Disillusionment

So in addition to being sick, the relationship with the family has changed, too. Yesterday evening, when I was still puking up water, Sandra kept telling me, don't think about being sick, you will be able to go to Otavalo with us tomorrow. You'll feel better. There's optimism for you.

So I say, yeah I hope I feel better, but I don't know about going - I'm worried about getting sick on the road. Pati, her brother (keep in mind here that I am sitting around the kitchen table with Sandra, Pati, Mami, Papi and Neil's parents from South Africa), says in a dismissive tone, I'm sick of people who get sick and can't eat certain things (I'm lactose intolerant) and complain all the time.

Really? I've been puking for almost 24 hours. Really?

I asked him if he could make me feel better immediately, to please do so, that would be wonderful. Whatever. I can understand about the complaining part to a certain extenet - I don't do sick well. I did pretty well about it, keeping up a good face, but what the hell, am I supposed to pretend I feel just fine? Excuse me while I run to go puke up the 1/4 cup of tea I just drank (I think it was at least another 15 minutes before that did actually happen, but still). I spent almost the entire day half-asleep in my bed out in the apartment off the patio and was barely around the house. How I was irritating while asleep, I'm not sure.

By some 24 hour miracle deadline, I woke up feeling much better this morning. So I get up and get ready to go, eat some bread and weak tea, which I keep down. Right on, let's do it. I really want to go see the market, it will be a short day, I am going to get ot back again later so it'll be nice to just take it all in without worrying about presents and things to buy.... Yeah, the car was full. So Sandra says, well you and I can go on the bus and meet them up there. Before I can say, yes, let's do that, someone else says, it's such a short trip, what if we can't find you, etc.

So if I say I want to go I making more problems, but if I say I am going to stay, I am just wallowing in my sickness. So now I'm upset because I don't know what to do... So I am thiking out load trying to decide what to do, I do really want to go even though we will be there again in a week, but on the off chance I get sick again while we are gone... Sandra gets this fed up look on her face and tells me, enough worrying about being sick, don't start with that again.

At least I found a way to extricate myself from the situation. I needed time today to plan my trip to Cuenca.

It's funny that something as small as being sick and not wanting to push myself managed to remind me that this trip was a roll of the dice from the beginning. As I am reading back over this, I'm realizing that describing it doesn't cover all of the undertones to the situation. When I lived here before, the little comments like the ones above were hard. More often they were tied to being forgetful, messy, misplacing things, or sleeping in - all of which are associated with being lazy. In a Catholic society, being lazy is practically a sin. It makes me a bad person.

Having someone, or a family, who is supposed to love you and treat you as their own, say things like that and make you feel that way is a damaging experience. It was those wounds I came here to try and cleanse, but for now the alcohol really stings and the wound seems too deep. I know that the healing will come from myself alone. I knew that coming here, but after how well things had gone until now, my hope that they would treat me better grew.

So for now, while the sting is fresh, I am leaving this house where so many previous hurts haunt. I hope that I will get to Cuenca and be able to enjoy myself in one of the most beautiful cities in Latin America, rather than retreat and lick my wounds.

Growing and healing always hurts, but that knowledge never seems to make it any better.