Senior Year (Day Nine): What I Learned From A Third World Country

“I don't need someone to understand.

Just as the ferocity of the lion could never understand the meekness of the lamb, you would not be able to understand the many sharp fractures of my heart and the few dull edged shards that are left of my mind.

I would advise you to be cautious. I am wrapped in barbed wire and covered with thorns; for I have a fragile soul. I am easily broken. The rubble of what use to be is proof of the abandon rooms that were once filled with love.

I don't need someone to understand.

But sometimes I just need someone to show that they care- to fight through my piercing forms of self-defense because my mind is an immensely dark and decapitatinly sad place. It gets really lonely here in my graveyard of emotions. I just don't want to feel the disorienting suffocation anymore.

I don't need someone to understand. I just need someone to hold me close and tight and show me that I am more than what I feel.”

~ June 25th, 2014, 5:20 AM.

I remember the night I wrote that so clearly, or should I say morning? The sun was rising, spilling a pale yellow light onto the concrete walls, it danced as the lace curtains swayed from the breeze flowing through the pane lacking window. The sound of my roommate sleeping above me -occasionally I’d hear a sigh or moan- followed by the squeaking and creaking of the wooden bunk beds.

I had been up all night. Sleep had never graced me. While the rest of the house slept, there I laid in an unfamiliar bed, in a third world country. I had left everything I had ever known. Literally, everything was different. If you have never been on an international mission’s trip, you may not understand, and that’s okay. But it’s odd the way everything is the same, yet simultaneously and completely different in almost every way possible.

Earlier that night I had a conversation with a guy on my team and it had left my heart feeling heavy and my shoulders burdened. Up to that point, I had been jaded…….. really jaded. To be honest, I really wasn’t interested in opening up to any of these people, especially the other three guys on our team.

It’s not that I didn’t like them. The complete opposite was my problem. I knew how much I really, truly, and honestly liked each and every one of them. I had even told one of my best friends a few days before I left that I was trying my best to not get close with these people because I knew I would get close with them and it would be amazing while we were there. But once we got home, we would all part, each going on our separate ways and the friendships would be all too soon be forgotten. They would fall apart.

And I would fall apart with them.

And that was something that I could not emotionally afford. I could not deal with another person abandoning me, like so many others already had. I would do whatever I could to make sure that did not happen, much less 15 times over again.

However, one night I finally let my guard down……. but only slightly. I told him about my life, what I had been through, what I was going through. And we bonded. But throughout the exchange of emotions in that circular guest house, I remained as distant as I possibly could.    

At the time, I was in the midst of my struggle with depression. Every part of me was overshadowed by a darkness that was so black it was physically suffocating.   I lay in bed that night, curled into a ball, staring into the physical nothingness that was the cliché metaphor of my life.

His statements replayed in my head.

“I don’t understand but….”

This statement was repeated over and over again. 

His words etched and clawed themselves into my brain. They repeated like an old, scratched, and broken record. My brain, their gramophone.  Frustration leaked in, bringing an annoying regret with it. I feared that I had said all the wrong things. I wished to say different things, or to not let myself slip in my stance for emotional isolation.  

It’s not about understanding! I was never asking you to understand things that I can’t even understand myself.

There was a lot that I learned that night.

First, I am a coward. Unfortunately, I did not possess the kind of strength people seem to believe I have and I run away from what I need.  I violently push away all the people who I know I need. I purposely distance myself from the people that will help me heal; isolate myself from the people who love me.

That’s heartbreaking.

And it hurts me to be this way. It’s not easy but I feel that it is my only form of security, only means of protection. I choose to deny people of myself because of the fear of rejection or abandonment.  My life seems to be a constant struggle between wanting to hide, to be invisible, but wanting to reveal more of myself to the world.  

And that is something I have really had to work on in the past few months. It has been hard and terrifying. But it’s getting easier. I’m learning that not everything should be revealed to everybody. There are times, when others are not emotionally ready or equipped to bear and handle with what you may share with them. You have to be sensitive to that person as well. Yes, it is your story, your life, your lessons learned, but some people are not always stable enough to handle the weight of those things.

Secondly, vulnerability is strength. Most people see a moment of vulnerability as a sign of weakness; however I see it as a sign of great strength. Vulnerability is the neon sign pointing to strength. It takes a strong and secure person to be weak and sometimes people are so weak they do not have the strength to be vulnerable. Sometimes, you are so fragile all you can maintain is strength. Fragility is such a fickle thing, don’t you think? This is one of the biggest lessons I feel I have ever learned.

When I was in Africa, I did not have the strength to allow myself moments of weakness. I did not sustain the ability to say that I really wasn’t okay, to ask for help. I knew what I needed; I just did not have the courage to ask for it.

What I needed was to be held. I needed to be told that everything was going to be okay. I needed to cry all the broken pieces of myself out, while someone held me close and tight, without question, without ever letting go, without judgment.

But I never allowed myself that moment. It’s really hard to deny how you feel but it’s even more difficult embracing it, dealing with it, and moving on.

So I remained guarded and looking back on it now, I really regret this. I regret not sharing who I was, not offering all that I had. I’m sorry that the Kenyans, that my team saw a poor representation of Chase, simply because of fear. But that is what happens when you are controlled by fear.

And I am so sorry.    

Don’t get me wrong, I do not at all regret going to Kenya, not in the least. My heart ache’s every day because I miss it so badly, I long to be there. I just regret my actions, or I suppose my lack -there-of actions to bond with my team because I was fearful.  

This trip taught me courage, what true strength is, honest vulnerability, how to be grateful, how to not be so much of a picky eater, to stop and appreciate the small things, to love, to live, to hope and to trust. Kenya radically changed my life, and I will go there until the day I die.  

But what it taught me was that change takes time. I came home frustrated, upset, and confused on why I still felt depressed. My cup had been overflowing with love, and I could feel it, but why didn’t I feel any different.

Why did I still feel broken?

Change takes time. Healing is a process. Kenya gave me the tools that I needed to heal, to put all the little pieces of myself back together again, but I had to get up off my victim couch and use them.  

And I am SO thankful for that.

It seemed completely impossible, until it was done. It always does though.

It’s the sleepless nights when we find ourselves. It’s when we have bags under our eyes that our burdens are lifted and it’s when we are immobilized by fear that strength is gained.