unexpected lessons.

this whole episode, while it's not over for sure, and while it's still going to get worse before better, i feel like has already taught me so much about many things, and mostly just about me. i freaked out, there's no point in hiding it. i just completely lost every sense of what was up, what was down, and where everything was in between. i, as my coach rightly pointed out, was letting everything that was happening consume me. i think it was partially that my entire high school world was truly crashing down around me, and everything (or, most everything) that i had loved for six years was just going up in flames. and there was, and still is, a certain part of me that feels like i should be thinking about this, because all the people i truly love are going through such a hard time right now, and i feel awful that they should have to go such a terrible thing that isn't right and they don't deserve. and, i felt guilty that i had this escape, that came back here and could, if i chose to, leave all of that behind me for a little while. i can't believe it's only been a week and half since all of this started; i feel like it has been more than a month. i had lost the resilience i always used to pride myself in in high school, that no matter how bad things were, no matter how stressed i was, i could always put a smile on, and at least be happy for most of the day, and push whatever was bugging me out for a little while. this past week, i couldn't pull that out, because i finally let something really get to me, which i don't think i've ever done, maybe because very few things of this magnitude have happened to me, or maybe because i was more guarded and protectionary until coming here broke at least a little of that down. it's just interesting though, i've learned a lot about what will get to me, in both positive and negative aspects, through all of this. what finally made me stop thinking about this all the time and freaking out about every little detail was just my coach saying something as simple as, they wouldn't want this for you. and on a positive end note, i've found a lot of comfort in some expected and some unexpected places.

mixed.

this post needs to be split into two parts, the positive and the negative.

i have so much to be thankful for that i can't really say everything i would want to here. i'm thankful that i have my family, that they love and support me, and that i could ask them for anything in the world and they would drop anything they were doing to come help me. i'm thankful for all the people i have met and become close with this year, and especially that i joined theta. even though i doubted my choice for awhile, it's become more than clear to me that i made the right choice. i know i could turn to any of you for good times, love and support when i need it, for someone to keep me sane, and just about anything else. i'm so glad i have that at school, and i'm thankful for each and every one of my sisters!

i'm thankful for five star, for all that it's given me through all these years, that i know i can always go back there and find people that love me, that i am always welcome there. i'm thankful i got to experience camp and meet all the amazing people there to share the greatest times of my life with, that i have a great support network there and people i love to death and can call on at any moment, and who i know i'll keep up with for the rest of my life because of that unique bond.

thanksgiving always remind me of how lucky i am to have so many great people in my life, to have the food and other things i need, to be able to go to college, and many other things. which of course always reminds me of all the other people out there who don't. how people can't afford to eat on any day of the year, let alone thanksgiving. how in some places people couldn't leave their house for fear of being killed. how over half the world lives on less than $2 a day. in some ways, i always feel like i've been given too much. but, at the same time, all these problems in the world, it's not like they're impossible to solve. if we all gave a little, gave some time or money or anything to these problems, they could be solved. we all just need to care a little bit more, if we put the effort, people everywhere could be living so much better than they are now. all today, i just think about how lucky i am to be eating so much food, to be in a warm house on a cold day, and to feel safe where i am. everyone could have that, with a little more compassion in this crazy world.

***********************************

i don't want and am not able to talk much about what's going on with everything. i wish this had never happened, i wish people weren't such fucking backstabbers, i wish i could just talk to him, i wish i could say that everything will be ok, but i don't know. we all just have to sit here and hope and watch while being muffled and while everything goes down the drain. i can't imagine how hard it is for you all who are in the families, but my prayers are with you. i just curled up in my bed last night a cried, because i know people will fight hard, but certain things are over forever, which is hard to accept after they were the single biggest joy in my life for so many years. i just hope that everything will turn out ok.

