True Love is Inexhaustible, the more you give, the more you are given...

I went to Africa with my University as a part of an "immersion" to learn about sustainable and innovative solutions to poverty. We traveled to Uganda and Rwanda and saw beauty and horror going hand in hand. I came home with no explicit expectations but now that the inherent expectations I had for the people I love have not been met, I realize that I anticipate too much from people. You see, I saw tombs, graves, memorials, skeletons, slums, AIDs, poverty, hunger, sadness and yet was overpowered with a sense of hope and joy and came home expecting people to understand.

NOTE: This is another post found in my drafts - I continue to have high expectations and am not sure if they have been met by those around me. I have begun to be a bit of a cynic but at the same time I recognize if I could experience the hope I did where and when I did on my 2009 journey to Africa, then I know we here, with our marginal problems, can find true, endless, burdenfree joy.

Quarter Life Crisis?

I'm sitting at a desk in a room where I'm fairly certain no one knows what I am doing. I greet people with a smile as they come in and most of the time they greet me. I can feel the judgement they pass on me. I am an outsider to their world with really very little desire of fitting in. It seems they can sense it on me. I feel as though I am masquerading as something I am not. I am constantly yearning for something different, something more me, it's just that I don't know what that might be.

I am happiest when I am in school. I excel there. I'm a good learner. I'm a good presenter and I enjoy academics. Having no true desire to teach I am worried that the lifestyle I have lived to this point of "perpetual student" will have to come to an end. So I wake up each day and convince myself I am excited to go out and do what I do. I convince myself that despite the apprehension I feel I am doing something great. It is a constant debate in my head. One to which I cannot assign a winner or a loser. So it remains a circular discussion that I am hoping for an end to.

NOTE:I foudn this blog in my drafts and chose to publish it as is. Some things have changed - I LOVE TEACHING. I am working on a phd and love my students and my school. I excel at school still and think it may be one of the many avenues I use to make change. I have a new found resolve in what I do.

Just sitting here

It's funny to be just sitting here, no one around, TV on, computer, phone, ipad, thoroughly connected and yet engaged with nothing. Confronting my health, listening to my body, being in tune with myself. It's just a bit funny.

I sit here with chills running up and down my body. My good ear (see my blog Living With Herbert for details on why I have a good ear and a bad ear now) throbbing strangely, inciting the fear that what remains of my normalcy may disappear. So I sit here and think, what is normal. Who gets to decide? I certainly don't, at least not for myself any more.

Then I realize how perfectly fitting my blog name is for me now. I am perfectly imperfect. There is not a thing about me that is not tragically flawed, and that is me and I am okay with me. I'm just sitting here, surrounded by stuff, surrounded by things that cannot fill the void in my heart. A brain tumor. I have a brain tumor. WTF. How did this happen? None of the stuff makes it better. It makes life seem that much more urgent. I think of my friends - do they know I love them? Should I cut those I don't? Worse yet, do I cut out the friends who I loved fully and never returned my joy, my love, my friendship? Will he commit to me? Will I end up alone? Will I have the strength to walk tall and alone? Will I even ever need to have that strength? Will I stand alongside those people who share my beliefs and stand up to those who don't? Will I stop being such a door mat? I'm not a door mat. I'm just me. I'm okay with me.

It's weird, to let the clutter fade and just sit here, alone, with thoughts that arguable don't make any sense. I am regularly contradicting myself. I consistently, even here, in this place and moment of expression, shield my thoughts in anticipation of judgement or backlash. I'm the doormat on the inside of your door, the one you walk on so your feet don't get cold when you take your shoes off on the cold tile. I suppose that is better than a regular doormat. Who knows. What the hell am I even talking about????

Peace - Samira