My Harrowing Collision with Karma -- Lake Atitlan, Guatemala

I'm starting this post from Il Giardino Cafe and Bistro in San Marcos, Guatemala. I'm waiting for Gigi, my Spanish teacher to arrive. We've been working together at least once a week for about two months, and my Spanish has increased by maybe 0.1 percent (and my frustration by about 99.9 percent). And not because of lack of skill on Gigi's part. More because I just haven't taken the time to really practice the vocabulary she's assigned me these last few weeks. There's always something else to do. Not something better or more important...just... something else. So I've decided that this will be our last lesson for a month or two, so that I can give myself space to actually learn the vocabulary. Part of me (okay, most of me) feels like a failure. Part of me (most of me) is unbelievably discouraged. 

But feeling frustrated and discouraged dosesn't really help me, does it? These emotions... these reactions, they tend to debilitate me instead of encouraging me to try harder. 

So... what can I feel instead? Gratitude that I actually get to live in a place like Guatemala and that I can afford Spanish classes?

Gratitude. I'll focus on that. And try to let the rest just slide off me. 

Dozens of flies flit back and forth from the table, to the chairs, to my hairy legs. I've placed a notebook over my ginger ale, defending my drink from the rampaging, parasite spreading assholes (I have no patience these days).   

At least there are no flea-infested street dogs going berserk, barking their faces off at god knows what, rubbing their sweaty balls on the cushions and dragging their butts along where I'm about to sit. 

What did I tell you? Zero patience. 

You win some, you lose some. 

2018 has been rough so far. New Year's Eve was wonderful, but I woke up on New Year's Day with a raging hangover and a meditation/yoga class to teach. Luckily for me, everyone attending my class was a little tired, so no one appeared to mind a chill (for me) kind of class. 

I spent the rest of the day in a mental fog, working through my headache by moving slowly and exerting as little energy as possible. I did manage to walk into San Marcos, because even a thunderous headache won't keep me away from my cappuccino. But I immediately regretted my caffeine dedication when I started stumbling back up the mountain towards the Forest. 

Blurgh. Head. Why must you pound so LOUDLY? Come on. Inside voices. 

I glanced up from the dusty trail below, only to glimpse two teenage boys rushing towards me, machetes lifted and somewhat maniacal grins plastered on their young faces. 

Umm....

The boy in front ground to a halt in front of me, machetes still lifted. 

"Spanish, spanish, spanish, spanish!" he said, gesturing wildly to my left hand (the one with a silver ring). 

"Umm... Hola," I smiled through the fog of my hangover. "No entiendo, lo siento," I sidled up against the stone wall and scampered past the wayward, machete wielding youth. 

As if a hangover wasn't enough. I also had to get charged at with machetes. Thunderbuckets. 

I cancelled a massage with a lovely lady from Alaska because I couldn't even walk up the Forest stairs (I mean... they are pretty killers stairs. In my defense) without feeling a prodigious pounding in the back of my head. 

Aimee. You are the Forest alcoholic. 

But also. It's New Year's Day. I think you're allowed a hangover. Even at The Yoga Forest.

Tammo and I went to San Pedro (a lakeside village we've dubbed Sodom and Gomorrah) on the afternoon of the second. New Year's weekend had been exhausting for the two of us, as the rest of the Forest staff and volunteers were off celebrating in San Marcos or at Cosmic, so we were left responsible for most of the shifts and yoga classes. Hence, Tuesday was our day to just relax and recuperate. So we relaxed and recuperated by eating chocolate, peanut butter bars, drinking gin and tonics, and then downing some smoothies supersaturated with nutella (see? Sodom and Gomorrah). 

 

Tuesday was a good day. 

Wednesday morning, I woke up near midnight due to a sharp pain in my shin. 

What the fuuuuuck? I thought blearily, reaching my hand down to investigate whatever had just stabbed me. 

"AGGGHHH!" I exclaimed, and promptly evacuated my bed, clasping my left hand in surprise and horror. 

"Aimee? What is it?" my light-sleeping tentmate sat up across the tent.

"I think I just got stung," I moved to sit on Tammo's bed, eyes plastered wide open, panting as if I'd just finished running my first marathon, and clutching my throbbing hand. 

"What do you need?" Tammo asked, sitting beside me. 

"Can you... can you go find it? I don't want to see the thing..." 

Scorpions are so... vile.. I don't want to see what just injected me with its poison juices. 

So Tammo went over to my bed and threw all the blankets to the floor. 

"Do you see it?" 

"Yes, here it is. It's a big one," Tammo brushed the scorpion to the floor. 

"Did you kill it?" 

"Yeah," Tammo brushed the corpse onto a piece of paper. "Let me just put it outside." 

"You killed a scorpion," I smiled. One reason Tammo had been put in the tent with me was because Jonas had started feeling sorry for all the spiders and scorpions I've been ruthlessly slaughtering. Tammo was supposed to save them before they fell beneath my vengeful shoes. 

"Yes, I killed a scorpion. But no one will believe you when you tell them." 

"We'll see about that," I grinned. Or grimaced. Probably a combination of the two. 

I didn't sleep well the rest of the night. Any every random tingle of my skin felt like it could be a new attack. So I watched a few episodes of a TV show and observed the sensations in my finger and shin as they changed. I'd been stung once on the shin and twice on the knuckle of my pinky finger. And the sensations didn't feel good.

My finger hurts so badly that I hardly feel the shin. That's positive, I guess.

So.... what am I experiencing right now? Deep. Excruciating pain. Burning. But such intense burning that it seems to have transcended burning. My finger is simply fire. All the way to the bone.

