Reevaluation

"Closing time, every new beginning comes from some other new beginning's end" - Semisonic.

I'm in my home for the first time in four months but it feels a little foreign. There's a "For Sale" sign on the front yard and the Laundry Shop is sold off-- so it's just me, my brother, my parents, my home, and my mind.

Leaving Brazil (Brasil... actually), leaving IHP and the comfort of consistently being challenged and always having companionship from at least one of thirty-three other students, and always having something new to try, to learn--- then going back here, where there is love, there is home, but the atmosphere is empty, Portland, ME U.S.A. is a culture shock for real.

Within a period of four months, I was on four continents, exploring health with 33 students who are as much if not hippier than I am. And over that past 4 months, I had made bonds that are deeper than I have with some of my own friends, because we talk about challenges, we talk about health, we talk about life philosophies, and we traveled... the 34 of us crazy kids together with no parents, barely any guidance, just us, faculty, and a fellow. I wore the same 6 or 7 pairs of clothes throughout that whole trip and there were days on in where I didn't wear make-up, didn't do my hair, wore flip-flips and was just stripped down to my personality to get me by but I had friends there who accepted it and embraced it and saw My at her essence, at her intelligence level, at her sometimes goofy, sometimes deep, sometimes confused being. I have "hippie shoes" that are to never be worn here again.

It's an experience that I know I've grown from, but I don't know how. I don't know what in me has changed but I know it has changed for the stronger and for the better.

Accomplished a few goals "I want to perform spoken word, I want to make love, and I want a tattoo" set by me in an earlier blog post and I did. Because, to be real, who in their lives ever gets an opportunity to travel for four months on a $26,000 program like this. Most people from the Deering neighborhood become stuck here and I am out the blue at a liberal arts college and traveling the world with other intellectual students from great colleges, and after we graduate, with the degree that has our names next to the name of our acclaimed institutions, we might get to travel and be challenged again. I always have complained that I need autonomy, but I guess the truth is that I was somehow chosen by some divine thing to have the privilege to have that. There are kids like me, exactly like me, as deep as me-- as soulful as me--- as talented as me--- as silly as me, or what not, who will live their lives constricted and I have the privilege to have all that.

My parents and relatives never had privileges like this. To go to South Africa, Viet Nam, and Brazil, and visit people from PEPFAR, different NGOs, hospitals, neighborhoods, beaches, resorts, and have even the opportunity to complain about the food in fucking South Africa as touristy students: it's unbelievable but then... I can't and maybe I shouldn't show it off. I'm traveling the world and coming home and feeling restricted by home no doubt, but this has always been home for my family and friends. And I think in English what I can't intellectually express in my broken Vietnamese, that I love them so much, but I'm not here-- I've seen myself as myself elsewhere. And there are things that they don't know about me and I don't know about them... I guess as IHP has said, I'm facing liminality, I'm in the process of walking through a door. And what I miss more than stability, more than being so spoiled and cared for in my own home, is challenge, and comfort, and conversation, and the intensity of having someone oppose me and make me learn.

IHP will take a long time to unravel. What I do with that privilege and cherished friendships is the challenge I now face from being away from it all. But I know at least a few things, I've been given a lot but I also know that I'm special enough to have a lot. And so my expectations for what I need from people in my life, especially men, has changed. I live to love but I live to be loved and cherished by the people lucky enough to have that love and care, because I think sometimes I sell myself short. Even when friends are good friends or "friend-bens" (as we like to call them on IHP), are caring, intellectual, beautiful and sweet people, and I know they're lovely, that shouldn't be my main reason for why I sometimes sell myself short of what I really want. Gotta stay strong.

And secondly, my fight and my passion is growing. I can't go through life without knowing who my grandfather is and what he fought for. I need to learn more about what South Viet Nam fought for. And I need to see and then fight to change my place and the place of minority people in the U.S. and to an extent, hopefully, idealistic, it makes some difference to the struggles and bullshit people of color are constantly faced with worldwide. And lastly, as a woman, to refer back to my last paragraph, I need to fight for my own right to be stronger, to love myself more, and to be loved as me--- and never give myself out for nothing less than that.

Doing spoken word drunk in front of teachers and peers was great, soo liberating and real. Getting 'Empathy' inked on my back to say that I live to feel what people feel and connect to the world was better. So, it's definitely a step in the right direction.