After spending Canadian Thanksgiving here in Pohnpei, it seemed only fitting that I should go to Chuuk for American Thanksgiving (perhaps not as fitting as being in America, but I can’t be so picky out here with such limited time and funds). I was so excited to get back to my much more rugged “home island” Weno especially after feeling somewhat like a tourist/visitor most of my time here in Pohnpei. The week ended up speeding by, dutifully ignoring the painfully long and drawn out anticipatory weeks which preceded it. I know it’s unfair to enter any situation with expectations, but that’s exactly what I did. Some of them were met, some were exceeded, and some fell short. The only proper way to handle this is to go day by day and try to dissect my week one piece at a time:
TUESDAY: I was a wreck! Packing, compulsive showering, not eating… this is what excitement does to me. It’s bizarre and slightly depressing to think that it’s Tuesday again right now and that a week ago at this moment I was beginning my journey to Chuuk. The morning was slow, the plane ride slower. Once I landed however, my day went into fast forward mode – the kind where talking sounds only like high-pitched, fast-paced chipmunk dialogue and everything moves in blurs; the plot being lost and the meaning vague. Tom was there to meet me with the requisite mwar’mwars and as we bumbled and bumped down the “road” back up to Xavier I began to feel overwhelmed by the old sights and sounds – the shops, the dust, the construction vehicles in a permanent state of not doing much. We passed a busload of Xavier boys on the way to a basketball game, hooting and hollering, previously unaware of my arrival. It was only a taste of what was to come, though. Approaching the hill up to Xavier, I heard a loud shriek. It was one of my students, a current junior, running faster than I had ever seen anyone run ever, trying to chase down the truck. “MISS!!! MISS IS IT REALLY YOU??!” his shouts caught the attention of other students who gathered at the top of the hill yelling down and waving dramatically. Once the truck reached the campus, there was a veritable welcoming committee of male students screaming and grabbing at me, trying to hug me. As the truck pulled through to the front of the school, more students followed. Extracurricular activities ceased as I was met with an onslaught of former students pushing me, hugging me, grabbing at me, jumping on me. “MISS, YOU’RE BACK!” “MISS LYDIA YOU CAME BACK!” “MISS, DID YOU BRING ME ANY PRESENTS?!” I couldn’t even handle the ensuing chaos. I was sweaty and exhausted by the time the tide of teenagers finally ebbed. I sat with them for a moment, watching their track and field practice, but utterly overwhelmed and feeling the urgent need to say hello to everyone else and meet the new people. In retrospect, this moment did not last long enough. I regret leaving when I did, even though at the time I was physically and emotionally unable to keep up with what was happening. Looking back on it, this is one of the few moments of my week I want to relive and replay. I want to go back to that instant and make it even better, more vivid, more lasting than it was. I keep thinking to myself “next time, next time,” without realizing there won’t be a next time. I will most likely never make it back to Chuuk; I will most likely never see the majority of those students again. I said over and over to them “we’ll chat later; I’ll come find you and we’ll catch up,” but the week flew by so fast, and for a good part of the time I wasn’t even at Xavier, and those conversations, those reconnections, never happened.
For all of that, I can’t remember the rest of my day on Tuesday. I met a few new people, said hello to some old people. I attended Xavier’s famous Tuesday night “porch prayer” and ate pasta for dinner. I was tired and inundated with so many new and different things. I was meant to sleep in Daisy’s old room which for me only held one memory: the time Daisy picked nits out of my hair. It was strange not to go back to my old room; I didn’t even end up seeing the house I stayed in all last year. I kept checking my old mailbox by mistake, wondering why there were so many papers in it and who had removed my purple NYU mug. The computer room had been changed around, and the table where I always put my laptop and did work was no longer in the spot it had been. Rooms were painted different colors and there were new dishes and new decorations. Someone else’s name was on my office door. It’s funny how these small changes really structured such a world of difference for me, and it was even funnier how sad, angry, or intrigued they made me feel. But this was all just the beginning.
