DO NOT WANT

I don't know what I want. That's kind of why I'm here in Baltimore doing MVS in the first place: because I don't know what I want. I don't know if I want to go to grad school. I don't know if I want to get married. I don't know if I want to live abroad. Taking a year to stall seemed like a pretty great solution leaving school, the idea being it would give me that much more time to figure out what I want.

I haven't, yet. But I am learning more and more what I don't want. I always knew I didn't want to wake up at 45 with a minivan in my driveway in the suburbs. I'm sure some people are or would be more than happy to wake up and find that as their life; I am not one of them. That sounds strangely like a white-washed picket fence hell to me, to put it bluntly.

Now I'm seeing that I also don't want to wake up at 32 in a "cute" or "artsy" but still technically-in-the-city neighborhood with a Prius parked in front of my townhouse. I KNOW a lot of people who have or would like this life, and a lot of people who are working towards it. And I see the temptation. I could get up early on Saturdays and buy vegetables and eggs from the farmer's market, I could drive my Prius to my non-profit but well-respected job, I could go to church on Sundays and gallery openings on Fridays. But I don't want that. When I imagine myself in that life, it's just too easy to see... I see myself in Gap jeans, with photos of kids in orphanages framed on my walls to prove, "See? I went there. That makes me a good person." I guess it just feels like it would be such a false life- that artificial, mostly-for-show, self-righteous string of semi-good deeds made to soothe my guilty conscience. It seems like such a half-assed attempt to feel good about my lifestyle without losing any of the comfort, ease, or glamor of an upper-middle class life. Please hold me accountable: I will never own dishes from pottery barn. I will never drive a Prius. I will shop at farmer's markets, but I will not act like that makes me a better person than anyone else, or that the purchase of one local head of lettuce off-sets every sin I've commited (food-related or not). Waking up to this life is one of my newest and strongest fears, because I can so easily see it happening.

The question becomes, then, do I want to wake up at 24 (or 32, or 45) still working a full-time, very difficult, stressful job for no pay? Maybe. Do I want to wake up at 24 (or 32, or 45) in Rwanda (or Bangladesh, or Laos) working in exchange for room and board and (if I'm lucky) vaccines? Maybe. Do I want to wake up at 32 (or 45, but Lord knows NOT 24) married with kids and NO minivan, NO picket fence, maybe a mud hut, some goats, and mosquito nets? Maybe.

I don't know what I want. But maybe I can narrow it down enough from things I don't want? Probably not. Thank God I have 9 months left to stall. Hey- I just realized- if I act fast, I could have a baby while under the MVS health plan! 9 months... do I want to wake up at 23 and a half with a baby and no home or job?

....maybe...... as long as said baby doesn't trick me into buying pottery barn dishes or a Prius.

addendum to cover my ass:
My not wanting to be 32 with a prius or 45 with a minivan does NOT mean I have any issue with individuals who are 32, or 45, or own a prius, or own a minivan. I fully intent to live to both 32 and 45, and look forward to it. I don't want a Prius (and the caricature of a life that I imagine would come along with it) because I don't think it would make me happy, not because I think it's wrong. Indeed, if people simply CAN NOT walk, or bike, or take public transportation, and actually NEED a car (which we can dispute later) I'd rather they buy a Prius than a hummer. I certainly have no beef with farmer's markets, I think they're great, we get most of our vegetable from one now, but it just seems so easily to slip into a cliche of doing all the environmentally sound things that are fashionable or make you feel cool or make your life easier, and stopping there. Again, I think it's great when anyone makes any kind of effort to limit carbon footprints, support conservation, etc, etc, but, for me, doing only the fashionable things would not work. Or rather, it would work, and it would work so well, and be so easy, that it is awfully tempting, and I don't want to fall into that. Please see this as what it is: a naive, idealistic 22-year-old trying to figure out who to be when she grows up. I know I can't know now who I'll be or what I'll want at any age, but don't tell me you weren't asking the same question when you were my age: Who am I? and perhaps more importantly, Who will I become?

