And it’s not the economy. I think it is in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Please check out this video and here one alternative opinion to those that you will hear in the mainstream media. An update is coming soon, soon, soon, but right now this is really important.

Peace to one and all.

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I just saw probably one of the most intense movies I have ever seen in my life. I was left stunned. Numb. “Sin nombre.” (Without a name.) If everyone in the U.S. could see this movie and react the same way I did, maybe things might change. But everyone is not me. Many people probably left the movie with vastly different reactions than I did. Watch the trailer here and you’ll get just a taste. But the narrator in the trailer does not focus on what I did. This movie is not about a drama and ill-fated love story of too young people whose lives happen to cross. It is about the broken world we live in.

The curtains in my room now are white and blue. Just like the flags of almost all the countries of Central America. I have found where my heart lies…it lies there for now because it is what I know. But beyond a geographical location, my heart lies with all the people in this world whose reality forces them to make choices out of inhumane options in seeking a better future. We have created the systems that provide the poor of this world with only bad choices to choose from. 

I may not be making sense right now because I cannot process what I have just witnessed. A window into a reality I have glimpsed from afar but never touched. A part of me wants to touch it, to really feel it, to KNOW because I was there. The other part wants to never get close enough to really being there because then I will know that I have been taken in and it takes a lifetime to get out, if you somehow find an almost invisible way out. 

I usually bawl watching a movie like this. I can feel the pain and connect the dots to the reality that thousands of people actually experience. But this time it was so close and so real, I was only left without a word to say and only wishing I could leave this country of mine that draws the people of Central America to it as if it were one of those fly zappers, ready and waiting for its next victims. I want to tell everyone there to stay. Don’t leave your beautiful countries. But then am I condemning them to starve, to die a far too early death? All I can do now is sleep and pray for the strength and the courage to continue to fight to change the hearts and minds that will lead us to change the world in a way that will allow the poor and all of us to have good choices to choose from. Help me, help us all, dear God.

It has gotten a little easier now. But also way busier. Work can take over your life if you let it and I don’t want that to continue but in some ways it has already happened. I have recognized, though, my need for personal nourishment and interaction with other people. I have started to go to a church regularly, attend yoga classes there on Monday nights, feel like now I don’t get lost every time I leave my house by myself, and have met some cool people and tried to socialize on the weekends (albeit still tagging along with my housemates). 

My longing for nourishment of my heart and soul come from deep within and I still don’t understand all I have felt in the past few weeks. I have had one rare moment of yelling and screaming at God and then a little later realizing how dumb that was for all I was yelling at God for had nothing to do with God but rather with me, my choices, and my pain. I needed that moment though and I know God will forgive me for it. It was purging of an anger at the pain and loss I was feeling. 

I have reflected so much recently on this transition and have come to some realizations but I have ultimately decided I need to start letting go of my idea of my time in Nicaragua as the only way to live and stop comparing it to L.A. My time in the U.S. will always be different from time I spend outside of the U.S. I need to cherish all I have experienced, but open my heart to new possibilities. Life is confusing but I am so fortunate that my existential moments of crisis are my crisis. I have so much and I must continue to be grateful for these things and never forget that my privilege must move me to fight for justice for those who are oppressed, victims of injustice, and those who only live in violence and fear.

Pray for me as I work through putting a lot of pressure on myself, balancing free time and work, and still missing that boy in Nicaragua who has stolen my heart.