WEDNESDAY: I felt largely useless. It was strange seeing everyone rushing around, getting ready while I myself didn’t have to go to class. No one invited me to visit their classrooms and I didn’t want to be a disruption and take it upon myself to do so. Instead I sat on the porch, looking out at the captivating view that had been such a beacon of serenity and peacefulness for me last year. I was surprised that I felt bored, though it was probably just because I was so anxious and had been waiting so long and now felt completely unproductive and like I was still waiting for something exciting to happen. In the afternoon, Tom and I played scrabble, and once school ended I sat outside in the rec house talking to more students and watching them practice for Xavier Day. Everyone asked me if I was staying for that, and showed such incredible disappointment when I told them I wasn’t. Truthfully, I hadn’t considered that at all when making my travel plans, thinking only of Thanksgiving which did not seem as important to them. I wish now that I had extended my stay. Xavier Day would have been an awesome opportunity to spend time with each and every student and really see them in their element with their full spirits. Again I kept telling myself, mired in a strange denial or forgetfulness, “next time.”
Wednesday night Tom and I took the girls’ bus downtown to Blue Lagoon. I was a little upset and distracted because it seemed at the time that our plans to go to Pisar were not going to work out. Because I am impatient and a worrier by nature, trying to convince myself to have fun despite my frustration was very difficult. It was better once we arrived at the resort and settled into our air conditioned room. Eating my old favorite Blue Lagoon meal (prawn suruwa, coconuts, and buca - a hollowed-out coconut filled with fruit and ice cream) for dinner also helped assuage my aggravation. The outdoor bar closed early because of rain and lack of customers, so we were forced to call it a night around 9pm which is early, even for a grandma like me.
THURSDAY: We awoke in time for breakfast overlooking a fantastic view of the resort grounds and the lagoon. The day was clear and shaping up to be hot and humid. I ordered eggs benedict, which arrived sans English muffin, with spam instead of Canadian bacon, and five pieces of dry, thick toast instead of hash browns. Perhaps I have been spoiled by brunch at The Village here in Pohnpei, but it just wasn’t as delicious as I remembered it. From our room we tried calling Dickenson, the owner of Pisar, to try and solidify plans, only to realize that he had given us the wrong cell number. We attempted his office, which was closed for Thanksgiving. After paying for our room, we decided to virtually throw in the towel and inquire how much it would cost to camp out on Jeep instead, another small atoll managed by Blue Lagoon. It was pricier than Pisar, and it was too short notice. We felt defeated as we began our trek back to Xavier.
The “back hike” from Xavier to Blue Lagoon, or vice versa, has been somewhat of a tradition for me and Tom. The first time I ever did this hike was the first weekend of second semester with a few other volunteers. I loved it, especially the reward at the end of coconuts and lunch at the resort. When the new Australians arrived a few weeks in, I suggested we do it again. There was less enthusiasm this time around, and a few people took the bus down to meet us for dinner and a night at the bar, but I insisted that Tom experience the hike. So the two of us walked, and it became one of our most frequented pastimes on the weekends. While others fretted about not being able to catch a ride back to Xavier from Blue Lagoon after the hike was over (another three-four hour, somewhat exhausting walk) Tom and I chose not to think about this until we absolutely had to. We would often walk to Saram and hope for a bus or truck to pick us up there. Sometimes we set out with the intention of walking all the way, an intimidating ambition, but I don’t think there was ever a time when we had to make the entire trip on foot. Sometimes if we were lucky we would catch up with a random Xavier ride coming back from a shopping trip or sporting event. Most times we hitchhiked, picked up by random and not always the most savory characters. Sometimes the rides were exceptional: once a man and his young son picked us up in their shiny, brand new, black SUV. His name was Rick, and he said that it was getting late and two Xavier teachers shouldn’t be walking in the dark. The car was roomy and air conditioned and he drove us all the way up the impossible Sapuk hill right to the front of the school’s door. Other times, the rides were less comfortable. We were once picked up by drunk man who was spewing frightening nonsense and angry accusations at us. We didn’t feel safe until his large and imposing (and sober) wife got in the car and literally slapped some sense into him.
