Perdóname pero nunca olvido!

On the eve of one year away to the day, I watched a life literally slip through my fingertips, ugh and that feeling of failure and selfishness and inadequacy starts to consume you, mixing with loneliness, and the new and very real understanding that there are infinite wells of issues so deep they are never ending, yet as the sun rises so does the stronger feelings and knowledge, that you can and will never stop believing in the light, in the fight for better, and those stuck in the bottom of those wells will only have a chance if we refuse to stop fighting, to take their pain and let it transform us, and so it will go... "But I will hold on hope And I won't let you choke On the noose around your neck And I'll find strength in pain And I will change my ways I'll know my name as it's called again http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3KkUeRPjc-Y

I don't want to come down

I can feel myself slipping, every day it's a bit easier, I think of you with less pain in my stomach, and for once in my life I dont want to get better, I dont want to escape the pain without you. I don't want to leave you in my dust, because I know you are not escaping, I don't want to leave you, the pain I feel for you connects me to you makes me a better person, makes me strive to save you, and if I can not save you I dont want to get better, because knowing you and your pain is the most powerful and important thing I have done in this life,i hate to think of returning to safe and content normalcy without taking you with me, I am losing the deepest most beautiful part of my soul.

Real life black holes

Pica: the feeling I get when I think of our last conversation, "i have made a huge mistake" I just realized you are just a bigger version of our lost scared boys, you have made it further, continued living longer, I know they say that us gringos we feel too much, but I saw it in your eyes, I felt it in the room, there is a black hole inside you, I can feel it inside me now. Yet I can feel you willing me to fill it, trusting me, like nothing about the hardest life I can imagine had hardened you,

What is the most unsettling is you, all our lost boys, are still so eager to smile, to trust, to love I don't know how to connect the two, or even which of all my over active feelings I am having. Its like my feelings are an oxymoron they can't coexist

There are these two combating forces the evil of desparity and pain, abandonment, abuse...and the overwhelming willingness to love and accept love radiating from you, all of you.

Felix

Its a hunt, like a treasure hunt. Walking for hours upon miles through literal sludge made of feces, decomposing waste, and trash. Through sweltering heat even in the darkest alley ways. Wondering with a mission through the biggest and blackest market in central america, accompanied by crack addicts, drug dealers, and back alley prostitutes, we continue searching, looking, hoping, and hunting. Until one day we find him. Hes only 10 but he looks like 6 and he is living on his own on the steets, either abandoned or escaping a life scarier than this hell. I call his name and he stops but is too high to recognize me, the solo white female in a sea of thousands. The last time we met he threw himself into my arms and forcefully wrapped my arm around himself. yet now her flees and in one short moment he is gone. The hunt is over.

Time to start the long walk back and the 2 hour commute possibly hunching over in a micro bus/ 15 passenger van holding at minimum 25 so I can start over again tomorrow. We might not find him, he might not remember us, but he is my treasure and I will continue seeking after him. The hunt goes on.

Long ago heaven was defined to me to have abundant adventure and I remember thinking my heaven would be a treasure hunt for the gold at the end of a rainbow, turns out for me at least this heaven is on earth just no gold and no rainbows but the promise of life from within the deepest depths of decay. And for me this is not hell, this is heaven, with decay, and hate, and pain, so much pain, but with little beautiful lifes, dry, parched vessels just waiting for a drop of love, worth, understanding. There is no greater adventure, for there is no worthier treasure.

I can't do this...

Why did I think I could do this?! I wrote notes to every shallow backpacker I met, and now when the little ones are calling me mama the ones that don't speak to anyone telling me how much they love me, and..., and chupie. ...AND PICA! I feel like my heart is being ripped from my chest. ...and pica what is it that makes it hurt so badly to leave you? I think its because I was able to see just one small peak into your heart and it made me realize YOU are the one in a million, you and alberto and rolando and yerman, the ones that against all odds made it out, with solely the strength of character you have made a life for yourselves, you are still lost boys with the same wounds but with the strength to fight.

Why do I feel so strongly, but suck so badly at expressing any of it?! I am not in love with pica but I have a love deeper than anything I have ever known, deep within my soul, for him, and yaoska, and my lost boys and every child that has cried into my arms for being the most broken victims of this broken world, for rape, abuse, child prostitution, for that gaping hole inside them calling out for the love of a mother, a father, anyone...

Holy f****** s*** did that just happen?!

Dancing all night long,quat moonshine, sleeping at marks, kite fest ride home!!!

Possibly the most dangerous way to travel: clinging along with 5 other guatematecos to latters on the outside of chicken buses on the highway. Our solution... taking rides from strangers.

