Drew searching for his own way

I lay covered in sores and bug-bites yet to become sores, choking on a cloud of useless repellent, sneezing, coughing, my back trembling and contorting, a mute horror show. I have not spoken to my family or friends in weeks. I have not had time to make time for myself. I am told to wait. I am told to appreciate the distance. I am told that so many have it much worse, that complaining is empty and meaningless. I am selfish, spoiled, fussy American. I am in truth, not pain. Live it. Suffer. You have earned it.

That I would calls these woes is evidence of my privilage. That I would speak of them as awful and uncommon is evidence of my privilage. That I would expect these things to be addressed with more than a shrug is evidence of my privilage. This isn't about me. I am unimportant. I am not genuine, but a receptacle for authentic experiences. I am ungrateful. So many people would kill for the chance to “suffer” as I do. My privilage hinders me from thinking of them first. That I would want to stop itching and bleeding, that i would want not to be covered in sores, stinging as sweat runs into them, itching constantly, marauded by insects – that is my privilege, nothing more.

I would not feel so if only I'd change my perspective. I choose to hurt. I choose to suffer. It is an illusion.

I am lost to myself, a stranger in my own skin. 

Much of this trip is performed on the rails. It feels like an adventure, but it is farce, a carnival ride. We are going in the only direction we are allowed to go. Because it is “safe”. Because they've done this before and we haven't. Because shut up and let us dazzle you with wonder and splendor! Let us do our jobs! And we are told:

* Look here!

* Don't look there!

* This is what this means!

* This is how you should feel!

* This is how you talk!

* This is their way!

* See how much better this is than yours?

* See how awful your home is?

* Don't you wish you were more like they are?

We are rendered cold and mundane, by contrast less beautiful, less storied, less cultured, less genuine. We, the fat and faceless consumer clan descend with empty open hearts and learn to love anew, to see beyond the price tags and buffets, to experience authentic meaning, not like back home, not like back there.

And we, the obedient children from the Land of Plenty, deign to tell them how moved and touched and shaken and stirred we are by all we see and hear. And aren't we so grateful? Aren't we so very profoundly blessed by this experience?

And they, immune to the majesty yet held fast by the same, struggle against their splendid nets and ask what New York is like. They ask about our cars, our food, our neighborhoods.

And we, newly disabused of our love and pride, cast our eyes aside saying only, “It's not like THIS,” our eyes wide, glistening like sinister peaches.

These are the things we don't say, you don't say, I don't say; too much, too fast, too long, too strange, too uncomfortable, too unusual, too awkward, too hot, too offensive, to demanding, too far – the tacit agreement being that critique and complaint are tantamount to intolerance and ingratitude. So we swallow our soft daggers and call it tolerance, beautiful, open-mindedness. We surrender to the schedule, the rigid definitions and expectations laid out before us like roads and bridges, delivering us to rare and exquisite truths. 

Or something. 

In many ways, expectations are the enemy of enlightenment. I find myself living out other people's expectations, other people's dreams and experiences. Everything is filtered. Everything is preempted. Everything comes with caveats and instructions:

DO/DO NOT

* Find this beautiful

* Find this delicious

* Do this because it's fun

* Marvel at this

* Wonder at that

* Go here

* Dream this dream

* Pray this prayer

* Want this

* Need this

* Love this

* Experience THIS like THIS

It is a checklist void of humanity yet feigning the same, a vivisected corpse of someone else's South African love affair, insisting itself to life, bloodless, nameless, desperate for breath.

There is no reason, only a feeling, a compulsion to act within certain boarders and boundaries. It is as rote and moot as parents attempting to describe to their children what love is like. Despite their good intentions, missing from their telling is the crucial admission that their story is theirs and theirs alone, that their love is unique to them, a magic that can only be conjured by them that only they will ever share and experience.

It is that rarity that makes love worth repeating, even after heartbreak, because it is never the same song twice. It is why falling in love matters at all. An that truth is the key to finding your own love in your own way.

But they leave this out, consciously or unconsciously, determined to guide their children toward experiences like their own – different, to be sure, grander maybe, but similar, an exaggerated, elaborated version of the lives their parents have lived.

And this is how it is, only instead of love stories, we have the story of a nation, of hundreds of millions over several generations, paths weaving into, onto, around, and through one another, a marvelously ancient and complex quilt, impossible to behold all at once.

The country breathes all around me, a living thing. I lay my hand to the earth and breathe with it, the sand and the sea made poetry by the setting sun, the hem of of the Atlantic lapping at my ankles and toes. I am looking toward home and cannot fathom the distance. 

I want to know the way but cannot say.