Through the rumor mill…

We are at 9 and a half months and counting! We have squeezed past the one-year mark and we are barreling on down to the single digits! Some days it is hard to believe I have been living in Central America for over a year. The time seems to fly..then again, there are days when it seems as if the time is passing so agonizingly slowly I might go mad.

Most of the time it is the former though. Time is flying by and I am having a great time!

The newest group of rural health volunteers arrived in country just a few months ago and they are all getting oriented into their sites. I have met a few of them along the way and it has made me think a lot about my initial reaction to Peace Corps, El Salvador, and living abroad. Through the rumor mill I found out I am “the girl with the negative blog.”Apparently, many of the new volunteers were reading my blog before they arrived in country and had already formed an opinion about me.  Well, this is true in a lot of ways. Looking back over some of my early posts I recall I wrote many things that were, shall we say, not exactly positive or optimistic. They were all accurate representations of my feelings at any given moment, and yes, the first six months here was nearly unbearable. I had an extremely difficult time adjusting. I would go so far as to say that I have lived a very sheltered and tightly knit existence before coming here, and being thrown into an unknown situation, alone, without any former knowledge of how to address these types of struggles proved to be more challenging than I could have imagined.

The problem that I have in my writing is that I write in the spur-of-the-moment style. I write exactly how I am feeling in this moment. I do it as a sort of therapeutic way of releasing pent-up tension and anxiety and, sometimes, unhappiness. However, with this type of writing comes a roller coaster of emotional ups and downs and a difficult to follow train of thought. My philosophy is to write it all exactly how I feel it, rarely subdued, for my own personal release, selfishly excluding the feelings of the reader.

Well, lucky for me, this is a blog, not a novel. I am not a famous writer. I have somewhere around 30 people who subscribe to this blog, and have never exceeded 100 views in a single day. I still have the liberty to write as I see fit, without any consideration for the reader, being as I am most certain the people who read this will not stop because I have a bad day. They are mostly friends and family who are invested in me as a human being and care about the way I am feeling.

However, I feel slightly offended that some people feel as if they can read a few bad days posts and believe they can encompass me as a person, as a volunteer, and how I feel about my life in this country. That is simply impossible. What I experience here is complex, and I can not even express clearly how I feel about my life here all the time.

However, as I read through my old posts I see how those judgements could arise, but still as I sit here typing now I do not regret a single word. Because I wrote every painful and debilitating detail it makes the view from where I sit now all the more beautiful. The ultimate truth is (and I have said it time and time again to those who ask) the longer I live in this country the more I love it. When I got here I struggled to let my former life go and give this experience a chance. I held on tightly believing that I could not straddle the two worlds I was trying to live in, and I could not entertain the idea of leaving the old behind. The reality is, I can not straddle the two worlds. I had to choose one, and though it took me many months to do it, I stopped obsessing over the fact that my life was passing me by far away. I learned to live the life I am in right now, and I have been all the happier for it.

All these obstacles make the positive outlook I see now even more improbable. Also, I included some of what I wrote specifically FOR those people who are now saying that I am a negative person. Perhaps I am, but I can be at my lowest low here, refuse to give up, and can now say that I am happy to be here, and do not look at the stretch of time in front of me with any dread at all. If a negative person can live like this, then imagine what a positive person can do. All those days I wrote that I didn’t know if I would be able to handle this experience were real. But so are the days like today, and yesterday, and tomorrow, when I write that I love this country in its own way, and the longer I am here the more I love it.

So, I am not ashamed or repentant that I was candid in my descriptions. But, it is important to know that I am allowed to change my feelings too. That might be difficult for those who have already formed an opinion, perhaps they are unwilling to abandon their already decided feelings, but I feel I deserve a chance to say; no, I did not like it here, and no, I did not want to stay, but now I do like it here, and I don’t mind staying. It is as simple as that.

Like I said, my blog is like a snapshot of a single day in my life here. Some days are bad. Some days are good. But don’t let the snapshot of me crying alone in the bus weigh more than the snapshot of beautiful children showing me their artwork. Don’t let the snapshot of the day of a robbery weigh more than the snapshot of me completing a project. I certainly don’t and that is why I am still here. Not every aspect is positive but not every is negative either, and I don’t believe I ever gave that impression, or I certainly never meant to.My intentions were never to say I hated El Salvador, to say I hated Peace Corps, or to say this experience is completely awful. Those statements are not true in the least. I love El Salvador and Peace Corps, and though there are aspects of both that can be vexing to me, it would be the same no matter where I lived, or what organization I worked for. I love my job, and I know I made the right decision coming here. This experience can really knock you down sometimes; this is the reality of living and working alone in conditions unlike those you have had your entire life, without any sort of support system. But in the end you are stronger, better, and more well-rounded, with a sense of pride, accomplishment, and the knowledge you are part of something important and wonderful.

If I could go back, I would do it all again, and that one sentiment speaks more about those bad day snapshots than any post ever could.