This Post is Long and Stuff

So disregard my previous post. A tornado swept through two nights ago (figuratively) and some changes have taken place. I know that I have blogged very little thus far and what I've shared has been zoomed in pieces of my experience. I'm learning things like that about myself here- my tendency to focus on the details, ignoring the big picture if I subconsciously find it to be too much to handle. Yes, I'm learning a ton about myself. So far my thoughts have been more inward focused than I wish them to be, but I'm not sure how to change it. My body is going through some pretty drastic changes and I'm not designed to experience it like this, in this short amount of time. I've yet to get into a groove or routine here, so hopefully that will happen within the next week and then I will be able to blog about more light-hearted topics or something.

After spending a week in a poorer neighborhood where Hannah and I only had air conditioning from about 5-9am, no running water, no internet, and a refrigerator smaller than the one I used in my college dorm room, I just about imploded. The bucket showers, no internet, and small refrigerator I could handle, but getting less than 5 hours of AC a day and it being the second half of the night was beginning to make me go crazy. The humidity has died off within the last week and now the heat is dry. The temperature is on the rise, though, so now when we are outside, it feels like a hair dryer on HIGH is blowing all over your face and body. Hannah and I had been falling asleep on the roof and when the call to prayer went off around 4:30am, I would move inside. We did this for a week, but the last few days I started to see symptoms of not being able to fall asleep until 5 and only sleeping until about 8:30. I had more trouble getting through the heat of the day and I dreaded the night. Two nights before I moved to the other apartment I laid on the roof and cried out of frustration of not being able to sleep. The next day I really began to see and feel the effects of not getting enough sleep. Something was really wrong within me.

While on the bus on the way back to my apartment alone, I was watching the buildings since there aren't any street signs and everything must be identified by landmarks. I was watching, looking for the series of pink and white buildings where I'd yell, "Jojji!" so that the bus driver would stop and I could get off. But I only noticed the LAST pink and white building and that was when we were passing it and I still wasn't sure that was the right one, so I stayed on for another minute before I assumed that that one was it. I walked back to where I thought my street was, but nothing looked familiar except a store that a Somali walked us to that morning for a phone card. I turned down the road anyway, still unsure if I was in the right place until I got to the final landmark (a wall with decoration along the top) which tells me to turn right. I've walked that road so many times, and I've walked it so many times alone. It was so strange for me to have a momentary lapse in memory. But anyway, I found my way home and took a bucket shower and then laid on our mattress trying to cool off from the HOT water I had just poured on myself. But I still was finding no relief. The room was hot and the AC unit wasn't working, so the fan I had on me was blowing hot air all over me. I began to sweat minutes after laying there and my mind started racing. I thought, I can't do it. I want to leave. My thoughts jumped to conversations I had earlier that day over Skype and through email, and I started thinking on the sad realities in my personal life in the States and those of my close friends, and I started to mourn over the life of the poor in Djibouti and the lostness of the people and the place as a whole. I mourned for the people around me who don't even have 5 hours of relief from this horrible heat and for the people who are dying from it. I mourned over the problems here that money can fix if only it were placed in the right hands and dispersed in a way only the wise can determine. It became a night of accumulative thoughts of hopelessness and despair over this life and what feels like an inability to escape it. And I just began to weep. I sprawled out across my bed feeling as though something needs to come up out of my body to relieve me of this pain. I kept asking God to speak to me, to give me some hope to hang onto while I was falling, and all the while I felt like there was still something I was holding onto...something that I needed to release from my grip in order to be helped by him, in order to be consoled by him. Hannah came back a few hours later and after she walked in, I just went up to the roof to try to sleep. When I got up there I saw that my phone which is my alarm clock was almost dead, and if I wasn't able to check how much time I had left until I could get some AC every time I woke up in the night, then it would be even more miserable. So I went down to charge my phone and Hannah lay there seemingly in distress over the distress she could tell I was in. We sat in silence for a few minutes and then I blurted out, "I need to go back to the other apartment." This idea had not been brewing up until that moment, but as soon as it slipped out, I felt a brief release. Painfulness still, as I had just admitted my defeat, but I figuratively just burped and let go of a painful gas bubble. As I talked through it with her (and myself) I felt so weak, like I had given up after only one week in this harder apartment situation. And by moving I am consequently screwing up the plans of 4 other people, so I just felt horrible. As I explained it to Hannah, I realized that this is the thing I least wanted to do. It was very much in line with the realization I came to only earlier that day. Fear motivates me to push myself to my limits and beyond.

