back to my reality

it's 10:50pm and i'm laying on my little blue bed in Belize. tonight the host family took us to a Guatemalan dance performance in town. before that, i had landed in the city and taken a boat to one of the Cayes to visit friends before heading north. i've been up for what feels like a week and i'm exhausted. it's dark and the air feels warm and dense now. so i'm back. this felt like time travel.

sister, friends and i met up with Andrew in Hollywood for a quick drink in a dark bar before my 2am flight from LAX. it felt good to hug my friends before leaving. i don't hug nearly as often as i wish i did these days.

***

today i went to work in the village. everything at the school went well; receptive and appreciative staff. i tested half of my struggling readers this morning and had impressive turnout for Story Time this afternoon. i read Where the Wild Things Are; that book never gets old to me. i was taken in by the PTA president and will now eat lunch with her on my work days. great food, fun company, sweet kids.
this school has such a positive feeling. both the boys and girls team won in the volleyball semifinals today.

this evening, on my way out of the library in town, i stopped when i saw the puffy white clouds above the river as the sky leaked pastel blue and pink. as i climbed on my bike and turned to ride home, the clouds that had been to my back were puffy grey, covering patches of steel blue and mauve sky.
the sky was changing. everything is changing. and i feel alone. but very alive. so this is home now. so i'm back.

a quote from Elizabeth Gilbert's "Eat Pray Love":

"So be lonely. Learn your way around loneliness. Make a map of it. Sit with it, for once in your life. Welcome to the human experience."


***

Inside the anxious mind:

there's constantly so much to be thinking about when your days are packed and you feel like everything might cause a lot less stress if you could just have a conversation with the one person your cell phone won't let you call and your left wrist is aching, red, and swollen from the poison of some damned doctor fly and you can't seem to find a planner with squares big enough to fit your daily to-do lists so instead you've scattered about half a dozen overlapping lists within your notebook, backpack, desk...

and again, from "Eat Pray Love":

"You should never give yourself a chance to fall apart because, when you do, it becomes a tendency and it happens over and over again. You must practice staying strong instead."