Happy Birthday MOM!

Today I want to write about my mom. It’s her birthday and I need to point out that I have spent a great deal of time lamenting the loss I will feel leaving this life behind. However, I have failed to note how freaking awesome it is that I get to return to so many loved ones. Ones that I appreciate more than ever. It’s like when you have the flu and you are so sick you want to die. Once you feel better, you really appreciate your health in a way that you take for granted. There are so many people back home that I can’t wait to see and value now more than ever. I will make more effort to maintain those relationships. But today is about my momma.

My mom has been a guide throughout my life but I have never appreciated her the way I do right now. She has helped me through some hard times while I’ve been here and ironically, I have never felt closer to her.

Mother’s and daughters have an odd friction, or at least my mom and I did. No one pushes my buttons the way she does. I don’t know what it is but I don’t give a shit right now because I’d do anything to see her today and have her push my buttons. Perhaps it is age, that I am growing up and can imagine what it might be like to be a mom, but I have more respect and compassion for her. She is a wise, beautiful, loving, thoughtful, funny, hard working, generous person. The list of adjectives could go on and on. Also, I have the unfortunate experience of imagining what it would be like to not have her around. She bravely fought cancer over the past 2 years. And she f*@king kicked its ass!! What a hero.

Mom, I am so grateful for your guidance, that you have your health back, and that I get to see you in less than two months. Many glasses of wine will be drunk to celebrate that you were born and gave me the privilege to live this extraordinary life.

xoxo MWAH!

Loss

Life lately has been a series of losses. Some bigger than others but life as an expat feels like a billion little heartbreaks. As I’ve written about before, living in a transient city you make friends fast but just as quickly as you form a bond, off they go to the next destination. Most people aren’t here for a long time. 2 years is a long placement here. (I'm jealous of those people at times and at other times I can't imagine being stuck here that long) Since you are arriving at different times, you can feel like you are just settling in and forming relationships that are remotely meaningful when the next thing you know you are at their going away party. The worst part is often you don’t have any notice. You think you will be spending the rest of your time here with someone who was meant to be here long past the time you leave and poof, they lose their job or move on for some other reason.


Certainly I have not made a great deal of meaningful relationships. There is a handful of people that I will stay in touch with and perhaps one or two that I will ever see again in my life. But is that going to stop you from being in the moment and caring about people? Of course not. That would be such a waste of this moment. However, as you meet people you go through the usual questions to each other, what do you do here, where are you from, how long are you here for. It gets old fast. What is exciting is when you stop having those conversations and just fall into one that is more like friendship than a bad first date. I was at one friend’s going away party and met a guy, I asked him when he was here till and he said next week. I apologized and told him I didn’t want to get to know him. It’s too hard, and annoying to go through the small talk for nothing. In retrospect, I may have missed out on a super cool dude (probably not, but for the purposes of making my point here, he may have been the key to me making millions, who knows).

But if you go along protecting yourself from feeling loss, you miss out on so much. I know that sounds so very cliche like “it’s better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all” but it really is true. The deeper you experience love for someone or something, the greater the loss. You can’t feel one without the other. It can be incredibly painful but would you want to live a life of not feeling either? So in addition to these little heartbreaks of constantly saying goodbye to the connections I make here, I also am experiencing a big loss back home. My dog (and my dad's dog- it was a sort of time share), the love of my life was put down while I was here. I am aware that my parents would only have made this choice because it was the best option. But it was awful to not say goodbye. It is awful to love something and lose it. Period. But would I take back caring about something so much so it didn’t hurt so much now? Of course not, life is about feeling all our emotions to the fullest.


And then there are the people I work with here. Uhhhg. That is going to be difficult as well. Let me take you back 4 months to when I arrived. As my predecessor and trainer took me around introducing me to the people she worked with she also was saying her goodbyes. Well every time she said her spiel about enjoying working with them and goodbye, I CRIED. She didn’t, I did. Obviously I am going to be a mess 6 weeks from now. Embracing feeling to the fullest at the cost of a billion little heartbreaks. A small price to pay, really. And who knows what’s around the corner....


“New beginnings are often disguised as painful endings” - Lao Tzu

I love this dude so much. 

Community

I have a tendency to veer towards hibernating back home. It always seems so much easier to stay home in my comfort zone where I don’t have to worry about how I look or what to say or any uncomfortable moments. By doing this however, I limit myself from so many potential opportunities and experiences. I know this because I can hardly think of a time that I actually went out and regretted it (with the exception of overconsumption of tequila a few years ago- I still can't stand the smell). Sure there is often the person you get stuck talking to that you don’t want to, or you are tired etc. But more times than not, I wind up having a good time and feel more alive. More me. So why do I avoid this so often? I am not sure but I have a new awareness that I need to move past that uncomfortable feeling and get into my community. Our social selves are just as much a part of us as who we are on our own, so why would we not try to experience everything life has to offer. 

Community means something different to everyone. For some it may be their family, others it may be a group of friends they have had since high school, or even a group that met at work. It is the feeling of belonging to something bigger, a shared experience and a camaraderie that I am realising I need more of in my life. I like it. I see how being around others can make me feel more like myself in a strange way. 

The other cool thing is judgement seems to go to the wayside. You become friends with people you may never have back home. The pool in which to pick from is reduced and you automatically have something in common, you are here. Just a little realization that you can find a way to enjoy almost anyone if you get past yourself. There are people that have become dear to me despite the fact that I don’t really know them. I hang out with them and conversation rarely gets deep. But so much of our lives are “deep” around here so it’s nice to just share some laughs over some generic tasting beers (oh, I miss my micro brews back home) People come and go around here often so you don't learn a lot about each other but can still feel friendship, because we know what it is like to ride in a bajaj and wonder if you will get home alive, to walk down the street and pray you aren't mugged, to be an outsider, to be assumed rich based on your skin, to miss home but you chose this so buck up and find a way to cope.

Here in Dar, social life seems to centre around drinking much of the time. Admittedly it is not that healthiest nor is it the way I behave back home. What I do know is that it isn’t ABOUT the drinking but about a group of people being in an environment where they need to feel connected to something outside of themselves. It is a lonely existence being an expat in Dar without a community. Usually we tend to go to westernised environment where we can relax and let our guard down from the dangers and stresses of this city. You need to form social groups. It is a necessity for your sanity. So for me these people have become incredibly important to me even if it is just for a short time and I never see or hear from them again; they are my present. Perhaps that’s why you feel like you are so close so quickly. Like you’ve known someone for years when in fact, it is approximately a month. You have a shared experience, you can relate to each other, and you are there for each other. So today I am grateful for the small community I have formed here and have a greater awareness of how I need to cultivate that back home by getting out of my comfort zone and discovering myself in social communities.

Look at this crazy crew that helps me get through the days.  In their defence, this was the goat races where we were supposed to dress up in costumes. So I am actually the weird one here.