This time however was different. Since Tom and I had taken the bus down, we intended to walk the back hike home. I had never done the hike from Blue Lagoon to Xavier, only the other way around, so it seemed a fitting end to the tradition, and it proved to be the most eventful walk yet. As usual along the way, we met some cute Chuukese kids, enamored with us for no reason except that we were strangers. I had to reacclimatize myself to Chuuk’s interesting social nuances. In Pohnpei, locals couldn’t care less to see mehnwai walking down the street. In Chuuk, everyone wants a piece of you. They spot you from miles away: from deep in the jungle, to behind their windows and doors, to atop large hills and cliffs looking down at you. You hear shouts and screams and salutations from all corners of your path, and you reply, sometimes without ever seeing the person calling out to you. Chuuk is very odd in that way, and sometimes annoyingly so. Seeing a boy and girl walking together elicits certain responses and reactions, some of which are not too pleasant, others which are downright rude. It’s often difficult NOT to think to yourself “don’t you people have anything better to do? Stop staring at us, stop whistling at us, get off your asses and get a job!” It’s hard to understand the intrigue and the strangeness that surrounds you as outsiders; it’s something I *kind of* got used to, but disregarded as soon as I left. I appreciate anonymity more than ever before and can better understand celebrities’ hatred of the paparazzi. Sometimes I like it, such as when little kids run up to me and follow me and want to touch me and get their picture taken with me. Other times, I hate it and wish desperately for privacy and the feeling of being back in NYC where no one cares who you are, what you’re doing, who you’re with, or where you’re going.
Tom and I eventually came across a special spot of ours; a little opening in the jungle which signified the near end of the first half of the hike, and was where we always stopped for water and to admire the views. This time though, as we continued on from there, we quickly realized we had lost the path. There had been significant overgrowth, and we couldn’t find where we were supposed to go next. Tom left me to go search for an alternate path and after a while of waiting, I started worrying he had forgotten where I was. I started calling out to him, and to my surprise, there was a reply, but not from him. A Sapukian man below us, realizing we were lost, gave us directions of how to get down to him. He was a scraggly character, with wild hair and a giant machete with which he used to chop a path for us through the dense jungle. He made us stop for a few minutes while he adeptly scrambled up a tree and cut down four coconuts – two for us to drink then, and two to take home. Chuuk is probably one of the few places I would follow such a man with such a knife through an unfamiliar part of an overgrown jungle, but as with most Chuukese I’ve met, he was just friendly and eager to help us. He led us to a familiar place at the beginning of Sapuk and I thanked him copiously, mostly for the coconuts since I had been dying of thirst. A few minutes later, we found ourselves walking through someone’s property, which we have done a hundred times before. The people know us (somewhat) from all the times we have trekked through. One of them, a graduate from Xavier, once stopped us and made us drink coconuts with him for a while before we headed on. This time, though, as we made our way across the property and excused ourselves for doing so, we heard a woman screaming “STOP STOP STOP!” I had no idea what happened, but in a flash, I felt teeth sink into my leg and screamed in fright and shock. This was an unusual attack: most often, dogs will bark and snarl before biting. I didn’t see the animal before or even after it bit – it was there and gone in the blink of an eye. I looked down at my leg and saw nothing but the small indentation of teeth. Members of the family ran over to me. One of the men asked “It bite you?” I nodded, my whole body shaking. “Ifa?” he asked and I pointed to the wound in my calf which was quickly starting to bruise and from which blood was beginning to run steadily. “oohhhhh” was the collective response. One of the women brought over a bottle of kerosene which I declined, not feeling comfortable about having lighter fluid poured over my skin. Another man tied a towel around the wound like a tourniquet. They asked if I felt ok to go home. I was waiting for an apology. “Amusana…” I tried, looking embarrassed. “Noooo no! Amusana tipis… that dog, he’s crazy.” It wasn’t as genuine an apology as I would have expected, but I suppose it’s hard to apologize for a dog that’s realistically just doing its job, especially considering we were technically trespassing. We walked off (maybe “gimped” is a better word). My body was still shaking, mostly just out of shock. The bite itself didn’t hurt as much as I thought it would. The dog bit into the muscle which just felt tense and strained. Tom poured coconut water over it which is supposed to be some kind of healing agent. The rest of the path back was surprisingly very flooded. I’m not sure what has changed about the island, but the water levels were very different and very difficult to bypass. We made it back though, in one piece, and I was more than ready for a Thanksgiving meal.