As things settle more or less into a routine here, living and working has become, well... routine. Things that seemed so exciting at first have turned into simple facts. At first, walking to work through scary neighborhoods was just terrifying, but then it became exciting. Now I'm struck less with feelings of awe and interest than I am with boredom and, at times, frustration. It isn't that I ever enjoyed seeing all the used syringes, broken glass, empty liquor bottles, etc, so much as at first it was new, and new things are always exciting (to me). I was struck, more or less, by the novelty of it all, and felt so fortunate to be able to experience a new and very different place. Now I find myself feeling angry at people leaving dangerous substances and objects on the street, disgusted by the amounts of trash, and both angry and disgusted with the people (usually young men) who yell things at me as I walk by their homes, businesses, etc. I find myself having conversations with these men in my head, yelling at them for suggesting the things they do, explaining that I have a degree from a very well respected college and have chosen to live far below the poverty line this year in order to serve the homeless in this city, explaining to them that I have every right to be in this neighborhood because I LIVE here, telling them that they can kindly go to hell, etc. etc. These mental conversation rarely use polite language.

Community living has also lost some of its initial charm. Like anything else, living in an intentional community is most trying when other things aren't going well. It's one thing for us to all get along (in the Voluntary Service unit, as well as RHHP residents as a whole) while we're all feeling fulfilled and loved and happy, but it is quite another to respect and respond to everyones needs when we just want to be alone, or to watch something on TV, or to use the computer, or to make food, or to take a long shower, or anything else that might (and usually does) clash with someone else's needs and expectations. But we're learning.

I guess I've been thinking a lot about times that I remember as being better and easier than life seems now. I miss college like crazy, especially having my roommate to talk to and hang out with all the time. I miss the feelings I had while living and working in Nicaragua and Kenya. I miss the feeling that I was experiencing and a part of something truly great, something that made a difference, something that would change me and the people I was working for and with.

When I'm honest with myself, though, I know that while I was living those times in college or Nicaragua or Kenya, I went through the same honeymoon-to-routine transition that I am going through here and now. Sure, most of what I remember (or don't, haha) from college are the nights going out to Froggy's or the cow, wine nights at the Tavern, whispering with Angela in the back of art lecture in Dittmann. But there were also so many nights I cried myself to sleep, was angry at friends, was up until 2 writing papers, spent hours and hours drawing dead babies... I just chose not to remember those times, because they weren't the ones that mattered the most. I remember taking long naps in the hammock on the porch in Nicaragua, walking through the village and hearing little kids yelling "Margarita! Margarita! Maggie! Hola!" and waving enthusiastically. I remember the mangoes. Oh God, the mangoes... and from Kenya I remember making balloon animals at orphanages, swimming in the Indian Ocean, going to prayer services where 4 or more languages were being used simultaneously, but I chose to forget the rough times. I have NEVER felt so lonely as I did in Kenya, I have never been so sick as when I had dysentery and an internal parasite, and I have never been so spiritually confused and angry as I was seeing the slums. But even the bad things that I do remember I tend to chose to view positively- the slums were horrible, but taught me to seek (and find) Jesus in the midst of living hell. The hospital with the dirt floor and dead children lying on cots and people openly bleeding from various wounds was disgusting, but showed me where my heart REALLY is when it comes to "the least of these" (far away).

So now as I stay awake, listening to gunshots and sirens, worrying that I'm not smart enough, strong enough, or good enough for my job or community, I remind myself that no time in my life was perfect. Weren't there tears? Wasn't there pain? Wasn't there horrible, horrible diarrhea? The answer is, inevitably, yes (though not to ALL of those questions in every situation). I also take comfort in the fact that, weeks or months or years from now, when I'm longing for the greatness of community and inner-city living and direct service to homeless, I will remember the good times more than the bad, that I will start to see the bad times as good times, and that I will appreciate all of the pain and anger and disgusting things as opportunities that shaped me into a more well-rounded person.

Maybe if I tell myself enough that one day I'll miss, or at least have learned from, the syringes and gunshots and cat calls I will be better able to deal with them now. You have to take the dysentery along with the mangoes.

addendum: if you have or are recently recovering from dysentery, you should not, under any circumstances, attempt to eat a mango. i'm am using that as a figure of speech. if you have or are recovering from dysentery, please eat plain rice, plain bread, and bananas. also, take as much cipro as you can get your hands on. try to be discrete about asking your kenyan host father for prayers about it because, culturally, you maybe shouldn't be talking to him about shit, least of all copious amounts of it quickly leaving your body. lastly, you should be lying down and crying, not reading my blog. thanks.

this monday i got my first official client at work. well, i didn't realize he was going to be my client until yesterday, but he came on monday. i did his intake evaluation and mental health stuff and everything (still pretty sure there is a legal issue somewhere in that, but whatev) and we're off! he's officially a resident at project PLASE (http://www.projectplase.org/) and officially my client!

