Life must be an adventure for me, even if it's only in my mind. I've been listening to motivational tapes by Carolyn Myss and Eckart Tolle the past week. They pump me up, make me feel okay. I DON'T have to stay here and be miserable, trying desperately to find happiness. It's really is okay for me to go. I'm okay. :o) I just wish I could write about all these adventures I'm having in a positive way. Oh, yeah, I'm reading The Crossing Place again, about a man's journey to find the Armenian history. He traveled all over the region and had some miserable times and he writes about those too. He doesn't stay stuck or wallow in them, but when he's having bad days he writes about them. Another book by Colin Thubron about crossing Russia solo back in the 1980s. He traveled all the way down to Armenia then back north again. He, too, got more than fed up at times with the crazy thinking. So I'll try to write. This 9 month sojourn in Armenia has been all about me, let's face it. It's MY journey, MY spiritual journey. It's not really about saving the starving children of Armenia from their parents and teachers. That was just my cover. I had to have an altruistic cover to make myself authentic. I didn't have the courage to just jump into the Central Asian waters all by myself. Now I've been here I see that I can travel here as easily as I traveled throughout CA. I am so liberated. :o)
I'm now studying the map, preparing to travel through Georgia and over to Azerbijan. Then back to Turkey for several weeks. May take a jaunt down into Syria and Iran. I met someone from Iran this past weekend and he invited me to come visit, he will show me that his country is a wonderful place, not as we see on the news all the time. I'll be with another friend until near the end of April. When she leaves I'll turn north, travel through Bulgaria, Romania, Moldova, Ukraine, Russia. I'll meet my Swiss friend Ruth somewhere sometime around the first of July and she and I hope to travel in Russia and perhaps up to Finland, where I have another friend - another old friend of Steven's. I am feeling so good as I make these plans. Yes, yes, yes!!! :o)
March 5 ~
I had a dream last night. I dreamed I was in a place where, in order to reach my home, I had to pass through an underground tunnel-way. It was very crowded in there, there were pathway tunnels which broke away from the main branch to various private residences. Furniture and junk was stacked everywhere, making it difficult to move and find the correct way. It was dark and dirty and very frustrating. I kept losing my way and having to backtrack. Hey, Freud, even I can analyze this and it has nothing to do with sex.
Saying good-bye to people here is difficult. I've only told two volunteers so far. I must tell the Armenians I work with and tell them why. The people at the Y will be disappointed. I must tell the teacher who arranges my English club and I must tell my English club. The children had no expectation that I would stay forever, though they had hope. I'll make my last class a geography lesson, with pictures of my family too. The English club with the young kids is what I enjoy the most. But one hour a week can't sustain and overcome the other hundreds. Even if I expand to 4-5 hours a week. Not enough. I'm immensely unhappy in the moment. One might say depressed. Will it pass when I leave here?
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I suppose if the truth were known most of us are here under cover. Peace Corps is like the circus used to be - a chance to run away from home and all that is ordinary and to somehow re-invent ourselves. And of course it's never possible to be motivated by only one motive. We all of us want to make a difference in the world too, to ease the suffering. For some reason it seems, sitting in the warmth of our American homes, that it will be easier and more rewarding to travel across the sea.
I never wanted to come to Armenia in the first place. I didn't even know it existed. I wanted to go to Central America. I still do, and I will. But being here has been a fascinating experience for me too, one that will take me years to digest. I do understand that they are caught in the net of their culture. Interestingly, I find that my reasons to leave are more complicated than my reasons for coming. That in itself is interesting to contemplate. It's not going to be easy to tell the Armenians I'm leaving. I must prepare myself for that, find the words to put the decision all back on myself - the health issues, missing my family. But they'll know the truth too. That I'm unhappy. They'd leave themselves if they had a chance. There is so little future here. Most people just give up, sink into the drudgery of their everyday existence. The young men who came to our college for Peace Corps day - the "bad boys". Underneath their bravado I know that what they really wanted was just for a moment to be able to rub elbows with the Americans, to be temporarily diverted from the depression of standing on the street daily. They had a flicker of hope that they'd be noticed, that they'd find the magic escape formula too. But there were no answers for them, so they wandered back outside to ogle the young women and decide which one they would marry.
Maybe I lack the necessary self-confidence to complete a task as daunting as this. Maybe that's what it takes. I can't see that I make a difference or ever will, and I can't see that my suffering is worth it. Neither do I think that it's a good thing for me to be so unhappy. Even though I don't show this face to most people, it must seep out on some level. And it most certainly expresses itself when I get into stressful situations that I can't handle, such as this whole affair with my landlady. I'm not good at conflict. I wilt and turn it in on myself. And with the cultural and languages difficulties it just stays there. I can't release it.
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Then there's my health . . . . . severe headaches, ringing ears accompanied by ear aches just in front of my ears, depression, excessive tiredness, burning eyes. I think the broken blood vessel in the back of my eye was related to this. (The doctor said it was caused by pressure - but what was causing the pressure?) I was having severe headaches at the time and ultimately discovered that the house I was living in was only a few hundred feet away from a cell tower. All of this is very bizarre and it comes as a package deal. I think all of these are related to the cell tower (first) and to the bad electricity in general, EMS or Electro-Magnetic Sensitivity, but I have no way to prove it of course. The symptoms come and go. Sometimes I may not be bothered for a week or more, then it hits again. I am never bothered when I'm away from Vardenis. If it happens in the evening or when the weather is bad there's nothing I can do but curl up and endure. It usually goes away during the night and I wake up relieved. Which is another reason I think it's associated with the electricity. There's no draw on electricity at night.
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I've begun sorting through my things. I'm headed to Yerevan today so I'll take some of my stuff today - things I want to give away. I came with 3 pieces of luggage - two backpacks and a roller. I picked up another roller load of stuff while in the US in December. Most of that was teaching materials and art supplies which I'll give away. The main items I want to keep and send back are my computer and etc, portable radio, my sleeping bag, some winter clothes. I may be able to ship some of that from here or Turkey, though of course I can't ship my computer.
Early morning. Thinking time. I don't make this decision lightly. Leaving is not easy, but staying is more difficult. And difficult in a way that's not positive for myself or anyone. It will do no good to prove to myself that I can be totally miserable for two years, or that I can endure such health issues as I'm experiencing. My daily walks are surrounded by scenes such as these and my psyche just can't take it. I'm weak
But enough of early morning confessions.
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