Interestingly, this day of togetherness was really what solidified my status as an outsider at Xavier. After showering and tending to my dog bite, I walked out into the kitchen where everyone was in a cooking frenzy. This was very different from last year’s preparation which was largely not done by the faculty. I kind of wanted to help, especially since I love cooking, but everyone already had their place and knew their role. Tom and I planned to make brownies, mostly for Pisar, but thought as long as people were cooking and the oven was on, we might as well make them early so they could be enjoyed for Thanksgiving. This offer was quickly met with frustration (“you’ll be in the kitchen too?” “… But we’re already making brownies!!!”) so we did it alone on the porch. Afterwards, while sitting outside watching the view and listening to the clanking and crashing of pots and pans, I realized that this was a perfect example for how I was feeling about this experience more broadly. Replaced, displaced, and in some ways re-created. My place here was no longer as a participant. Even though I was a veteran, I felt more like a newcomer, unacquainted with the new patterns, new routines, and new personalities. There were new jokes, new stories, new experiences that I was not a part of. Unlike last year where I was integral and essential to the group effort, this year I was just a bystander watching it all take place. As the week progressed, I began to feel more and more like my time and purpose there had passed, as though this was a new and completely separate era of Xavier. I belonged in that time and that space, and no amount of effort or money spent returning again and again would be able to restore that world. Maybe I thought my particular knowledge, perspective, and experience would be much more valued, or that I would somehow be able to return to my old roles, or at least be able to feel included and welcomed in the way that I had when I first arrived last August. But a whole new herd of people ushered in entirely new viewpoints and ways of doing things. I wondered if I had ever been like that: still relatively brand new, but with already completely formed ideas and opinions about my situation; still figuring it all out and yet so seemingly certain. I’m sure of it.
The meal itself was delicious, even though I took far too much food. There was turkey, gravy, mashed potatoes, seafood pasta, stuffing, rice, coconuts, ice cream, cake, brownies (too many?), and cookies. Everyone was finished surprisingly fast. I remember last year we sat talking for hours. People were finished and leaving the table by 7:00 after starting at 6:30. The dynamic was so drastically different; the community so much more fragmented. It forced me to think about the drama at the end of last year and if I could have withstood that for the entirety of my time. I think the answer is decidedly no.
