2016 Year End Reflections Pt 2

There was the trip to Ireland. The place in which I found myself every few years, which I'd considered to be a sort of second home. It was the only place outside America I thought I could ever live. But I did  not visit Belfast, the focal point of those imaginings, and perhaps that was the mistake. Much of the trip was tourism-oriented. Of course, there is no wonder lost when seeing the Cliffs of Moher, even when you have seen them before. And Guinness tastes just as rich after the twentieth pint. Yet because I had money and a friend, I journaled little and spent as little time reflecting upon my life and transition from life on the island, even though this should have been the very purpose of the trip for me.

My mother's love for the simple and dismissal of the complex in Europe strongly carried with it the same derision for intellectualism that I had already discovered in the States, particularly in my own Lone Star State. Coming from medical school, this nagged at me, and would continue to nag at me for the months to come. So I spent my time in Ireland and Scotland managing my mother and her friend so that they would have no worries. And that trip ended.

This was near the end of September, so I was planning to start focusing well on school. Unfortunately, this is near when the presidential debates began. The nagging at home became declarations. Vague comments resembling racism or bigotry began to solidify as such. My dislike for such became seen as a side effect of living on an island with Muslims. I had effectively been brainwashed. Those who had scoffed at restriction of freedom of religion before now proclaimed it as they sided with Trump, usually not bothering with the only possible (though unfounded) excuse that Islam is not a real religion.

I tried to go to church again, to find and center myself. But I could hear the support for Trump in the amens. I still do not know what to do regarding that. In any case, I became more anxious from attending church rather than feeling relieved or uplifted by community, so I stopped attending.