‘untitled’ probably fits this best

by Christina

It’s so much more difficult to write here. I want to imagine it’s because I’ll have to face the people that read what I write and they will inevitably ask questions. And what I had liked most about this blog was that it was a impersonal way of telling my most personal thoughts and stories. I was able to write and hide behind a computer because I was half a world away from the readers (and I’m sure I still am to some). I’ve been in a weird place since returning, there is no doubt that a huge change has taken place within me. For one, I’ve become a big cry baby. Most would’ve described me as “cold” before I left to India and I’m sure some still would but for me, what’s happening on the inside is major. Something happened in India, I’m not sure what but I feel something powerful. I get overwhelmed with such intense emotions that real tears come barreling out of my eyes. God, this is so new to me. It’s not only sadness that brings the tears, sometimes its a distant idea. I was visiting the 9/11 memorial and although I didn’t lose anyone in the attacks and never once felt remotely sad about the events – ugh, I felt such a heaviness there. Looking at the waterfalls cascade into the dark abyss, it felt so dooming and the thought of it still makes me sort of uneasy. Perhaps its a flaw in the design or maybe its just all the lives that were lost right there where I was standing, the intense agony of death and despair lingered still. So I found myself crying, it was weird. I wasn’t even trying to think morbidly about what happened there, I was just there, I had just wandered in to kill time really, having no idea I’d end up smearing my mascara with tears.

Other times I think about the beautiful things I saw on this trip. It makes me so happy that I was able to experience such beauty and such a feeling of connectedness and supreme placement. My heart still skips a beat when I think about crossing the mountains from Kaza to Keylong in India or that motorbike ride through Indonesia that ended with my broken tooth. Such amazing beauty it just stupefies you, I can barely write about those experience because they were just too powerful to assign such meager words to. It’s times like that that I feel limited by language, I want to show you what I felt, what I feel, but I don’t know how to, ack, and I’m so frustrated by this. Maybe if I stare into your eyes for long enough you’ll see it and understand, maybe if I wrap my arms around your body you’ll feel it through my embrace. We’re so tiny but something so major and powerful is happening around us and we’re often so oblivious to it.

And so my eyes well up and unlike the beginning of this trip, when I’d force the wetness back in, I have learned to let the big wet ones roll out. I wish I knew what it meant, I wish I had some conclusions, one conclusion, anything!  I’m at a loss…