January has been one of the oddest and most unique months I’ve lived through in some time. I woke up on the beach in the desert on New Years Day. A sandy, practically uninhabited area is a wonderful place to do some reflecting. Unfortunately, I’ve come to realize that no amount of reflection will actually produce the answers I’m looking for and people will always confuse me.
Almost 24 hours later, I arrived back in
That alone would have been a very travelly month, but the fun only began there. Or actually, I guess it ended there. Yesterday I returned home from a week of camp with my kids and at least a hundred more young people. Given that the only English speaker was my Spanish co-volunteer, it reminded me much of the Spanish Intensive I took around this time last year. Only it was 24 hours a day. And I was babysitting kids all of those 24 hours. Oh, and those kids have severe emotional and behavior problems and like to beat the shit out of each other. So instead of learning lots of useful vocabulary, the majority of the new words I picked up are garabatos, i.e. curse words. I lost the ability to count how many times I was asked, “What does muddafuchyou mean?” On the positive side, my self-esteem is flying after a week’s worth of being called “Tia Rica” and constant comments on how beautiful my hair and eyes are. Of course that’s only because I’m probably one of 3 blondes those kids have ever seen, but we won’t talk about that.
Beyond the shallow details, the experience was really quite tragic. I like to believe that people can change, can better themselves. I’ve seen it happen in my own life. But as I overheard one of the kids say to another camp monitor, people can change, but they have to want to do so. And when I see a nine year old girl possessed by some insane rage which leads her to physically attack a girl larger than her who has no desire to hit back, I don’t know. The more screwed up kids seemed to have no concept of the fact that their actions effect other people. Either that, or they just didn't care, or they lacked the judgment to think before they did something. All of those kids have and will live lives that are super duro and I understand to a certain extent why they are the way they are, but I have no idea what to do about it.
And despite their situations, I look at a few of them and think, they could have a decent life someday, if… If they don’t fall into some sort of despair that makes them think they can never change anything. If they aren’t ruined by their brother’s thoughtlessly thrown flying rocks. If being surrounded by so many damaged people doesn’t induce them to initiate a pasta base habit before they reach 16. If. If. If...
Sigh. The saga continues. But at least for the next couple of days, any tantrums I experience will be ones I throw myself.