Saw Devil Came on Horseback today. I forgot how much movies like that really get to me, not in the sense that they upset me because of all the disturbing images as much as I always feel like someone's grabbing something inside my chest and twisting because I get so antsy. I feel uncomfortable that I'm sitting in a room full of food, with a giant movie screen, and a cell phone in pocket while these people have nothing. And I mean nothing. I guess things like this also have sort of a duel effect, where it reminds me why I'm here and also makes me severely question while I'm here, if that makes any sense. Something like genocide just completely blows my mind. How it comes about and is carried out is astonishing, but what always really gets to me is that this has been happening for four years. And nothing has changed. All the information I see, the stories and situations that are portrayed in newer movies, it's all the same stories over and over that I've been hearing for four years. Why has nothing been done? What more evidence or suffering do people need to see before something actually gets done?! Genocide is supposed to be the greatest crime against humanity there is, and even though it's been called so, and has been proven, in the eyes of most, to be genocide, nothing has been done. Hundreds of people are dying every day because of our inaction, and the death toll just keeps getting higher. This whole notion and inaction is just utterly ridiculous at this point. Over 400,000 people have died, and 3 million people are displaced. And the international community stands by, watching...

The discussion after the movie was definitely interesting, although one of the panelists frustrated me a bit. He just seemed like he thought he knew more than he did, that he understood things he didn't, and his choice of words I at least found frustrating. Hearing the man from Darfur was very very interesting, his background was really unique and I liked hearing his perspective on things.

Basically, tonight solidified my need to do something soon before I go stir crazy with all this energy I have.

the long and winding road...

I'm nervous that everything is coming back. I thought it was done, over with, gone, but no. I wish this didn't happen to me, that I wasn't like this, that I could change myself, something I used to be able to do so effortlessly. It doesn't seem to be like that anymore.

breathing.

i had forgotten how much i fear change.

again.

I'm so relieved that he's doing ok. I can't even begin to think about the whole situation, that it would happen [again] so close to home, so close to me even, even closer this time. I see him every day. It's just weird and shocking and painful.

All day today, when I was trying to study, all I could think about was last year. I can't believe it's already almost been a year since that day. January 19th, 2007. I will never forget, nor do I think anyone who was at LS then could ever do so. All I could think about today was how I felt that day, after first being told by a panicked Mrs. Kramer to get out of the room quick, to go the very very long way around to another building, seeing the pool of blood outside the bathroom, the yellow caution tape across the doorway. Hearing from Amie's friend exactly what had happened because their friend had been in the bathroom. Sitting in Mr. Grace's room with Anna and Amy and Amie watching the Italian Job while we pretended nothing was wrong until we got official word. Finding out that he had died, probably right outside that bathroom, although not officially. Having to sit there, knowing what had happened, until we were allowed to leave, all of us streaming outside together from the school, not knowing what to think nor what to do, numbly walking to our cars and the buses to head home. Somehow driving home, then going to Amy's, then to work at Barbieri, where the principal came and talked to me about what had happened, which was touching. All the candlelight vigils. Standing outside LS in the freezing cold, but warm from huddling with hundreds upon hundreds of people with candles and flowers and emblems on the ground. The rage with the media and how it portrayed the whole event, how it made both the victim and John seem. How it made LS and Dr. Ritchie and our school as a whole seem. Coming back to write a letter to James and sending them up with a bundle of balloons to who knows where. Going back to school on Monday, and all cramming into the auditorium somehow, having Dr. Ritchie talk to us as a school. Going to each class, talking about the same things, the same events, painfully, over and over again, seven times. Somehow making it through that day too, with everyone. The silence of the school that day, seeing more tears than I have ever seen in my life. Actually standing where it happened with someone, and the disbelief.

All I could think of was that day today, and the days after, hoping that I would not have to relive that again.

I LOVE MY NEW FAMILY!!! (but more on that later...)

I just had one of those moments walking back from dinner that I want to remember. I was walking past the chapel and the sprinklers were on and covering the whole pathway. There was a girl walking behind me and she just came up next to me and asked, "Are we just going to run?" So we both laughed and then just ran through the sprinklers to the other side with all our stuff. We walked all the way to BC talking and laughing and she was awesome and amazingly nice. She was from Lebanon and I got to here a bit about her life there and what she thinks of it here, which was really cool. It was just...refreshing to run through the sprinklers and have such a genuine, nice conversation with someone I had never met. It reminded me of my favorite Gandhi quote:

"You must have faith in humanity. Humanity is an ocean; if a few drops in the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty."