so imagine my excitement when he came (LATE!) to our house meeting yesterday, clearly intoxicated. well, ok, clearly to toni, one of the other counselors. i would have missed it completely. i'm terrible at telling when people are drunk (for many reasons we won't get into here) but toni is great at it. she asked him point blank if he was high, and he said no, he had only had a few beers, but hadn't been using any illicit drugs. he is in recovery for cocaine and heroin, and it is project PLASE policy that no resident use any drug OR alcohol while they are a resident, regardless of ANYTHING. so we had to talk to him, go over the rules, write him up a warning, move his curfew, and put him on contract.

it isn't my fault that he drank (especially since i didn't know he was my client at the time...) but i can't help but feel a little bad, and hope that neither of us screw up his life or the opportunity he has while he's living here. so many people get their shit together and are really able to take advantage of the multitude of opportunities they have while they're here... and so many fall again and again into relapse, refuse to take meds, move out or get kicked out, and end up on the street again. somehow my bachelor's degree in art and my 2 years of working at a zoo didn't prepare me to ensure that someone be successful here... maybe nothing could. but Lord knows i'll be doing what i can.

this wednesday the "therapeutic art group" i've started at work had its first meeting. it's "therapeutic art", not "art therapy" because i'm not a liscenced art therapist. also, i feel things like glitter paint and salt dough christmas ornaments might have a place in therapeutic art, but perhaps not in art therapy.

anyway, i was really excited, but also nervous about the group. i've taught art a lot, but never with adults, and certainly not to homeless adults with severe mental illnesses and multiple drug addictions. but it was incredible. all i did was give everyone a giant, thick piece of white paper, some magazines, scissors, and glue, and tell them to make a "who am i" collage. i was afraid that they would mutiny, that they would see how silly and juvenile that idea is and refuse to do it, and then maybe attack me with the scissors. but they didn't! they starting looking through the magazines, cutting out applicable words and pictures. everyone kind of settled on a theme for their piece, and an hour and 20 minutes later when i said we needed to start thinking about cleaning up, they were genuinely disappointed. they said it was the most relaxed they had felt in a long time, that it was so nice to get to sit and be quiet and make things, focusing only on the task at hand. we then took a few minutes to explain the significance of what we had created, why we had chosen what we had. as they talked about having their children taken from them, about being prostitutes, about being in and out of rehab for cocaine and heroin addictions, about God and about family, they started crying. Well, three of the women did, anyway. And it wasn't just talking about their own pieces, people were crying as they listened to others' stories as well. it was so, so beautiful. after we were done, we all hugged. they wouldn't stop talking about how good they felt, and how much they're looking forward to next week. i couldn't, either.

when i got home, as we were finished up dinner, one of the asylum seekers (refugees) from cameroon came in, wearing a suit and grinning. his asylum had been granted that day, so he is now legally in the us, he can get a job and a driver's licence. after 8 months of basically not existing, having no income and no way to get an income, having no way to get home and no way to get his family here, after hours of interviews and hundreds of pages of paperwork, he has his asylum. to celebrate, i made him a burrito (uh, look, it's what we had, ok?) and sat and talked with him about the process and what he's going to do now. the next step, he told me, is to apply for his family to come over. he has a wife and three children, two boys and a girl. i asked about his children, and he got very quiet. they are 12, 6, and a year old, he told me. the youngest is a boy, and he left when he was just four months old. staring at his half eaten burrito, he said "but i don't know him. four months, that's it. now he is a year. i don't even have any pictures of him." i didn't know what to say, so i didn't say anything. i thought of my nephew, who will be visiting in a few weeks, on his 4-month birthday. i thought about how that might affect him, or the refugee from iraq who has a 2 1/2 year old daughter he hasn't seen in two years. "perhaps now they will come", the asylum seeker turned asylee said. "perhaps now i will ask for some pictures to be sent."

tonight i went to an hiv class for work. i thought it was just a general information kind of class, but it was actually a workshop for people who have been recently diagnosed with HIV; it was still helpful, of course, very informative about transmission, treatments, etc, but i felt a little bit out of place. i did learn a lot, though, like how maryland has the highest rates of HIV of any state in the US and how most of those were located in baltimore. they even broke it down by zip code, showing where most of the infections in baltimore were located. the zip code at the top? 21217, where i live. the rates are between 13 and 15%.