FRIDAY: I woke up early, anticipating our potential trip to Pisar. Later Thursday afternoon after sifting through some address books, Tom found the correct version of Dickenson’s cell number and we made concrete plans. Renting the island would only cost us $50. We asked the workers to buy us gas (a more expensive investment: $120 apiece) and planned to set out around 1pm. Tom and I spent the morning cooking: I brought taco spices, shredded cheese, and tortillas from Pohnpei, so we cooked some meat, and put it on ice to reheat later. We made pasta salad and tuna salad and set aside some wine, brownies, and chips. After all this, and collecting other necessary materials (a lantern, sheets, a machete, sun block, etc.) we waited. And waited. And waited. I was getting more and more visibly impatient with each passing hour. The driver did not arrive with our gas. The maintenance worker that was meant to take us out on the boat was occupied with fixing one of the buses. Paired with some nasty weather, I was beginning to feel like the trip would be hopeless. Finally, we were told that we would leave at 3:30. I felt more relieved, but still annoyed that we wouldn’t get to the island until a little before sunset. I settled down once I was finally seated in the boat, ready to go. I was ready, SO ready for a night on a quiet, beautiful, deserted island… and then…
The boat ride. I have never in my life experienced anything so horrendously unpleasant, and I hope I never have to again. The water was rough, probably too rough to safely navigate. Plus, the driver cut through the choppy waves like the leader of a drug cartel speeds across the border. There were no seats, only jagged wooden blanks on the floor of the boat which I sat on, my back propped up painfully against the side. I watched the two young boys that had come along to help steer. One stood at the front of the boat (stood?! Impossible...) and the other sat motionless and cross-legged behind me, showing no sign of pain or unease. Meanwhile, Tom and I were jostled to and fro, slamming against the sides of the boat. If you have never been on a boat ride like this, it isn’t just a rocky, wavy feeling. It isn’t just a problem of seasickness. It feels as though you are launching into the air and then slamming down on a massive rock with every wave the boat encounters. Each time, my head and chest felt like they were plummeting to the floor, my elbows and the bottom part of my spine smacking violently against the wall of the vessel. About half way in, I started to cry beneath my sunglasses. I could already see bruises forming all along both my arms. My fingers were white and sore and splintered from gripping the wooden planks beneath me for some kind of support. When I finally saw the crooked palm tree at the edge of Pisar over an hour later, I thought I had never witnessed such a beautiful sight in the whole of my life.
We got to the island around 5. I was so sore from the boat ride all I wanted to do was sit on the beach. The sun was setting, and for once I was fully able to take in my surroundings. Pisar is a breathtaking, but tiny island on the edge of Chuuk lagoon’s reef. It was such an amazing and surreal feeling to be completely alone (except for the “security guards” who mostly stayed in their small house on one side of the island). The sand is almost purely white, mostly made from pieces of bleached coral, and the water is a glassy, crystal blue. Hammocks hang from the various coconut trees that dot the island’s small landscape, and hermit crabs rule the shore. I found so many gorgeous shells, but they were all inhabited by some sleepy sea creature. I did not feel right displacing them from their little habitats for the simple prize of a pretty shell, and I was rewarded later by finding a really neat piece of black coral which I have never seen (despite the small island off the coast of Pohnpei aptly named “Black Coral”). I’ve described Pisar before I think, so just to quickly recap: there is a small house with a few rooms and an indoor toilet and bucket shower (more of a luxury than you might imagine). There is no electricity and no cell service and only a small, outdoor fireplace for cooking if you happen to be so ambitious. As soon as we got there, Tom climbed a tree and got some coconuts which we drank on the beach watching the sun set behind a storm cloud that thankfully missed our vulnerable, private island. We set out to make a fire with which to reheat our taco meat, and were surprisingly successful (by “we” I mean Tom – my contribution consisted of sitting nearby, avoiding the smoke and offering pointless, ignorant suggestions). The tacos were delicious and probably could have only been enhanced had we been able to find sour cream, or had the lettuce we took from the Xavier fridge actually been fresh. Since we had limited transport space, and since there were no wine glasses to begin with, we drank my cheap Charles Shaw white straight out of the bottle. After eating and washing our dishes in the ocean like the cavemen we were, Tom and I sat on the beach and looked up at the incredible stars. It was a tremendous sight, and I was thankful for it especially since the last time I had been on Pisar, it had been cloudy and rainy at night. It’s probably difficult for most people I know to imagine the kind of depth you can perceive in the night sky when there are no lights around for miles and miles and miles. It’s not even anything like I’ve witnessed in the far recesses of rural NY where there are still distant city lights and car beams polluting the clarity of the atmosphere. It made me feel quite small, especially on an island as tiny as Pisar, but also part of something far larger and more magnificent.