I explained it in an email to my friends Dave and Ashley this way:

I tend to push myself to do the hard things, the things I specifically don't want to do and to experience the most difficult experiences possible in order to become stronger mentally, physically, emotionally. And I think all for the sake of self sustainability. I don't want to be unprepared for some unknown future situation and be unable to respond- that is my fear. I fear finding myself unprepared for something that frightens me more than my inability to deal with it. I want to have built up enough tolerance and resistance so that even if I find myself in a situation I have no experience in, I will be able to handle it and not cower away. And I think about that here because the accumulation of this experience is beyond my human limitations/what I would consciously subject myself to. This place and these people push all the right buttons to make me feel lost, out of control, vulnerable. I am excited about getting through this and being stronger than ever since this is beyond what I would have forced on myself, but until then, I have to deal with all the things I try to avoid by building up my tolerance. I feel like an infant here as I am fully dependent on the other American people around me since I don't know the language or way of life yet. And the heat is so defeating. I hate being hot, and it is inescapable. I find myself just wanting to cry like an infant would to tell my "parents" that I do not at all like this situation that I'm in, wanting them to remove me from it. But I dont want to admit my defeat to the people who could make my experience easier/less stressful on me. That is giving into the fear. I feel as though I must deal with it, I must suffer through it. But I don't know why. I don't know that its necessary that I not suffer through it, either. I dreamed two nights ago that I was sent home early, I don't remember the reason why, but I was depressed in the thought that people thought I just needed to be removed from this place and that they didn't give me the chance to endure it and grow from it. That made me think that this is a good place for me to be, but its also just a completely sucky place to be.

But in admitting defeat from the heat, I gave into my fear; I found a limit and I adhered to it instead of trying to overcome it. I've been saying that I want to become stronger here, but after that conversation I thought that I had just given up my chance of doing that. I explained that desire/goal only a day prior to Rachel and to Hannah as well. I was instantly ashamed in my inability to stay in this harder situation in an apartment w/o running water, AC,and internet. This isn't tough, this isn't being strong, I thought.

But while sitting on the hot, tile floor in mine and Hannah's room, a contradictory thought crossed my mind. For me, in this situation, acknowledging my human limitations and acting on them is the strong thing to do. Weakness would be continuing to beat my body up beyond what it could handle for the sake of some stupid ideal. I learned that 1) my mind always wins in a battle, and it usually makes my physical body suffer... my twisted mind games, adhering to rules that don't actually exist but only in my mind, just in order for me to stay in control and become tolerant and toughen up. This played out when I broke my foot in Jordan. It hurt pretty bad after I fell on it, but I thought that I could handle the pain. I walked on it for two more days probably damaging it more before a few friends made me go to the ER for an X-ray where we found out it was indeed broken. My physical body pays the price for my twisted mentality. 2) I can't be weighed down by the thought that I've let other people down by removing myself from this harder situation. Without much verbal affirmation in my decision I feel like I may have actually let these people down, but I realize that it doesn't actually matter if anyone sees eye-to-eye with me on this. My body is different than Hannahs and different than Toms and I'm the only one who knows when my body can't handle any more. I have to take care of my body, to preserve it. It is as much a gift from God as a good friend is, you know? I have to prioritize taking care of myself because if I'm worn down and out like I was from not being able to sleep, then I really am worthless to everyone around me. 3) I'm learning more and more about my human limitations. I think that is the underlying feature of my sin- I'm unwilling to accept that I am human, that I have limits and I need certain things to stay alive and flourish. Maybe I'm trying to be God. Well, that's what sin is, so I'm probably trying to be God by making the calls on things that I really have no ability to. I need to see in more than one way that these limits and boundaries give me freedom as a human. I'm glad I'm only human. Admitting my humanness and my inability to even take care of myself gives me hope, too. All the situations that I mourned over the other night are still represented in my life and of those around me, but in coming to terms with the fact that not only am I not supposed to put these broken pieces and frayed edges back together, but its humanly impossible for me to do so. If I am to take any part in the restoration of any one thing, then it is God doing it through me. I am incapable of doing anything about it, but thank God that my voice and its utterings are heard by the One who can change it. And thank God that He sees the full picture of our human story and knows when and what should be done. Thank God His plan and nature are good. Thank God I know Him.

So anyway, since that whole escapade I have gotten a good back massage and a good nights sleep without being covered in sweat. I felt more refreshed today and I was able to pay attention to people around me. My language lesson went a lot better, too. Its amazing what sleep does for one, and when you havent slept in close to a week, you really notice the difference.