during the workshop, though, something hit me. we have all these things of hand sanitizer all throughout the house where i work, people have to wash their hands before they touch anything, all our dishes are washed with bleach, stuff like that. we have several HIV positive and some AIDS defined residents, as well as several residents with other contagious blood borne and other diseases. i always assumed that all the hand washing precautions, the special little sleeve over the thermometer for taking temperatures, the plastic gloves i have to wear when doing anything medical with the clients, all of that, was to protect me (and the other people in the house without HIV or hepatitis or whatever else) from contracting those diseases. i thought it was a little silly, you know, since of course you can't get those illnesses from sharing dishes, bathrooms, etc, but i thought it was just a universal precaution to protect the healthy from the ill. tonight at the class, i sneezed, and i sneezed into my hand instead of my sleeve, like you're supposed to. "oops" i thought. "oh well". then i realized that every other person in the room was HIV positive. then i realized that all that hand washing, disinfecting, bleaching, plastic sleeves, and rubber gloves weren't to protect me. that's to protect them FROM me, from my germs. from the things i bring in, from the things my body can fight off. how stupid and upper class and privileged of me to assume that all of those things were for my benefit, and how self-righteous of me to be proud of the fact that i don't mind sharing dishes and cups and whatever else. it's not about me, it's about them. it's been a long time since i've felt so much shame at a realization of such a misconception, because it applies to so much else in my life. i've spent 22 years assuming it was about me, for me, because of me. i think i'm finally seeing that it's not.

i hope i haven't given anyone anything, because these people are quickly blurring the lines between clients and friends.

so, work has remained enjoyable. last week was especially great, as i obtained several days' worth of food. first, i was given a 50 pound bag of potatoes, because the shelter had 3 and couldn't eat them all before they went bad. then, i was taken out to lunch with all the other volunteers, which was quite exciting. i got a brownie for desert, but it was actually 2 separate brownies, both huge, so i saved one. when i got back to the office, my boss gave me a doughnut. well, first she just offered it, and i said no since i was full from lunch and had just eaten a brownie. but she was quite insistent, so i finally took it and wrapped it in a napkin to save with the brownie. then one of the clients came in (one of my favorites) and asked if i liked pie. i thought he was just curious, so i told him yeah, i love pie. he pulled a little boxed cherry pie out of his bag, and put it on my desk. then he saw that i had, in addition to the pie, a doughnut and a brownie, and he scowled at me and said "eat something healthy!" and pulled a banana out of his bag and added it to my stash. then yesterday i was put in charge of organizing and re-stocking the food pantry here, and got to take home a giant bag of dried cherries for my efforts (they have the STRANGEST random canned goods here, i swear...). then this morning the same guy who gave me the pie and banana gave me some of his hot chocolate. basically, the point of this entry is that it would be foolish to think that walking a mile and a half to and from work every day would result in weight loss. this job is going to cause me to gain weight, and i'm not sure i'm going to protest. after all, we can't really afford luxuries like "food" right now, and i'm prepared to accept whatever i can.

the clients here are just incredible. i thought that it would be hard to be a caretaker (of sorts) for these people, but i find they take care of me as much as i take care of them. my favorite client and i have had multiple conversations about relationships and love and marriage, and he always calls me mags and sweetheart. reading over that, it could sound really creepy, but it isn't at all. he's in his late 50s and isn't flirting, it's very much a fraternal/paternal kind of thing. he is the oldest of 5 boys and always says how he wanted a little sister, how he would have treated her like a queen. i am more than happy to fulfil that role for him. the clients are also always telling me to be careful, and saying the worry about me walking to and from work. these fears are justified, but mostly it makes me feel loved. nothing makes me feel loved like knowing someone is thinking about me and concerned for me, you know? of course, their fears also concern me, since if anyone knows what's going on in certain neighborhoods as far as drug use and crime, it's our residents. when they say to never walk down linden, even in the day, because the gangs there are out all the time and armed, i'm going to listen. linden is the next street over from mine, by the way.

the job isn't perfect, of course. for one thing, it's really far from angela. for another, i don't get paid (i was, obviously, aware of this fact before starting, but i guess it didn't hit me until now. today i bought a diet coke on the way to work, and it was $1.50, which means i worked 4 hours and 42 minutes to earn it. 4 hours and 42 minutes for 20 ounces of diet coke. that's 4.25 ounces i earn an hour. so i won't be buying a whole lot of diet cokes. but that's ok, i'm not here for the cokes. as i resist coke-a-cola, my clients will resist cocaine, and we'll drink hot chocolate and eat pie to make it through together.