Honestly, I think the best thing for me to do at this point in my life is to be taking this gap year. While it's only been a month since I arrived here in Lima, I can already feel this year-off working its magic, and I can only imagine what the rest of this year will do for me. These past couple years of my life have been quite stressful, too stressful I think for a 16/17 year-old girl, since at that delicate age, I think every adolescent should be entitled to the frivolous pleasures of their youth. While I definitely have some of the most wonderful memories of this time in my life that I will cherish forever, unfortunately a lot of Junior year and half of Senior year were very academically rigorous, and the last few months of Senior year were emotionally very distressing for me. As a person who doesn't like change, the last few months of Senior Year brought with them a vast amount of just that. Not only was high school ending and I was probably never going to see all my amazing classmates all in one room together again, but if high school was ending, regardless of whether I was going to college or taking my gap year, I was going to have to leave my family behind and start my adult life anew; I was so scared to leave my parents, the people who raised me to be who I am today, and the single people who I will always cherish above all else. In my mind, all this change only signified impending doom, and I noticed myself becoming more withdrawn and sort of unsure of who exactly I was. Up until that point, my greatest bragging right was that I always knew exactly who I was and what it was that I stood for. Sadly though, all my emotional turmoil brought on by such huge changes in my life threatened my self-esteem, and it made me angry that I couldn't just be the way I was before, carefree, boisterous, and joyous. Looking back, I think I felt as if I was carrying a titanic burden on my back made up of all the upcoming change in my life, and carrying that burden pained me.
This process though - this year (mainly) committed to stress-free living and learning about things greater and more important than academic or social success - is helping me already, I can feel it. I have to say deactivating my facebook definitely had a lot to do with this, since right now, I'm trying not to concern myself with the superficiality brought on by technology always being right at our fingertips. As to not live like a total hermit though (... I do have social needs), my closest friends and loved ones have my email address, so I get to hear from all the people I care about; what could be better? With my volunteer work, being by myself, and in a new culture/country, internally I can feel myself relaxing a bit, loosening my grip on all the world's seriousness, and at the same time, learning how to help myself and others in times of trouble and turmoil. Call it a mimicry of Julia Roberts' character in Eat, Pray, Love (that movie stunk by the way), or soul-searching, but I definitely think I'm doing the right thing by being here and doing what I'm doing.
Fun Fact: I'm taking a trip to the Peruvian AMAZON RAINFOREST this weekend.... i'm quite excited! monkeys! tucans! mosquitos! oh my!!! :] :]
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