I hate the feeling that I'm helpless. I found an old research paper I wrote last year for a scholarship and reread it today because I remembered feeling so strongly about what I wrote and I wanted to remember that feeling. I wrote about the invisible children in northern Uganda, the 20,000+ children there who every night walk many miles by themselves to sleep in the streets of the cities in northern Uganda away from their parents. They do their homework by candlelight, sleep on mats and blankets rolled out in such tightly packed spaces each can hardly move, and then get up before sunrise to walk back to where they are from. As if that isn't horrifying enough, the reason they have to do this is to prevent from being abducted and forced to fight for the LRA, a rebel group there. I was reading my paper, all the completely shocking and horrifying stories children younger than I am had told, children as young as 9 telling stories of killing their brothers and sisters, and I read what I thought about what we should do as wealthiest and most powerful country in the world, and it was sad to think that none of it had been done. That taking all the time to write that paper and come up with these complicated policies at the end of the day does nothing if it isn't put into place properly (or at all). It makes me question the entire idea of political science to begin with. I'm a person of action, I need to do something about issues like this because I feel some sort of overwhelming obligation. But what can all these crazy political theories really do to help these children? All they really need is someone to care enough to do something, to motivate governments and large groups of people to commit to change and engage in the process, which is something that, at the end of the day, political science falls short of doing. I don't think there really is a major for what I'm looking for, but I hope that somewhere in this place I can find the tools to make the difference I want to. Because the world is full of some crazy things, and it's up to us, as the more fortunate, to change them.

It also really always makes me think, why should they have to live through such tragedy and horror when I've been so lucky? Why should I have been able to sleep peacefully in my bed in my house with my parents every night of my childhood while these kids have to walk alone for miles every day to sleep miserably and in constant fear? It's so unfair, I feel like I shouldn't be sitting here on a laptop studying at a school that costs obscene amounts of money while there are so many people suffering? I remember in high school that all through my junior and senior year I didn't even want to stay in high school because I felt so guilty that I just felt like I needed to go out and do something about it instead of sitting in a classroom all day. I felt like I could be saving people's lives and making a difference instead of wasting my time sitting around all day. That feeling's coming back, the itching to go out and do something, to stop all this crap that goes on out there instead of suffering through four more years of this. I know that I need to finish, but I'm impatient to leave and get out and start doing things that fulfill this desire for me to go out and actually see the change I'm making. All this on campus stuff is I guess a substitution, a way for me to get a bit of that out while I'm here, but I know that as soon as I'm done I need to go out and start doing some real work out there. It's bad that I'm getting this antsy already.

happy happy happy!

i've decided to start posting one of my pictures for each day, partially as a reflection of my mood, and partially to share little pieces of me and my life every day. today's is one of my all-time favorite photographs i've taken - it's in the garden outside my house. =)

today was great! nothing special even really happened, i'm just so happy! 18.02 was ok, now I'm pretty much done for the week, workout was fine, i love thetas and i love getting harassed by my big and her family, and i just feel completely happy. i think a lot of it has to do with the fact that all the decisions i was questioning (essentially everything i've done here at MIT) has settled down and i've realized over the course of the past week that they were the right choices. i'm so happy i'm doing gymnastics even if it's time consuming and taxing, because i forgot how much it makes me happy, and every day i come out of the gym smiling! i'm glad i'm living in i-house even though it initially seemed like it was out of the way, i didn't like living there, and i wanted to move somewhere more social, i've realized that the goals of i-house and the ideas behind it are, essentially, mine. i love theta, i love my friends here, being a non-science kid at MIT is ok, i'm surviving through the science and math. yayyy. i can't wait for thursday =)

Camp

I'm still grappling with the whole issue of camp. It seems like the more I think about it, the more conflicted I get. I can't describe what camp means to me, even though this past year was miserable for me and I got so incredibly frustrated, I still truly love the people from camp, the good times we've all had together, and the bond that somehow forms between all of us. I hate that it's all going down in smoke now, but more than I hate that camp will never be the same, I hate that it's all turning out to be so...twisted and uncamp-like.

