and disillusioned and feel incredibly helpless. actually, i feel that way a lot about anything i do that matters.


i've been looking for internships since i've gotten here because when i leave argentina and people ask me what i did in six months in a foreign country, i don't want to only be able to say i went out with friends. i can go out with friends any time back home - i wanted the things i do here to be meaningful, once-in-a-lifetime experience. but finally, finally, i realized that spending time with friends - especially the argentine ones - IS a once-in-a-lifetime experience. i touched on this a couple posts ago, i think, but i'm growing and changing and evolving such an incredible amount and when i look at the things i can attribute that change to, it's to the people who are in my life. 


that being said, i know that if i do start internships/volunteer opportunities, i will be impacted just as much if not more. so after a beautiful trip to patagonia ... 


(i digress for a bit because holy. shit. there are simply no words to describe patagonia. it is probably the most incredible place i've ever been to or will ever go to in my entire life. living in san diego, i have a certain attachment/dependence on the beach and patagonia was the first time i've seen the ocean in almost 4 months. i immediately felt at home. something about the wind in my ears, about the sound of the waves crashing gives me space to meditate. i isolated myself and just stood in the water (which was freeeeezing, by the way. took me until my entrance into the water to realize that its the same water that hugs the glaciers in antarctica. cold.) and meditated on my time here. three months from today, i come back to the states. and i used that time by myself in the most beautiful place in the world to reflect on what i've achieved since i've been here and what i want to achieve before i leave. so many thoughts rushed through my head in that week and my own happiness and contentment surprised me more than anything else. i haven't had true nightmares in so long and i know almost all of that is due to the fact that here, i've slowed down enough to allow myself to work through the things that have always bothered me at home, the things i've refused to deal with, the things my subconscious deals with through my nightmares. essentially, i'm healthier here than i have ever been at home. i've always had such a drive to do well, to succeed, to work to get to that end goal that i completely and totally forgot about the present. everything i have ever done have been steps towards the future but here, i've realized that the present is just as important, if not more than, as whatever i achieve in the future. and if i allow myself to truly experience every moment in the present, to absorb things and allow them to change me & to help me grow, i'm more likely to succeed in the future anyway because i'll be truly in tune with who i am, what i want and what will make me the most fulfilled. rereading that, it sounds like i've given myself permission to be lazy and maybe i have and that's probably not so good but knowing i'm in the healthiest mental place i've ever been in in my life makes it hard for me to want to change anything about the way i'm leading my life here.) 


... i started a volunteer position at a children's home that my wonderful, wonderful angel of a assistant director of our program helped me find. all through high school, i worked with autistic children in a program called VIP soccer. essentially, we played soccer with autistic kids a couple months out of the year and it helped them develop in so many respects. the physical sport developed their motor coordination. the human interaction developed their social skills, their ability to express themselves since most autistic kids can't talk, and their ability to adapt to changing situations. the thing with autistic kids is that they're usually incredibly intelligent human beings. one mom at VIP soccer explained it to me like this - autistic kids have all their "motors" working but they lack the wires that allows them to express themselves. when we have a thought, we have ways of expressing it. we can show affection, we can write and talk and express emotions. we can control the ways we express ourselves. for them, when they can express themselves, they most certainly can't control the way that expression manifests itself. what we did through the medium of soccer was help them develop that control. 


at this home, though, there are only two autistic kids. the rest of them have cerebral paralysis which essentially halts their growth at a certain point. i think my position at the home is going to evolve the more time i spend their but as a starting point, i essentially act as accompaniment to the kids. so saturday morning, i spent a couple hours just getting to know the kids in the home. just so you get an idea of what i'm dealing with, i'm going to introduce you to my kids.


bryan is one of the most developed kids in the place. he's 9 years old and suffers from cerebral paralysis. what does this mean? it means that getting his attention is incredibly difficult. it means he may want something (a stuffed toy dog, mostly or brightly colored balls) but he can't tell you he does. he can wave his hand to get your attention and then you have to sit there and guess what it is he wants. sometimes, he just wants you to hold his hand. he craves physical touch but can't do anything more than hold onto one of your fingers. you can place the ball directly in his hand but it may take him up to five minutes to grasp it because he lacks really any form of motor coordination. it means that he can't close his mouth to swallow so he drools and for those of you who have kids/have been around kids, you know that that much saliva does nothing but irritate the skin. it means that we strap him into a wheelchair so he doesn't fall out because he can't hold himself upright. i found out that he loves dancing. and if you let him grasp a finger on each of your hands and sway with him, he's the happiest. and to show that happiness, he screams. and screams. and shakes his head from side to side so you get scared that something is terribly wrong but really, you've just brightened up his day. and two minutes later, he's back to being a vegetable, blank eyes, drooling mouth and slack grip on your finger. 