My hand started to tingle. Then my lips went numb. 

"And I haf to gif a massage tomorrow morning," I moaned out loud, probably waking up my long-suffering tentmate yet again. 

I was tired at breakfast, but the pain in my finger and shin had subsided. 

"My lips are still numb," I laughed to Nele as I told her the story of the scorpion in my bed. "It's so weird." 

Nele, wearing her Easter Bunny sweater, just stared at me. Then went back to doing her makeup. 

Well... now I know that three stings from an adult scorpion results in three hours of horrendous pain and numb lips. 

Could be worse. 

"How are you?" Jonas asked when he came down from Lakshmi, his cabana at the highest point of the Forest. 

"I got stung by a scorpion three times in my sleep," I responded in a rather monotone voice. 

"KARMA!" Jonas seemed jubilant at my misfortune."That's KARMA!"my manager fist-bumped the air. Or Karma. My manager fist-bumped Karma.

Whatever. 

 I went to bed that night feeling a little under-the-weather, but decided it was probably because of my harrowing collision with KARMA the night before. 

I'll feel fine in the morning. I mean, I hope I'll feel fine in the morning. Girl gots a yoga class to teach. 

I was not fine in the morning. If I went to bed feeling a little under-the-weather, I woke up under-a-fucking-deluge. 

"Tammo," I groggily called to my tentmate. "I can't teach this morning. I think I have giardia," I burped sulfur and gagged. 

"What can I do?" 

"Can you go up to Nele and Anna and ask them to teach for me? I'll teach one of their classes later. I just... I can't do anything this morning," I groaned, burped, gagged, and curled up into a trembling ball of grouchy, sick hippie.

"Okay. Anything else?" 

"Bring me a barf bucket? And some water?" 

"Okay," Tammo rushed out the tent and up the million stairs. 

If/when Tammo gets sick, I'm gonna need to take such good care of him. Holy bananas. 

I staggered up to the kitchen area around breakfast, then collapsed onto one of the dog hair blanketed porch couches.  

I want antibiotics. Now, my belly rumbled portentously.

"I can go into town and get the antibiotics for you," Nele offered. 

"That would be so great. Thanks, Nele..." 

"Are you sure you want to take antibiotics?" another well-meaning volunteer crouched beside me. 

"Yes. I'm sure." 

"But do you know what they do?" 

"Yes, they kill all the good stuff in your gut too," I replied, starting to feel that all-too-familiar anger that arises when hippies tell me to lay off western medicine.  

"They kill everything, that's why they're called "anti"," the volunteer continued. 

GOD. REALLY? 

"I know they kill everything. That's why I'm going to take a lot of probiotics to reestablish my gut flora."

"But why not give yourself a few days to just feel the pain? Sit with it. Lie in the sunshine and put your hand on your belly. Try some charcoal and grapefruit seed extract."  

"Here's the thing," I tried to keep my temper under control, "I don't believe in that stuff anymore. Natural medicine has hardly ever done anything for me. And if I don't believe it will work, it's definitely not going to." 

"But sometimes our bodies just need to feel pain. Sometimes we just need to stay with it." 

How dare you tell me what my body needs to feel. You don't know the kind of pain I've stayed with through my life. You don't know how long it took me to decide that I was allowed to NOT feel pain. 

"Your body can heal itself."  

"Not if I'm so resistant to these natural medicines. Which I am. Right now." 

"You're saying you're resistant to your own body. How can you, as a massage therapist, believe that?" 

I mumbled something inaudible, anger and sadness making me mute. 

I just wanted some fucking antibiotics, for the love of all things dairy. 

"What do you think you do when you give a massage?" the volunteer pressed. 

"I think I'm helping people relax and feel better," I gave a curt reply and turned away.

The volunteer left at that point, probably realizing that he wasn't going to get anywhere with me.  

Getting sick around hippies can be the worst. No matter how wonderful their intentions may be. 

...

This reminds me of what happened in Thailand last year. When I was finally diagnosed with chronic sinusitis after eight long months of suffering, was given antibiotics, and then judged by a large portion of my Thai massage classmates for taking the medicine I'd been prescribed. Instead of drinking some traditional tea, or some Eastern herbal medicine like that. 

Nele came back with my antibiotics about three hours later. 

"Did the pharmacist say how to take them?" 

"No, I just asked for eight and she gave me them. She was watching TV the whole time and didn't care." 

Oh, goody. 

So I spent the next few hours running to and from the bathroom, trying not to vomit, and attempting to contact as many of my doctor friends as possible. 

I finally figured out how many antibiotics to take at about three o'clock. And kept the antibiotics down until four thirty. At which point I hurled magnificently over  the sink of a compositing toilet and into the unsuspecting jungle below. 

Crap. 

I went back to the Cave and snuggled up under a blanket on a straw mat around the fire pit. Where I'd been sleeping for most of the afternoon, because it was significantly closer to the toilet than my scorpion infested bed in the Submarine.  

This is normal, jungle life, Bourget. Parasites, scorpions, and toilets that are WAY too far away. Don't complain. If you can't take it, don't be in the fucking jungle. That's all there is. 

I was feeling significantly less like hell around dinner time, so indulged in a vegetarian curry 

"How are you feeling?" Nele asked me. 

"Well... less like being hit like a truck, and more like, have been hit by a truck." 

 I crawled into bed that night (after checking for scorpions), feeling utterly wiped out. 

And it's only the first week of the new year. Holy bananas. I don't want to tempt the universe by saying "things can only get better from here... "

... but I sure hope they get better from here.