Last year, I was reborn from the ashes.
Two nights after I ran my first half-marathon I almost didn’t wake up. Poisoned from carbon monoxide, I crawled out of my room only to pass out and hit my head on the lip of the shower. Not even a month later I was hit by a car while running. The morning after spending many hours in the hospital, I received the official email inviting me to move to Zambia. I was mourning a relationship and struggling through a friendship at the time. I felt tested. I felt broken. I was near death twice. To quote Fleetwood Mac, I felt I couldn’t handle the seasons of my life. Rebuilding took a lot of effort. If you were in my life at the time, maybe it looked easy on your end, but trust me, it wasn’t. I had to make the choices that I wanted to make. I had to do the things that felt most like me. More especially, I had to disappoint a lot of people who I love. I’ve written a lot of cryptic musings on this. Indirectly talking about those months, placing words down precisely in only the ways I could handle them. At that time, when I went to see a therapist, even she asked me to chronologically write what had happened. In response I found myself writing in metaphors. Definitely not writing about the car and not about my room that suffocated me. Last year, I also wrote extensively about not knowing who I was. About reinventing myself based off of others. Last week, I found myself reflecting on who I was during high school. I definitely wasn’t someone then who I am proud of today, I wouldn’t say that I had much of a character at all. I wasn’t “myself” because I hadn’t found “me” yet. College was spent mostly in hiding. I was uncovering truths about who I am, and at the same time, feeling very unconnected to everyone around me. I believe now that lack of connectivity made me falsely think I still didn’t know who I was at the time. Now, I know that I knew who I was the whole time. After the poisoning, the car accident, and after all the running - I was brought back to the surface and taught to fight for who I am and who I wanted to be. I was reborn. I fought for who I loved. I explored the places that make my heart sing. I spent more time outside. I listened more to my family. I said yes to the Peace Corps in all aspects of my life. Now that I’m here, on this adventure, I’m done with feeling like I don’t know who I am. I’m done writing about it and I’m done doubting myself. I don’t take things lightly and I feel heartache deeply. I’m not happy everyday and that’s okay. I am creative and resourceful and can be impatient when the most direct path isn’t taken. I am moody and thoughtful, lazy and willful. I make challenges with myself over and over, run miles and sleep days. I struggle the most with self-satisfaction. Feeling that I could be doing a thousand different things, in a thousand different places, a thousand different ways. That doesn’t mean I don’t know who I am though. Zambia proves to me monthly in small moments that if I stay here I’ll become a stronger version of me. I’ll find more bits of happiness. I’ll feel more complete. From the ashes I’ll grow older and wiser. In Zambia, now I’m chatting with the man who makes chips (French fries) in town. Now I’m swapping teaching stories while hitching rides. Now I’m reading on my porch. Now I’m joking with friends in the vill. Now I’m yelling at the top of my lungs with my students, happily being the loudest classroom in the school block. Now I’m going to the river just to breathe in the air. Now I’m running down a road again. I wanted to write this because a new friend of mine, knowing my history with cars and running, laughingly joked with me how I’m fearless because I run on a busy road in this country all the time. It’s true, the road I run on has cars, sometimes very fast ones at that. She laughed when she made the remark, and I smiled it off. I’m here writing this because even though I can be lighthearted about the past and the present, it isn’t easy. Please remember. It wasn’t easy, but I can run on a road now. I run on a road and I’m not afraid. I don’t feel lost yet I don’t necessarily feel in control, but I can do it. I’m not fearless, I just refuse to feel like I’m not myself anymore. Just the other day, I was running and doing my typical wave at every single house - every single person - greeting them in the fashion Zambian culture demands (my host mom during training warned me that if I didn’t greet, no one would come to my wedding). It’s also typical that kids holler at me from all directions. They yell, practicing their English, “ELLLOOOO OW ARE YOU!” Their accents always misplace the sound of the letter H. Turning to two young boys who had recently bounded towards the road to greet me in English, I yelled back, “I AM FINE HOW ARE YOU”, all in one go in between breaths as I jogged. Sometimes kids don’t respond, in the exhilaration of talking to the white person they forget that they should reply back. These two, young as they were, remembered. They opened their mouths wide and said “WE ARE FINEEEEEEEE”. As soon as they had finished the obligatory statement, I kid you not, those two bounced up and down like kangaroos. So gleeful and so proud. Their happiness was like a drug. Even as my feet kept moving me forward, I turned my head back and back to watch them bounce. My smile matched their wide open beaming faces. Reaching my turning point I challenged all the kids by the road to sprint relays on my way back home. Going a few meters at a time, giving it my all, with kids of all ages. The kids laughter filled the villages as the sun started to set. It was enough to make me feel okay about the decisions that had brought me here. It made me not only feel like myself, but also begin to feel proud of who I am.
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Author's note:Hi, I'm Helen. Welcome to Lifted ~ I write to lift myself up. Archives
March 2021
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