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.
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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 (:
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