Sleep was not so easy. The mattresses had bed bugs, and the wind was cold and harsh. There was no rain thankfully, but it got so cold that eventually I had to move into one of the small, stuffy, roach-ridden bedrooms. I wanted to get up for sunrise, but because the room was dark and windowless, I had no way of waking up in time for it. I lugged myself out of bed around 8, and Tom and I sat on the beach watching the gray post-dawn skies recede into a sunny haze. The waves around the reef were strong and loud and the clouds burned off in the mid-morning heat. We ate breakfast (honey bunches of oats and boxed milk) and went for an early snorkel. I had actually never snorkeled far off the shore of Pisar, but today I felt unsatisfied with the seaweed and little sea flowers right off the beach, so I ventured a little farther. We saw some really beautiful, exotic-looking fish and outstandingly bright coral. We saw a couple huge, neon-blue starfish (that I always want to pick up but I’m afraid to) and a couple airy, listless jellies. We saw a long, thin flashy fish dart through a school of tiny peers and eat one in the blink of an eye. The current was quite strong, and after my recent run-in with fire coral on Ant, I was concerned about going any deeper because the coral expanded out into great forests of itself with nearly no open space to rest among it. Tom and I fought the wall of ocean to get back to our island. After roasting out in the sun a bit, we took a short water-walk to a nearby island (maybe too strong a word – it’s really just a tiny plot of land that could maybe house one coconut tree if its earth actually had the stamina). But on this miniscule piece of land, there are always really unique shells and stones (it is where I found my piece of black coral). We tried to cross over the island and make it to the reef, but it began to rain and the water was strong so we only got about half way. I love walking out to the reef. The water becomes shallow and all you can see are rocks and large slices of coral peeking out through the surface, shiny and pale as bone. The water is gray and calm, and the sun beats down on it making it look like an empty, wet wasteland. Partially what makes it so strange is that the waves in the distance crash back into the water rather than on a beach, so it really seems as though you have reached the edge of the earth. You can’t see much beyond the waves, and it feels like you are an ancient explorer finally deciding the world is indeed flat as you come to the very end of the ocean and the last corner of the world. We watched it for just a little bit, but turned back as storm clouds menacingly approached. They ended up passing over us without the slightest interruption, as we ended up back on Pisar eating our lunch of tuna salad.
Afterwards, the day was a blur of different, not-so-strenuous activities such as floating around in the strikingly clear water, sunbathing, and mostly resting in one of the many generously spacious hammocks, catching up on the sleep I didn’t have much of the previous night. We went on a coconut binge, and I played around with the hermit crabs and the big, whiny orange cat that oddly enough lives on the island. The worker and his young helpers came to pick us up around 4:30 in the afternoon. I sat in a different position in the boat, and it was a better, but still bumpy ride home.
That night some of the volunteers went downtown to say goodbye to one of the Peace Corps, but Tom and I weren’t back in time to make the ride. We showered, ate dinner, and hung out on the roof and porch with the remaining staff. It was nice to get to know some of the people better, but I was exhausted and called it a relatively early night (midnight). I was planning a rather big finish on my last day ever in Chuuk.
