Senior Reflections (Part 5) -Final

Skipping ahead to Uganda. I wrote more but, well, whatever.

My first day working in the rural hospital in Kamuli, I saw childbirths. I had been so trained as a good Christian to look away when I saw anything inappropriate on women, so it took some getting used to. These pregnant women would sit completely naked on a metal table to give birth. That is when I learned something that is, of course, common sense, but was strange to really take in. Women are all one thing. The zones that had been so forbidden to see were simply a part of the whole. Breasts, vagina, everything, they were a person.

Unfortunately, what that mission included far too little of was ministry. I felt useless for a month, and that combined with the desire to change the poor state of healthcare there gave me a real reason to become a doctor. With that in mind, I began my best academic year to date (grades may argue, but it was). I also preached the sermon that God had been teaching me since the summer before my sophomore year in college, that righteousness comes from believing in God’s promises even in the midst of everyone else’s (and a fair amount of your own) disbelief. In my case, this pertained particularly to my becoming a doctor. As often happens in a time when I am very connected with God, it was easier to give into temptation because I thought of myself as being above it. So when I disobeyed what God said to do shortly afterwards, I felt awful, and I missed out on more opportunities to serve ‘cause being ‘dupid is a good way to distance yourself from God’s voice.

From then, I kinda just read those Wheel of Time books. I cut out getting coffee with friends in my spare time and either studied, read books, or did something else to lose my mind and avoid thinking. Ironically, this strategy to do better in school and making myself unlike my brothers made me act similarly to my brothers and push away from the very reason why I was trying to do well in school in the first place.

And now I’m home. Now, my mom uses a vacuum cleaner on wood and tile and looks to me for validation when she cleans. I realized that I was pretty much taught how to clean by my dad, and my mom had apparently acquired few of these skills. My dad gets lonely a lot. My brothers get high a lot. My youngest sister won’t slow down enough to learn or be corrected or stop doing drugs, and my other sister is only just now about to finally move out and have her chance to grow up away from family. I was annoyed at first that I was considered to be the “good kid”, but now I understand it. I have grown a lot, and most of it hasn’t been in a bad direction. I’m the only one in my family that consistently works out and eats at least semi-well, and I’m willing to work hard at whatever job comes my way, which is impressing my dad a lot. I’m acting the way he always described that we should act. My mom is still emotionally unstable, and I’m having to assure her that she’s doing fine. And I’m realizing that my parents are going to ask me for advice again, and they will listen. I now have this odd mantle from before college on my shoulders, brought back by familiarity, that I have to balance with social habits like drinking. I cannot be who I was before by any means. But some degree of it is going to stay with me, too.