Messy

I’m sorry there hasn’t been more posting happening here recently. I wish there had been, and I mentally start posts all the time, planning them out as I walk down the street or prepare dinner or grocery shop. I think of the things I could tell you all, the little stories, like how recently I was sitting on the couch early on a Saturday morning, watching a little TV, and I had just turned on the ceiling fan and sat down and suddenly, plop!, something landed, a little wetly, on my shoulder. I took a BIG breath, and stamped down the overwhelming urge to hurl my body off the couch, to shake whatever it was off, off, OFF! I slowly turned my head to see a little black gecko peering back at me. He must have been chilling out on the fan when I turned it on. I set him free in the jungle-y alley running alongside my apartment’s back door.

I think about telling you how much I love my new gym. There are a set of huge fancy hotels that run along the Malecon (the street which fronts the ocean – named George Washington, of all things) and I joined the gym in one that is located just one block from my house and I go and work out on the elliptical machine and then one of the gym guys helps me think of interesting weight stuff to do and although it’s only been a few weeks, I am so excited to have a regular exercise schedule for the first time since high school, really. There’s a rooftop pool at this hotel as well, and access to it was included with my gym membership, and although I wasn’t really even thinking about it when I joined, it has turned out to be the most wonderful place to escape the city for brief periods. It gets a wonderful breeze since it’s close to the ocean and elevated, and I get a towel and lie in the sun and read a book or take a swim and it’s quiet and clean. I’ve been going a lot since I haven’t been working and today a bunch of my friends came as well and we made a whole Saturday of it.

The thing that blocks those peppy little mental posts however, is that I’m not really very happy right now. I am happy, quite happy, in small doses. I have friends I really like, and an actual social life that I’m finding quite fulfilling, which is not something I really expected at this stage. I have a lot of time and I am doing more nothing than I think I’ve done in years – in fact, most of the last two weeks of my life has consisted of going to the gym, reading, hanging out with friends, and watching movies. This nothing makes me happy in small doses – I can’t believe how wonderful it is to have time to go to the gym and do a whole, long routine, without the pressing dread of how I’m going to get my reading done for Metaphysics tomorrow. I love staying up late re-reading the 7th Harry Potter. I love that I can meet my friends for dinner any night of the week and that I can plan a long weekend away (next weekend I’m going to the kite-surfing capital of the world on the North Coast. I’m so excited!). I haven’t had the ability to do that much in the last four years.

But. But the truth is that outside and around and in all the times other than these small doses of fresh air, of light, of fun and relaxation, I feel very very messy. And I’m having a hard time writing about this messiness. I can write about true feelings – good or bad, but messiness trips me up more – things are not clear in my own mind and I am disturbed by how I feel.

It is of course, partly that I am effectively unemployed. I am working on finding a new position, but although I have a couple promising leads, it may take a couple more weeks to track them down and make a couple of site visits. I am disheartened by the lack of organization and drive and proficiency I have been presented with. I am trying so hard to let go of my American expectations, expectations which I believe are ultimately not good for us, expectations which I see as working us into the ground, expectations which I find myself frustratedly using to make grand cases against people around me here. It’s such an endless process for me – I let go of my expectations, I accept that things just work differently here, and then I find myself angry again the next day, all zen forgotten.

And if that was all – if I could tell that my feelings were occasioned by a lack of purpose and place, if I thought that the intense messiness that I currently feel would be mostly erased by a well-fitting job, I wouldn’t worry about it. I am optimistic that even though it might take a couple more weeks, one of my leads will turn up something that will be good for me, and I do think this will help. I think that a schedule, and a purpose, and being part of an organization that is doing something to combat the conditions I see around me will improve my mindset a ton, will help to clean up a bit of that messiness.

But the dark truth is that I don’t like this country right now. I really don’t want to admit this to you. I re-wrote that sentence multiple times before I finally got down to it, slowly unwrapping the deception I would like to cover my ugly feelings with. I got up and went to grocery store after writing it, letting it sit there on the page, thinking through what it meant to post that sentence on the worldwide web as I chose between all the different kinds of fresh breads. I even came back and changed it. You’ll notice I chose the noun country instead of other possibilities and that I end the sentence with a lovely little clause meant to temper, to contain, to limit my ugliness. I am so hoping this is a temporary, culture shock feeling.

It is unfair to feel this way about a country and a people. That you, from your tiny little, one-person perspective, do not like them. And I know so many people who love this country. And I have never felt this way before. Despite being in situations that were hard or trying, I have never felt that I couldn’t unearth redeeming qualities somewhere that could help me to gain a better picture of those around me, that could help me get the better of dislike.

I am having real trouble doing that right now. And this feels like an exceptionally dark thing to me, too dark, really, to write about on my “year in the DR” blog. It feels unwieldy and unjust and I don’t want to admit it about myself. I am posting about it nonetheless, because I feel a little stuck and I sincerely believe in the power and importance of putting it all out there and because I want you all to know who and where I am, even if I’m not very proud of it at the moment. Let’s hope that in a couple more months I can write a post talking about how much this has changed, okay?

Look for more posts on geckos, coming soon :).