SUNDAY: Tom and I always made brunch together Sunday mornings, and he had planned a picnic for us to go up to the water tower. But I hadn’t yet gotten a chance to see the Saram volunteers, and I really wanted to do that before leaving on Monday. There were no rides going down (Sunday is usually a sparse day for them) so Tom and I did what we had so often done before when bored on the weekends at Xavier: attempt the long, hot, rocky walk downtown. It was nice to see familiar spots on foot, and run into some interesting characters, but the novelty soon wore off and we hoped for someone to give us a ride. Thankfully when we reached Tunuk, we saw a familiar face drive up in a flatbed – Rufina, who had been one of the people I really wanted to see at Xavier, had been at a funeral all week, but was now just by chance driving past. She picked us up and drove us down to Lei Side restaurant where we got some famous Chuuk pizza. Afterwards, we walked the rest of the way to Saram where I had a great time reconnecting with Caroline and Jessica and meeting the new JVIs. I had also been told that this is where my cat, Oreo, got exiled to at the beginning of the year. I searched for her tirelessly, calling her name and peering in tiny, hidden spots. Chuukese people stared at me curiously, wondering what the hell I was doing, but I didn’t care. I wanted to find her so badly and say a final goodbye to one of my closest friends. Sadly, she was nowhere to be found. I was told she was in the late stages of pregnancy and was probably resting lazily, and also that she found a very good home with the nuns who gave her a little pink collar and only feed her cooked fish. It was good to hear she is taking after her mother (a little spoiled brat!), but I was really most thankful that she has a good home. It hurt me that I couldn’t find her – I had maybe expected her to intuitively sense my arrival and bound up to Xavier looking for me – but I tried to remember that I should really just be grateful that in a place where animals are so often neglected and mistreated, my cat found a loving, warm home with people who care for her just as she cared for me.
We were thankfully able to catch a random Xavier ride back up, eliminating the need to walk most of the way. I spent my last night watching movies on my computer and eating leftover pizza. I knew I would have to get to sleep as early I could since Xavier’s vehicle policy has never been very conducive to the schedules of those who often need them most, and I would have to wake up at 4:30 am to catch the workers’ ride downtown for a 10:20 am flight. A brutal and unappealing notion at best, I begrudgingly accepted the fact that I wouldn’t get another morning at Xavier, and wouldn’t get to say goodbye to any students or many of the teachers. I wrote a little note on the communal white board instead, and hoped that my limited time and presence there would somehow be appreciated.
While the power was out, I went up to the Xavier roof for the last time. The stars were not as fantastic as they had been on Pisar, but they were still an incredible sight to behold. I saw a few shooting stars, one that moved slow and brightly across the entire span of my vision. I tried to condense the whole of my experiences in Micronesia into one solitary instance of thought, but it was nearly impossible. I could only vaguely pass by the tips of certain emotional icebergs: happiness, joy, peace, anger, sadness, sickness, betrayal, comfort, discomfort, hate, and love. They flashed before my eyes, scratched the surface of my brain, and then floated uncertainly onward into a new and distant ocean. Most of my memories have been twisted and expanded; idealized and vandalized, overly-exaggerated or densely concentrated. I don’t remember most things, events, or people as they really were, but rather how they affected me; how they made me feel and how they either inspired or deflated my spirit. As I looked up at the endless landscape of stars, I realized I was staring into the past: light that was generated hundreds or thousands of years before just now reaching my eyes. Maybe that’s how I will come to truly learn from my experiences here. Years later, maybe I will finally see the light and accept a more unadulterated version of the truth. It is only when all of these things have passed completely that I will be able to value their immense influence and worth. Staring up at these millions of little lights above me, I felt minute and insignificant. I am not one who sees such a grand portrait and thinks to myself how wonderful it is that in such a vast universe I should have some greater purpose that will last until the end of time. Instead I see it, and I feel the full affront of my purposelessness. I am just one small thing amidst countless big things. I am an infinitesimal particle within a microscopic atom constituting one single grain of sand on an endless and eternal shore. Sometimes, this realization bothers me, because as humans we have difficulty forgoing our egos and recognizing that we are not as important as we make ourselves out to be. Other times, like up there on the roof last Sunday night, it gives me a sense of true peace because I’m not so sure I want to have that kind of influence over the workings of the universe. I would rather simply just exist within it, taking and giving what I can, and creating my own purpose for the short and fleeting time I have been so graciously granted. Because regardless of my insignificance, I am still not insignificant. I feel as though I am my own universe, and as small as I am, still somehow infinite within myself. I am my own collection of stars, my own endless stretch of personal, private galaxies, and there are many worlds which turn within me.
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