lily is 52 years old. she is one of two kids out of the thirty that can speak. she has the mental capacity of a 12 year old. she also loves dancing. she'll come and put her arms around your shoulder and sway with this incredibly peaceful look on her face. if you make stuffed animals give her kisses, she giggles. she tries to tell you she loves you but she can't always get all the words in the right order. she can walk and dance and we consider her lucky.


one girl, whose name i never got because i wasn't strong enough to actually approach her, can't do any of the above. they tilt her wheelchair back so her head doesn't slide off the headrest. she barely blinks. she never smiles. she doesn't show any recognition of there being any human presence around her. she's just.... there.


according to the workers at the home, bryan used to be like the third person i described. a few years later, he's developed the place he is now which no one, least of all his doctors, ever thought would be possible. they say human interaction really helps them. they say that we have to push them, hold the ball a little out of their reach, make them work for things. they say these things, these few hours we spend with them every week, will help them develop. 


i hope i come to the same conclusion. because right now, all i feel is helpless. i wonder if they think constantly without any way to express themselves. i wonder if it drives them crazy. i wonder if they're sad. most of the kids are orphans but a few have been abandoned by their families. i wonder if they miss their moms. i wonder why i have everything i do, why they don't deserve the same. i wonder at the sheer power, courage, bravery of the people who dedicate every single day to these kids. i wonder if i'll ever do anything nearly as meaningful. 


so after giving myself three months to heal, to become whole and happy and content with my life - its time to start pushing again. i'm hoping to keep up with this volunteer position at the home, i'm pushing a friend to let me come to the slums with him here in córdoba to get a sense of the places i think i want to work in in the future, my gender professor is looking for an internship with a women's ngo and hooopefully, i'll find something in a hospital too. i know it sounds like a ton but while i'm here, my experiences are a lot more important to me than my grades for once and i'm going to take advantage of everything i possibly can. after all, only 90 days to gooooo!

send away for the perfect world; one simply not so absurd.

i think the hardest part of this trip - and the reason why i've been resisting it so much - is because it has forced me to do an incredible amount of reflection, both conscious and sub-conscious, which has in turn led to increasing self-awareness and understanding that at times truly takes courage to deal with, accept and internalize. the last post, of course, was about the reflections concerning my future career choice and the accompanying, terrifying "i have no idea what i want to do with my life" feelings. 


i hate making decisions. i'll avoid it at much as humanly possible but once i've made a decision, i stick to it. if it takes me so freaking long to actually make the decision in the first place, by the time i finally do, i'm not going to change my mind and have to go through that entire process again. i spent the better part of high school exploring my options and by the time i graduated, i had decided what my future would look like and i thought i was about 99.9% positive i knew what i wanted. this past year has been another round of exploration, though, and that seemingly insignificant 0.1% had now taken over my life. while i spent an immense amount of time resenting my indecisiveness and my confusion, i now realize that it was a blessing in disguise. 


and then i flew 5668 miles to do some meditation, get a change of scenery, space to clear my mind, to get rid of an unhealthy attachment and what do i do? i fight. tooth and nail, i fought. suddenly, i was getting everything i want but those wants inherently called for change. i hate change - maybe even more than i hate decisions, i hate change but there just comes a moment when you know you need to give in, and the result - while incredibly, indescribably emotionally draining - i think has been net positive. 


relationships. 

the most important thing in the world to me are my relationships to people. i form attachments quickly and in order to save myself the pain of having to break said attachments, i invest a lot into the relationships that are important and meaningful to me to ensure their success. i also feel things a lot deeper and more intensely than most people do so the highs of these relationships make my present and future shine whereas lows are draining and defeating. i was afraid to come here because i've done long-distance and it caused nothing but tension and frustration; being here means i risked losing my relationships with those i care about dearly, and invested an incredible amount in. and i was equally afraid of forming new attachments and creating relationships here only to know that after these 6 months, i would probably never see these people again. 


