listless...

God, I don't know how to think or feel right now. The past 50 hours I've been in an apathetic daze. In 10th, I used to take Vicodin before lit class every day. It set me in a glazed over state, where i was neither here nor there, existing in a trance as to not realize how my world was falling out from under me. I never told anyone about it, and I was alone in my addiction to these pills and this state of living.

Though my dependence on the drugs dissolved, I now have put myself back in that mental state without them. I don't want to think about anything, about the life I've just left and the world I've finally grasped, and for the past few days I haven't. I've felt high, loopy, and empty since a night a few days before I left Samoa that left me dysphoric and confused. Maybe retreating from the world is my way of coping? If it is, I'm worried that when it wears off I'll become an emotional wreck and know no way to handle it. I really don't know what to do.

All i know is, the wreck is imminent.


Today I was trying my best to forget everything in the world with a drink and a nap down by one of the pools at our hotel. I was enjoying a $2 apple (I'm fucking serious), listening to the sunburned, overweight couple next to me argue about what time they should make dinner reservations for (and, funny story, this morning I was woken up to my parents having an almost identical argument). I tried to zone out by flipping through my National Geographic I greedily bought yesterday, and wham, i was hit with a story of a slum in Dharavi, Mumbai, in India. This story was partnered with beautiful, vivid photos by photographer Jonas Bendiksen, and tells the story of a group of people existing together in poverty in India's financial capital.




This reminded me of the squatter settlement I visited in the heart of Suva, Fiji, a little over a month ago. These people lived in corrugated steel houses and washed their clothes in the same water supply they drank from. They lived barefoot and hungry, living off of what little they could scrounge up each day doing low-paying jobs and begging. They lived vagrantly, as on any day they could be kicked off the land. Across the street from this development were barb wire fenced-in mansions of successful and monetarily blessed families who jumped on their trampolines and shined their expensive cars. The funny thing was, though the people of this squatter settlement was pitied by the many weathly people surrounding them, those living in the tin houses were the nicest and happiest people I met in all of Fiji.




The article I read made it sound like though the people in Dharavi called it home, their lack of possessions and sanitation made it difficult for them to be happy. I thought about this for a while, and now, I'm a little perturbed. The mission of National Geographic is to promote a desire to care for our planet, but it seems like these stories are just a way to make middle-class americans feel better off than the rest of the world. It's shaudenfraude. Taking joy in other's misfortune.

I don't know really what to think, and the vicodaze is washing back over my head before I can develop any real ideas. Recently there have been so many fragments of thoughts running through my mind that leave too quickly, and it turns out this is just one of those. hopefully soon i can go deeper into my own head and figure this out.