Here is a memory I have from a day we taught English...

I remember her face. She is laying down next to her sister. Her eyes are so expressive. The pain was so clear in her eyes. I wanted to help her somehow, take the pain away, take her out of this unhealthy environment. My heart sank. I wanted to take her place in her suffering. I think if I could take all the suffering away from all young human beings by sacrificing my life I would do it. They aren't responsible for their suffering; they are innocent. It's their parents, their environment, their culture. They just are caught in this mess and are suffering needlessly for it.

If it were feasible and logistically sound, I would take all the children away from their damaging environments, to a peaceful peace somewhere. But I know that isn't possible. It's wishful thinking. It is a nice idea though.

I feel discouraged. I feel powerless. I feel helpless.

I enjoy playing with children, picking them up, holding them, and giving and receiving hugs.

They are more human than adults, more open, more free, more willing to learn to new things for just the sake of learning, more expressive with their emotions, less motivated by material things. They laugh at simple things, and smile when you pick them up. They are grateful for your attention. You earn their respect the more you treat them like an equal and a fellow human being.

There is an underlying sadness I feel when I meet children though I am glad to be with them. Though we have fun, I know it can't last forever. I can't help them understand what their culture is doing to them, or even escape from this place. We talk about simple things. We practice the numbers in English. We hold hands and dance. I put them on my shoulders and run around while they scream with laughter. It is also awkward for me because I cannot understand and respond to them in Spanish that well. I understand some and most of it I don't understand. I tend to avoid long conversations with them because it is difficult and uncomfortable for me, and I'm afraid that they will reject me because I can't speak Spanish well.

I am also afraid that they won't accept me for my skin color or my very curly hair or just the way I look. I feel helpless in a way because I cannot change that. But then again, I don't see why I should change that. Why does it matter to others? I am just a human being. I say that because adults are so used to thinking in black-and-white terms when it comes to perceived differences among human beings. But they (the children, I mean) accept me, more than I accept myself. So I feel very appreciative of them and grateful to be around such truly good people.

When they run over and give me hugs, or when Asusena sat next to me and held my face against hers while we were practing English together, it feels so positive...and calming.

But to a certain extent I feel despondent because I am damaged by my parents, teachers and other authority figures, friends, and American culture---all the things I had depended on for guidance growing up. They steered me in the wrong direction before I forcefully took the wheel and drove away from them. My life has been complicated by my thoughts, sorting through all these memories, trying to make sense of what has happened.

Right now, I feel very needy at an 8, needing someone to feel close to and intimate, but not necessarily in a sexual way, more for the emotionally and mutually beneficial aspects.

I remember feeling frustrated when I was at the internet cafe two days ago. And one of the kids I met from the colegio came in to look at the movies that were in the glass display. I think her name was Maria. She waved when she saw me and came over and gave me a hug and a quick kiss on the cheek and then went back to look at the movies. When she left, she waved at me again. It was nice to see her, and I felt better after getting a hug from her. It's little things like that which are worth more than money or any material luxury.

Hugs are important, regardless of the other person's gender or what they look like, especially if it is genuine and well-intended. It naturally has a positive effect for human beings, especially when we feel sad or alone or frustrated or some negative emotion. It eases the pain of our emotions.

The other day I saw another young person I met from the colegio, pushing a wheelbarrow full of something (I don't remember what was in it) for his mother. It hurts to think that the driving reason she had a child was he could work for her like a farm animal. But that's what parents use their children for in Peru and in other places around the world, to work in their farms or do housework or some manual labor that a child ought not to be doing, in my opinion. But that is what's nonetheless going on here because the people are so poor.

It hurts to think that people have a child because they are lonely, or because they want to be loved by someone, or because they want they want to feel important or looked up to by someone---basically out of an emotional need that they expect the child to fill. It also hurts to think that people would have a child out of low self-esteem hoping that child will fill their need to feel superior or something.

My father had very low self-esteem and a negative self-image, which is why he felt superior by bossing me around, forcing me to do things that I didn't want to do. He would always talk about confidence and pride, how I should follow his example. He is arrogant and he admits this, but he says that it is just high self-confidence. It is his way of compensating for the decades of invalidation he has experienced.

You see, his insecurities became my insecurities. He was deeply insecure about his skin color because so many people made an issue of it when he was growing up. He was damaged by American culture in that time period, which was the mid-50's.
He wasn't a bad father in the sense that he provided for me and could fulfill my physical needs for food and shelter, but when it came to my natural emotional needs as a human being he was clueless. He really had no idea about parenting. He didn't know what he was doing. So he followed examples from other people, television, cultural expectations for parents. He thought that a good parent is one who provides for the child, and disciplines them so they obey, and other dumb shit that he was wrong about. He also believed in corporal punishment as an effective way to maintain and raise an obedient child. I think that's the source of my resentment towards him because I couldn't physically defend myself. It was unfair and demeaning. But he felt powerful when he hit me. I think that is part of why he did it.