in the past few days, through writing and listening to meaningful songs and reading beautiful poetry and watching sappy love stories (yes, mostly grey's anatomy...), i've come to see that even if i lose friendships back home, if i create or fail to create meaningful relationships here - each experience will have challenged me and forced me to grow and adapt. i learn through experience. and i'd rather deal with the sadness of loss than risk missing learning, growing, maturing through interactions with others. 


still, goodbyes are never easy; in case where i gave and loved, they're even harder. and as i'm saying very difficult, probably permanent, goodbyes, i'm trying my hardest to be okay with them, to not hold grudges, to wish the best for those i'm saying goodbye to, and to convince myself that change is healthy and really, what i was looking for when i left home. 


see what i mean about needing courage? my therapist would be proud.


feminism.


i think i've mentioned this before but i'm taking a fierce gender studies and social work class. i signed up originally thinking it was a human rights class with a gender component but the entire thing is about gender, about domestic violence, about women's rights, etc. 


i came to this country being told both by people who have visited/have family in argentina and my program that argentina was a conservative country and that it has deeply catholic facets embedded in the people and in the government that strongly influence society. as almost everything else i was told before i came (except for the out-of-control love for meat), however, this information was misleading. that's not to say that there isn't a large catholic presence here or that it doesn't influence society but rather, being told things like that clouded my judgment and gave me a bias before i even got here of what i was going to encounter. the nation, contrary to what i was led to believe, is extremely socially progressive. gay marriage is legal. the current president is a female. education is free. medical care is largely subsidized by the government and doctors are often found making house calls. 


so then, from one extreme, i jumped to the other. suddenly, i found myself in awe of such a progressive government - i still need to learn to take everything with a grain of salt. because in my gender studies class, in spite of all these seemingly progressive laws, there remains both a large lack of rights for minorities (especially women) and a discordance between the existence of laws and their actual practice. for example, in this class, i learned that the government instated a program called Sexual Health and Responsible Procreation. under said law, all health insurance providers and state-sponsored hospitals/clinics were required to provide certain anti-contraceptives free for any patient over 14 who asked for them. as students chimed in on this discussion last week, i realized that the law might as well be non-existent for all it succeeds to do. only 5 or so people in the class of 70 had ever heard of the program to begin with. and of those who knew about it and went to go receive birth control, they were either given the run-around by their insurance companies or the pharmacies responsible for dispensing the medication. the reasons for this are still unclear considering the state buys the medicine and all that remains to be done is distribution but maybe it does have something to do with the catholic culture. maybe there are hidden fees that i'm missing. in any case, women and young girls aren't getting access to the birth control they need.


so when they get unwanted pregnancies, they look for ways to terminate them. unfortunately, abortion is illegal in argentina except in cases of proven (oh yes, i know) rape or danger to the mother's life. as a result, 33% of all maternal deaths are a result of unsafe abortions. thirty three percent. at a maternal mortality rate (MMR) of 46/100,000 live births, that is an enormous, completely unacceptable statistic. MMR in less developed countries in Latin America remain around the same percentage but more women die annually, resulting in more deaths due to abortion. regardless of cultural expectations or religious influence, when such a high percent of maternal deaths are due to unsafe abortions, clearly there is a societal need for access to safe abortions. 


so my vagina warrior of a professor organized a jornada (forum) on abortion. she called in the director of public health at the university and a pioneering doctor/public policy worker from uruguay. together, they pitched the current ways to circumvent the laws in order to provide care for mothers after they aborted their fetus by buying the pill on the black market. we may not be able to help them with the actual abortion, but at least we can be there to save their lives after the fact. i wonder if they're criminalized if the government finds out after the fact. i hope not. 


as the debate on abortion in the states is becoming more and more pronounced, being in a country that has outlawed abortion and seeing the very real effects of such a decision had made me realized, a thousand times more than before, how very essential of a right the right to choose is and has resolved me even more to continue pushing to make that right universal. 


_____


i think that's probably enough for one post of realizations haha. keep an eye out for the next one - i'll be talking economics and culture (: