Ashamed for Struggling -- Lake Atitlan, Guatemala

I’m starting this post from the impressively uncomfortable mattress of mi carpa. Broken springs stab my ribcage, my hip, my ankle. I hear tourists trudging towards the forest, huffing and puffing and creaking open the ornate wooden gate. I hear them stop suddenly as they stare at the mountainous stairs looming ahead, and the perfunctory, “you’ve got to be kidding me,” escapes from their gaping jaws. 

"My favorite part about living in the tent at the bottom of the stairs," I told Saraswati one afternoon, "is overhearing the sighs of despair when people see the mountain ahead of them."

Sometimes I yell, “good luck” to the woebegone folks outside my tent. It makes me laugh, although I’m sure it just seems a wee bit creepy and stalker-esque to them.

I don’t really care.

Sixteen more days until I board my bus for Antigua. Five more space holding shifts, seven more yoga classes, sixteen more days running rushing up to the toilet at 5:30 on the dot.

Sixteen more sunrises over the lake. Sixteen more desayunos of papaya, piña, avena, and huevos. And tortillas. Siempre tortillas. Tortillas, tortillas, tortillas.

Two more pizza nights.

Two more pancake Sundays.

Sixteen more nights of shaking out my sheets for scorpions.

God knows how many more hot ginger lemon teas at Shambala. Probably a lot.

Sixteen more days of feeling out of place in a hippie community. Out of place, frustrated, and wondering if I'm just the kind of person who will never find a place to call home.

As anyone who reads my blog can tell (quite easily), I’ve been struggling lately. A lot. And because I've been trying to be transparent in order to let my community support me, I've been honest about my struggles.

If they can't feel you, they can't support you. 

Some days are harder than others, and I cherish the fleeting moments of total contentment. When I grasp a new concept in Spanish. When a yoga class goes well and my students let me know.  When we have burritos for lunch and the kitchen ladies are liberal with the queso. When the kitchen ladies joke with me and I understand them. When I get the water temperature in the legendarily fickle showers spot on.

Sigh. Bliss.

But on the whole, I feel like I've got a full-blown war raging inside. The war that ensues when you know you're in the wrong place, doing the wrong thing, and you've just set the intention to make the most of your final days. Waiting it out without checking out. And I haven't been hiding my raging war. But maybe I should have. Maybe I should have kept my problems to myself.

Maybe people don't want to "feel me" in order to "support me." Maybe they only have space for their own troubles and can't cope with mine.

Which is fair. 
 
“How did you sleep last night?” I was asked by a Forest colleague.

“You know, not so well. It’s crazy how the changing weather has really affected my joints. I was in a lot of pain last night because of my psoriatic arthritis. When I'm at home, I can take some fish oil, which helps. But we don't have a lot of anti-inflammatories in our diet here.”

Just beans, beans, rice and beans, beans, rice and beans....

“How did your shift go?” the same colleague asked later.

“Honestly, it was really tiring. I’m not doing so well dealing with groups of people right now. The cafe was super chaotic this afternoon and I’m feeling crazy introverted right now. So the shift itself was easy, but I’m finding that “hospitality” really isn’t for me at this moment. I just can’t engage people the way I want to.” 

After six months of "space holding," it’s turtle time for this introvert. When I get to Antigua, I'm going to go to Spanish classes four hours a day, eat meals with the family in my homestay, and then just hold up in my room. FOR HOURS. Studying Spanish, playing Cecile, painting postcards, and watching all the documentaries Netflix has to offer. ALL OF THEM. 

This same colleague has been consistently sharp with me lately. Sharp in a way that has left me feeling crummy for entire afternoons, mulling over the conversation and where I went wrong. Playing it over and over in my mind, like a broken record, asking myself, "am I overreacting? am I reading into it too much? do I need to just chill the fuck out?"

These are my emotions. Don't make others responsible for them. 

When I finally asked my colleague to explain the sharpness, she said it was a reaction to all my negativity. I asked for examples, and she provided the example of when I complained about my psoriatic arthritis giving me pain.

“I’ve been struggling with pain in my leg and you don’t see me complaining about that. I guess I’ve been harsh because I really believe in the law of attraction. We attract what we talk about. I can’t be around your negativity. I have a lot of stuff going on in my life now, and I’m trying to deal with it by being positive. And your negativity makes that hard for me.”

“Oh,” I struggled to keep back tears. And failed.

So. This is how my experiment of "letting people feel me so they could support me" went. 
 
“I just need to have better boundaries around you," my colleague continued. 

“With me and my negativity?”

“It’s not just with you.”

“I’m sad that I’ve become that person.”

Maybe this is what happens when I linger in a place, a place where I don’t fit, too long. I become the person around whom people need boundaries. Which makes sense. I'm out of harmony. Everything feels discordant. And this discordance affects those around me.

Now when this colleague asks how I’m doing I smile and say, “fine.” It’s the only answer I feel she has capacity for, so it’s the only answer I give.

I never wanted to be that person, either. The one who forces smiles and fakes positivity. But I also need to be sensitive to what people can carry. Maybe MY frustration, MY sadness, MY confusion, are just too heavy for her. 

And that's okay, too. We all have our own unique windows of tolerance. My struggles don't fit within her window of tolerance right now. And that's just something I need to be aware of. To be aware of, to be sensitive to, to respect.

I left the conversation feeling worse than before. Heavier. More depressed, because I felt like my emotions, my experience, had become toxic to those around me. Like I was spreading some sort of infectious disease that I needed to quarantine within my journal, my blog (sorry guys), or my heart.

I've learned something from this situation. I've learned that by not allowing people the space to express how they’re really feeling, by somehow communicating that only positivity and happiness and rainbows and butterflies are allowed, you end up alienating those in your life who need the most love and support. By making them feel even more like shit. Not only are they struggling -- now they feel ashamed for struggling.

Win. 

So. 

I want to be the kind of person who creates space for people to express their suffering. I want to acknowledge their feelings as valid, as important, as part of the human experience. I want to do my best to never create this feeling of shame in another human being. 

At the same time, I want to respect what other people can tolerate healthily. I don't want to take my suffering to those who are already struggling under the weight of their own pain. That's not loving. And it's incredibly egocentric.