Back in Cairo, and I'm actually not sure how I feel. "Wahashteeny", as I recently learned, means "I miss you"'. When I look back to experiences I had my first term in Cairo, and even those first two months in Jordan, I do miss them. I miss the feeling of self-serving bravery, the exciting nature of beginning new adventures, the biggest dose of independence I could ask for, given my financial dependency and overall sheltered life thus far. I have many regrets - for one, not completing this blog as I began my adventures, not completing all the goals I laid out before boarding that plane to Amman, and the most excruciating of all: the changes I've seen in myself.
This time last year, I was spending my days scaling the unvisited, cob-webbed corners of Drexel, begging for signatures and struggling with the mound of paperwork that is the study abroad application. I was naively unaware of the events to pass in Tunisia (yes, that is where the Arab Spring began), and the domino of events that would lay the ground and shape my path of travel in the upcoming year. I could never have imagined the events that transpired or the historical importance of them. Admittedly, at the time, my concerns and attentions were self-centered and half-hazardly given to the well-being of this side of the world, but more decidedly focused on the effects of such happenings on my own insignificant plans.
I had this notion, this brilliant plan so carefully formulated in such a way to perfect my life, my ideas. In reality, this plan was nothing more than a desperate whim to escape everything I saw as a failure in my life, especially myself. I wanted nothing more than to run from myself, to find a way to be a person - a being, someone, something - that I didn't inexplicably and irrevocably hate. I wanted the acute, recurring depression to be something of the past, a demon left behind in my teenage years, night terrors left in the child's mind. And yet, when I think back to this time last year, the overall direction of my life, the potentials, the completed, the expectations, I miss, well, me.
These last six months, in addition to the next six, were intended as a test of will, and an overall transformative experience that would result in the beginnings of a person who was worth the time, the money, and the overwhelming resources she was given in her lifetime. Instead, I find that the state of my being has deteriorated. In the two years before college, when tears were a thing I wiped only from the faces of others, and public slips of the endless, swirling mush in my mind were near unheard of, I would've laughed to think that at this time, my picture could appropriately adorn the "Water Works" square on a children's monopoly board, every girlfriend stereotype I swore to never be is under my growing list of flaws, and that dreaded look in the mirror every morning has become increasingly difficult.
The incredible self-disappointment cultivates into a second personality of mine that I hope to shed permanently and very quickly. This lesson - change is not always good - has grabbed me as I tried to tiptoe by, and thrown me over its shoulder, hard, into the ground. These next six months are vital in a lot of ways. I came to Egypt, to Jordan, to the Middle East - no, I left the US, to find myself, to soul-search, to put it in the lamest way possible, and what I found was what I despise most, so - let these next months be something else, something new - a game-changer, and, Inshah Allah, let it be the future I hoped for.
This time last year, I was spending my days scaling the unvisited, cob-webbed corners of Drexel, begging for signatures and struggling with the mound of paperwork that is the study abroad application. I was naively unaware of the events to pass in Tunisia (yes, that is where the Arab Spring began), and the domino of events that would lay the ground and shape my path of travel in the upcoming year. I could never have imagined the events that transpired or the historical importance of them. Admittedly, at the time, my concerns and attentions were self-centered and half-hazardly given to the well-being of this side of the world, but more decidedly focused on the effects of such happenings on my own insignificant plans.
I had this notion, this brilliant plan so carefully formulated in such a way to perfect my life, my ideas. In reality, this plan was nothing more than a desperate whim to escape everything I saw as a failure in my life, especially myself. I wanted nothing more than to run from myself, to find a way to be a person - a being, someone, something - that I didn't inexplicably and irrevocably hate. I wanted the acute, recurring depression to be something of the past, a demon left behind in my teenage years, night terrors left in the child's mind. And yet, when I think back to this time last year, the overall direction of my life, the potentials, the completed, the expectations, I miss, well, me.
These last six months, in addition to the next six, were intended as a test of will, and an overall transformative experience that would result in the beginnings of a person who was worth the time, the money, and the overwhelming resources she was given in her lifetime. Instead, I find that the state of my being has deteriorated. In the two years before college, when tears were a thing I wiped only from the faces of others, and public slips of the endless, swirling mush in my mind were near unheard of, I would've laughed to think that at this time, my picture could appropriately adorn the "Water Works" square on a children's monopoly board, every girlfriend stereotype I swore to never be is under my growing list of flaws, and that dreaded look in the mirror every morning has become increasingly difficult.
The incredible self-disappointment cultivates into a second personality of mine that I hope to shed permanently and very quickly. This lesson - change is not always good - has grabbed me as I tried to tiptoe by, and thrown me over its shoulder, hard, into the ground. These next six months are vital in a lot of ways. I came to Egypt, to Jordan, to the Middle East - no, I left the US, to find myself, to soul-search, to put it in the lamest way possible, and what I found was what I despise most, so - let these next months be something else, something new - a game-changer, and, Inshah Allah, let it be the future I hoped for.