His father abandoned him before he could walk and his mother basically shrugged off her parental responsibility by handing him over to his grandmother. His grandmother beat the crap out of him to discipline him. And she would defend her barbaric parenting practices by quoting from the Bible, the same way my father defended himself. He would often say, "Boy, you're lucky I'm not like my grandmother because they would have to put you in child-protection services." And whole time I'd be thinking, "Um, yeah okay, fuck you." I never liked calling him "Dad" and I didn't want to acknowledge that I basically had an idiot for a father. I call him an idiot because I feel resentful towards him, but actually he was just clueless and sorely misguided and so out-of-touch with himself. He wasn't emotionally honest, nor was he even emotionally aware. He was very self-unaware. He couldn't tell how he was truly feeling because he was confused about his own feelings. I think he was afraid to look inside himself because there was so much pain from unresolved past emotionally traumatic experiences. But he is the way that he is for a reason, and it is important, at least for me if not for him, to understand those reasons. It is the same with me. I am trying to understand myself, what things or events have shaped me into the person that I am today.

I never agreed with religion from an early age when my parents first took me to church and later forced me to go to church when I spoke out about it and pointed out contradictions in the Bible. My parents used corporal punishment to force me to attend church with them. Ugh, those are such primitive and animalistic parenting methods! And they would say, "We are doing this for your own good. We are laying the spiritual and moral foundation for you. You don't know how important this is for you. When you get older, you will thank us later." Meanwhile I'd be thinking, "Yeah okay, fuck you." And today I say, "Hey look I'm older now, and I remember what you told me, and everything you said was bullshit and lies, so fuck you, you brainwashed jackasses." I feel better saying that.


7:09 pm
It gets stressful trying to be so frugal with money all the time. It is easy to become obsessed with expenses and price-comparing, trying to get the best price and make the most of the money you have. I would rather spend it without getting carried away or going against my core values and feeling that I should be overly worried about it. The way I see it, money cannot last forever, and it comes and goes. When you have it, you can either lose it or never use it. It is easy to become possessive over it, as most people are. Money has a practical instrumental value, but I don't see how it is truly important to or a constituent part of happiness.

I was thinking of the term "job security" and what it meant. For me, I want a guarantee for the future. I don't think most people are content with the unknown, the unpredictable future. We want guarantees. We want to know that we will get what we set out for. But reality is there are no guarantees and that we may set out to do something with our best effort and end up failing.

My stomach has been bothering me for the past week. I don't know what is going on with it. It has been hurting for days, but the pain has been very subdued and lingering. I feel somewhat hungry now, but my stomach hurts, so I don't know if it would make much sense in eating something. I'm a little thirsty, but the water from the faucet has a bad taste to it. I feel little uncomfortable drinking tap water in Peru. It depends on where you get it from. But I don't like the tap water from this room. It sucks and it is cloudy when you look at it in a clear bottle. I could buy water and something to eat but then I would have no money for food tomorrow. This is what I was taking about above: worrying about money and expenses. It would help to have a stipend for a set amount of days, so I could adequately cover my food expenses without having to worry about it.

Oh well, the human drama ensues. I feel like I'm in a cosmic soap opera that never ends.


9:18 pm
Most of the help that I've done so far has been more superficial, I think, and hasn't been as deep as I would like. I don't want to just teach children I meet the numbers in English. What I want can't be done, and what can be done I'm not fully satisfied with or I'm unable to do as well as I would like. Like, for example, educating them about emotions or how their environment is damaging them so they can better protect themselves from it, but that would require a grasp of the Spanish language that I simply don't have right now. I'm more idealistic and a dreamer than anything else. The idea of taking all the children from their unhealthy environments sounds like a noble idea, but I think it is better left as a nice idea than a working reality that necessarily undergoes all the strictures and countless factors that no human being could possibly pre-calculate in their mind. It is just too much to do, the idea of "saving" the children, I mean.

I'm thinking back to when I was talking with Steve earlier. As we were walking, he said, "It hurts to think that you unintentionally or subconsciously would sabotage my relationship with Laura. Because I think it would be to your advantage if she weren't here." Just thinking about that, I feel defensive. It would hurt me to think that someone I considered a friend would do that to me, too. But that wasn't the case. First, I appreciate his honesty about his feelings, so he values our friendship enough to tell me that. Considering his statement, I'm thinking, "Whoa, why are you blaming me for her decision? It isn't fair to hold me responsible, even partly. I can't control how other people think." It's like he took what I said, passed it through his belief filters about me, and processed that conclusion. So, to a small extent, I feel judged and misunderstood. I feel judged in that he assumes or believes I'm trying to take advantage of him or trying to use him or I'm only out screw him over for my own benefit. The thought that you would think that I would do something like that and that I'm the kind of a person who would step over or hurt others for my own personal gain offends me, Steve. The more I think about it, the more misunderstood and judged I feel. I merely said that I felt left out and like a third wheel, and I felt a little resentful towards Laura because she needed so much time alone with you. If I didn't say exactly that earlier today or you remembered me saying something differently, then that was the intended meaning.

