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lovingpet -> RE: I Admit It I........ (1/29/2010 7:15:11 PM)
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Get comfy. This is going to be a long one...
I admit I am broken up so deeply inside I don't know what to do. Through my teens and in college I did overseas humanitarian work. I saw some of the most heartwrenching things that haunt this world. I even had a little one I cared for while I was on one of these efforts and whom I would have adopted had I not still been in high school at the time die of starvation six months after I returned home. He didn't see his first birthday.
I have apparently dealt with fibro and a myriad of other problems it seems since birth. Those trips to go pour concrete floors in the hillside shacks were some of the hardest, most testing work I have ever done and really tested not just my body, but my heart and spirit given my conditions (not known at the time). I cried all the way home only wishing I could have done more every single time. I knew I had made a difference, but I also knew it was but a drop in the ocean of pain and hopelessness of these people I had come to cherish. One of my last trips was capped off by getting stuck on the city subway to meet our bus out to the airport because a man carrying the emaciated corpse of his little toddler had jumped onto the tracks in his dispair. How could I leave? There was too much to do. I had no choice, however. I would take one more trip after that one and was compelled to try to raise funds and return on a permanent basis. All the organizations I had worked with in the past refused to send me on my own because I was female and denied funding.
I moved on and have tried to go on with life ever since. Those times out in the fields have burned images and impressions upon my mind that cannot ever be erased. I will NEVER forget. I struggle every day and keep on persevering every single day through the exhaustion, the pain, the illness, the failed treatments, the clueless doctors, the excruciating therapies, all of it just in the hopes of one day being whole again and finding my own wings and returning to those places I left my heart so many years ago.
Now one of the groups I worked with years ago is making a call for volunteers to go starting in April to spend at least one week a month working with building projects and elder and orphan care in Haiti. Several people immediately remembered and thought of me. They called me offering to help me with renewing my passport and getting my immunizations in order to accompany them. I haven't told them no, but I don't know how I could. I can't even manage to keep my home clean and my children cared for. How do I think I am going to go and put on roofs or run after little ones that don't sleep due to the trauma they've been through? I feel completely useless, helpless against their suffering. I feel like the purpose for my existence has dried up and I have no direction or clue anymore what my whole life's story supposed to be about anymore. I have NEVER felt this way. I've always known in my heart where I belonged, even as a small child who had only seen things on television. My world has collapsed around me and I doubt anyone understands. No one can hold my hand. And I don't want them to. I don't want encouragement or sympathy. As far as I'm concerned, I don't deserve it. Somehow I have failed. People will suffer needlessly because of some shortcoming in me.
I know no one came on here expecting to be burdened in this way and for that I apologize. These are words I can't utter out loud and tears I must cry. I lay it down here and I take it to my G-d like a small child whose only lovie in the whole world just got torn to pieces. I can't fix it. All I can do is let go. I just hope that in doing so, some way, I will find peace.
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