Camp was the first place that I felt like I was truly me, and with people who were also just themselves around me. All the goofiness, ridiculous games and tricks and crazy skits, the sketchiness, working out with girls I loved, getting to know each other inside and out, running around at 3 in the morning, and also just feeling like I truly belonged somewhere, and that I always had those people to return to each year was such a big part of my growing up. I had at least 10 people I could always turn to to talk to there, and everyone was just so involved in me and in camp. Seeing someone from camp during the year automatically brightened my day, and I was and am always excited to see anyone from camp. It really saddens me that now, it seems like I won't have that to return to, or if I do, it will be so different I'm not sure I would want to go back.

I wish that, if camp has to end, at least it could end peacefully, without all the fighting and disagreement and seemingly sneakiness. I wish that people would agree or at least be more respectful about the end. I wish that the whole entire issue that brought most of this about would just disappear, because it's not right, nor just, and he doesn't deserve that. I hate that I have no way of dealing with any of this, that it's completely out of my hands even though the entire thing is such a big part of who I am. Much as I can't stand to think that camp won't exist anymore, that I won't have that to return to and that other girls won't have the chance to get what I've gotten out of camp for themselves, I wish that this would all just be settled and over with and, maybe the best solution is just for it to be over.

Arg.

I-week starts tomorrow =) . I'm excited to start getting clues!

Today, with the new member meeting, with just hanging out with thetas, it made me realize that joining theta was one of the best decisions of my life. There's a comfort I just can't explain with so many girls, and some of the stories that came out today were so incredible, deep, and while I also started crying more times in that one hour than I have in the past year, when we finished I was sincerely happy to have spent that time with those girls sharing our thoughts, emotions, lives, and that people felt comfortable enough with the group of girls to share those things. I'm so glad I've met each and every theta I have, because while each one of us is so different and unique, we all come together under our common bond to love each other, laugh together, cry together, and be ridiculous together. I'm excited to find out my big, but I'm also excited to wear a theta shirt every day, to walk around campus and see all the other thetas wearing their shirts, and to have that reminder all day of girls that make me so happy!

ashiya

Ashiya. It's a Cameroonian word I learned from my high school calculus teacher who worked in the Peace Corps in Cameroon/Mali for three years. It doesn't have a direct translation into English, nor any other language that I have found, and yet it expresses a sentiment that I feel so often that I wish we had a word for it. In english, we try and say "I'm sorry" when a Cameroonian would say "ashiya." It's the feeling that someone is struggling, having trouble, or is in pain, and yet you know there is nothing you can do for them. If you saw an old woman carrying a heavy load on her back back to her village, you could say "Ashiya Mama" as you walked by, acknowledging her struggles, and also that there is nothing you can do to alleviate her pain. This word keeps me grounded, while giving me hope. It seems contradictory, but it makes sense to me. While ashiya serves to remind me that, though I wish I could, I can't help everyone in the world, I can't fix every problem that I see even though I may want to, I can't save every child from dying, give every person food, or give each child the same opportunity to succeed in this world. But at the same time, it reminds me of my teacher, of how she gave up three years of her life to help children have a bit better a life, a bit more of the pie, a tiny sliver of opportunity they wouldn't have normally. It reminds me that people have the ability, as a whole, to change the world, one little village, one child at a time. It also inspires me to do the same, and I have no doubt in my mind that I will. The idea that I could be doing something to change the world and alleviate a little bit of the great amount of pain there is in this world, but then chose not to is something I could not live with. I have been given so much in this life, and while sometimes I feel like I've been given too much, and that I don't want it all because I feel guilty for having so much when so many have so little, I also know that I can harness what I have been given and spread it across the globe to other communities. "Ashiya" lets me acknowledge this somewhat guilty feeling, and also makes me remember that, while sometimes I want to push some of what I've been given away because of the guilt, that in the end I can counteract this guilt by spreading what I've been given around to better others' lives. It is my daily inspiration to keep going, to push through struggles, because somewhere, someone's struggles are a thousand times what I could ever imagine, and they push on, they still keep moving, and while I can't help them now, that one word allows me to acknowledge their struggles and keep them in the back of my mind to help solve them later. Ashiya.