After the two occasions when Steve was feeling jealous when Laura and I were practicing English together, which I understood why he felt that way, I was afraid to talk to her that much for the sake of Steve's feelings. She ignored him on those two occasions, and I make that emphasis because I am feeling defensive. I am not responsible for other people's decisions and actions. I can't control what other people say and do and what they think and the decisions they make. After a while of being so afraid, I just didn't want talk to her much because I wanted to avoid as much conflict as possible and I figured I would give them their space while managing my emotions about it. Maybe if we all had sat down and talked about our feelings about the whole situation, we could have worked things out.

Reality is hard and firm, and once something happens we cannot change it; instead we can either come to terms with it or let ourselves be bothered by it. I don't think it is of much help to any person to brood on the what-if's and would-be's because what has happened, has happened regardless of what you could've done. I think it is of greater help just to start with a fresh outlook and ask ourselves something like, "What do I do from this point?" Not necessarily that exact question, but just something with that general meaning. In other words, focus their mental energy on what they can do from this point onward, rather than on what they could've done in the past.

At times, I've gotten the impression that part of the reason he wants me to stay is because, even though I'm not a girl, it's better than having no one around, which I don't like the thought of. I don't feel valued as a person or accepted exactly as I am. I also feel used. It has seemed like the emotional support that I earnestly try to give considering my own limitations and past damage he has some difficulty accepting entirely because of my gender or bodily appearance, which makes me feel disillusioned or jaded. No sooner than I wrote that came the thought that my statements are more out of being self-conscious and insecure and projecting that on the situation. That is one of my belief filters, so I already have this preconceived idea in mind and when something happens, I filter it through those beliefs and come out with a different conclusion which is off-base and doesn't accurately reflect reality.

Going back to his statement, he said that it would be to my advantage if Laura weren't here, without going further and saying in what ways it would have benefited me. He later said, after I questioned him about it, that I would get to spend more time with him. That is true, but even still I don't see how things right now are in any way beneficial to me. I don't at all enjoy seeing Steve unhappy and crying and feeling alone, abandoned, and deserted. It hurts me to see him like that. If I could suffer in place of him to take his pain away, I would do it at moment's notice without a second thought to the contrary. But really, I don't know what to do, and most of the time, I'm scared to do anything because he might reject me for whatever reason. It's a hell of a lot different trying to lend emotional support to someone in real life than it is over the Internet, for better or for worse. Regardless, if I were a girl I'd give him lots of hugs and hold his hand when we walk so he wouldn't feel alone. But the reality is that we were both born male and grew up into such as we are today with our respective belief systems and ways of thinking, and as such I can't do that kind of stuff without there being a deep discomfort or awkwardness between us. I'm not entirely sure how Steve would react to that statement. I'm a little afraid he or someone reading this would judge me or that statement as being "gay" or homosexual. Sometimes I feel that being caring of others along with the fact that I'm a guy with these bodily features is altogether a handicap, like it would be better if I were a nice-looking girl if I want to give emotionally support to certain people. There are certain people I could reach out and lend emotional support to and there are others who would reject it because of their own personal prejudices, I suppose, or for whatever other reasons. But when I think about this, I imagine an adult or older teenager who is in emotional pain and needs support. I don't think a crying child would care about my gender or how I look, if he or she senses that I am genuinely trying to lend emotional support and that I care about them. Young children have no use for prejudices. There minds aren't damaged in that way...yet. And it pains me to think that it is only a matter of time before their wonderful, pure minds will become damaged and programmed and that they will learn to value things that are of no ultimate worth and meaning and instead value things that in the pursuit of obtaining them will invariably lead them in the exact opposite of happiness, contentment, and inner peace.

In my opinion, Laura wasn't internally motivated by the work that Steve and I were doing, or at least not nearly as much as we were. So, to a certain extent, she did "get in the way" of it but it wasn't necessarily her fault. I think it was more a conflict of core values or life outlooks. I don't think she is out to make a difference in the world in the same that we are.

But she is a warm, sensitive, caring, considerate, compassionate, intelligent, creative, and artistic person. And she gave really good hugs! I missed the hugs she gave me when I first met her, and we would hug and I wouldn't pull away because I was so needy for human contact and she wouldn't pull away, which surprised me, and so it was long-lasting and emotionally satisfying for both of us. I felt so emotionally supported when I first got here! What the fuck has happened? God, it's such a shame that something so beautiful ended up falling apart! From sitting in the Jorge Chavez International Airport in the food court with Steve and Laura on the morning of September 24th, I would've never imagined that things would have ended up like this. It's something out of the Twilight Zone, when you compare that morning when I first got here with the afternoon of December 12th when Steve and I were sitting on the hill together talking about how Laura left two weeks ago, about two-and-a-half months later. It surprises me and truly scares me, the thought of how damaged a human being can get from the backwards values and programming of a given society. It really goes back to the collective intellectual, emotional, and psychological sickness of humanity as we know it. Something has to be done about this. I'm no anarchist, but I think a complete overhaul of all industrialized, capitalist societies across the globe and their resulting value system and shared worldview is sorely, sorely needed. We are getting so alienated from the basic things that makes us human. Life-on-this-earth is needlessly complicated by all the bullshit that goes around in and comes with living in industrialized, aristocentric societies. We've lost the desire and motivation of getting back to a simpler life, without overly convenient luxuries that accomplish little more than making us lazy and existentially ungrateful.