For halloween we all went to a nearby town to a party at a guy we just met's restaurant.after working a full day packing tires, digging ditches, and teaching my quatemalan companeros how to say things like: I want you and give me a kiss, basically giving them the tools to bug the crap out of any gringa; we all packed into the back of a pick-up ready for a party.

The party started well as the guy made good on his promise of having a keg of dark beer, which I swear was the smoothest most delicious dark beer I have ever had; but maybe the trick is starting with warm tecate. As the Guatematecos started to show up and line the walls we decided to go for it and start the dancing. Eventually everyone realized for us at least dancing is all about having fun and forgetting how you look and they all joined in, someone had face paint so following the lead of an awesome guatemalan guy we all made our selves mustashes, and sideburns and danced the night away for hours.eventually after the djs left everyone still wanted to hang out so we played banjo, they played guitar and every one sang their hearts out to some ranchero music. Finally after bull shitting on the block and playing more music in the street we finally went back to the guy's house to play horse shoes and eat my first lunch meat in months and amazing sandwiches...and sleep.

To some this may just seem like a night of partying but to me it was beautiful. We come to places like quatemala to learn about and live in another culture, but I love that this night we brought that gift to other people. For this night we got to invite these quatematechos into what we wanted to represent halloween as. For a night they knew Americans as open, fun, welcoming people.people that dance with abandon with non of our differences, just as people, and if they never get to travel like I am,i hope they feel like they did just a little bit this night.

The next morning, our host had actual pancakes, eggs, beans, Orange juice and coffee for us, and after a couple of us headed to another nearby town for the biggest kite festival in Guatemala. I think I mostly just need to post pictures to describe this, but it was amazing: kites the size of houses, each one incredibly intricate and shockingly colorful. Thousands of people packed onto the hills rooting for each kites flight and aweing together as it went down, someones violently into bystanders, ice cream and bubbles everwhere, and a crazy beautiful decked out cemetery.

I felt that especially put together these moments were me choosing who I want to be. I chose to take the first step by coming on this trip but every choice I get is an opportunity to choose to define myself, to choose the different experience, the new opportunity, and to realize I can do this everywhere, but to have it so big and visual has made me realize how much opportunity I have in every moment.

Several hours later we started to head home way too late hoping we didn't miss the last bus... After 3 fully packed buses passed us by on the highway saying we had to wait for the next, we knew the forth was the last bus we would see and, had to make it on, no matter what. Again they were fully packed but we pleaded so they lead us to the back, where people were literally hanging out the door and several other guys were already riding on the outside latters, and we were to join them, so because even riding on the outside of a chicken bus going 60 on a windy highway wasnt as scary as being suck on the side of the highway at night, we climbed on. While we were still slowly making our way through traffic,a lady yelled to us from a car asking where we were going, as we told her, she told us to get in, they would take us.

Turns out great people exist and they offer rides to strangers heading two hours in the opposite direction. Just ordinary people with stories of narrowly escaping death during the sandinista revolution, you would think I dreamed them into existence, now I will dream myself into a new existence, one where I would sacrifice myself for strangers like they have done for me.

Ahh, hot chocolate made of protein powder and partially boiled rain water

Comalapa, night under the stars, picnic with david, talking with demetrio, soccer compliments, toe, living sitch, playing pots and pans and disney songs

So after being trapped in beautiful san pedro for a week and re-planning the rest of my life I finally made it to comalapa.

Being in the highlands and still rainy season it was freezing and the conditions could definitely be considered rustic... I lived in litterally a shed and I could see through my walls, our dry compost toilet and solar shower were outside and the site we worked on was a half hour walk up a mountain of mud. And I loved it!

In the mornings we would all either make a collective breakfast or pack our lunch then we worked all day digging ditches, hauling gravel, sifting sand, or decorating with mud and cow shit. We made lunch together, went to town played soccer, lived a full life. Again for dinner we would all cook together then play music into the night. Meaning we would get out pots and pans for drums, play the banjo and sing disney songs. These are not things I would normally do or relish in, coming from the states I would much rather drive than walk anywhere and probably cook for myself maybe three times a year. But once I was thrown into this totally opposite life style I was hooked; its like the feeling of being fully alive. and I started to love walking for hours everyday not to be healthy but because thats what I needed to do to get where I needed to be, I fully owned everything I accomplished in comalapa, because I wasn't relying on anything but my own body or mind. Gas and machinery didn't take care of transportation, I did. McDonalds didn't make my food, I did. And although I bought the ingredients I bought them from the person that grew it, raised, killed it, whatever.

It all felt like being baptized in a waterfall, I couldn't have planned it and I don't think I can replicate it, but I want to figure out how to use it, not forget it. We joked this should be sold as a retreat, to become one with your body and your world, because honestly I can not imagine finding this feeling at a yoga retreat eating all the right foods, I think its because this is the way we were meant to live.