I've spent nearly every day of 2014 curled up on the couch, the bed or the floor calculating the hours it might take to digest whatever small food I ate last and trying to hold on. Apparently I have a phobic reaction to throwing up. Dry-heaving, no problem but actual vomiting results in all sorts of panic attack symptoms. I'm not sure when this developed, or why, but I can see it is deep rooted and borders on a psychosis.
I've also learned about myself that if I am one day old and ill I will most likely become the crotchety old woman who yells at everyone and ruins their good time. Being sick makes me short on patience and low on kindness. This revelation reminded me of one I'd had during my last observed Ramadan. Being hungry makes one tired. It was such a profound thought to me that tired took on a whole new meaning. Not the sleepy, weary tired of staying up all night and not the exhausted, can't walk another step tired that comes from physical exertion, but more of a deep in your bones, invading every cell and slowly shutting down the mind tired that comes from not having enough nutrition to make the body function.
Being sick makes one crabby. Not the cranky, I didn't get enough sleep crabby but the snap at someone before even thinking with a just plain mean response crabby. Which shouldn't surprise me....it's an awful lot like my mother and as we age it seems inevitable we become more like our parents- no matter how little time we spent together. But it is disappointing. I wanted to be a better person than that. I wanted to be the sweet old lady who says uplifting and slightly mysterious things full of bits of wisdom, emitting a fragile strength that carries me through to my last tranquil day.
I'm not dying, though I may feel like it at times, and so there is still time to develop this person who won't become a bane to the young nursing home attendants. I'm sure much of the strain has to do with job stress and the impending life changes facing me. Returning to Kinshasa after this last small vacation was particularly hard. I've been feeling a lot like this except I've been in the Congo for twice as long as the author, which makes things all the more poignant.
Last September, last summer really, all the way up until about October, I had thought I was staying. Putting down roots and making my final peace with Kinshasa. I was prepared to call it home once and for all. Sometimes I try to get back to that state of mind, when riding the streets at night with a cool wind and lazy city sounds filling the air made me feel cozy, comfortable and filled with a sense of belonging. We know each other, Kinshasa and I. And we understand how to get along.
Events have conspired in such a way, however, that it turns out Kinshasa and I are not soul mates. We won't be hunkering down together to get the boys through their middle and secondary years of school. We won't be launching them off to colleges and futures out in the world and we won't be waiting to welcome them home with arches of woven palm leaves and open arms.
In between bouts of nausea and amoeba attacks, I've been using all my couch time to imagine new beginnings. What do I want to do with my life? Of course, in imagining new starts it's impossible not revisit the past with a bit of nostalgia for what could have, should have, might have been.
In remaining true to my resolve to be a better person, I'm trying to stay focused on the present. What can I do now? I see lots of nature in my future, mountains or water. I'm really hoping for a place that will allow us to spend more time outdoors. I'm trying to open up my mind to locations I hadn't before considered. Every so often, I dream about the paths I really want to take, though it can be easy to get lost in the tangled web of contradictions that always seem to define my future plans. The illness doesn't just take over my body, but it corrupts my mind as well, leaving just as many days curled up on the living room rug feeling hopeless and stormy gray.
Sunny skies or not, the facts remain. There are four months left in Kinshasa and then the boys and I will be off on a new kind of adventure
