Dropped

My pocket buzzes, and I look down to see the email I have been waiting for since September. I shudder.

~

I find myself at yet another dance show. The lights dim in a fashion so familiar it is nearly intertwined in my DNA. I have grown up watching dance shows, and I can tell you all about them. I can tell you how easily my body shrugs a friendly arm over the shoulders of my host sister’s opening routine. I can tell you just how I fix my eyes on stage as the lights collect and brilliantly fuzz around the edges, adding more magic to the movement.

My host mom and I sit in the last row in the back. My host sister Fe had failed to purchase the right number of tickets, so while the rest of my family sits centered in the front row, my host mom and I mumble bitter stabs that range from how no one wants to be friends with us to honestly was it really so hard to find a few extra seats to pass me another cheez-whiz to where the hell is the Coke? With orange dusted fingers, my host mom pulls out her camera to record Fe’s dance. Her face puzzles into a fierce determination.

And then a baby shows up. I swear, he literally just appears. One minute, I see colorful polleras and the next, a giant shadowed head is bumping and flying and wailing across the screen of my host mom's camera. As the shadow grows and grows, my mom's brow furrows profoundly. And okay, so I am just gonna go there: the ridiculousness of this baby’s head reminds me of that goat parody on Taylor Swift’s “I Knew You Were Trouble”. Like, one moment you see beautiful dancing and smiles and then all of a sudden BAM BABY FLIES ACROSS THE SCREEN....Okay okay, yes, a wonderful group take on that turn , wow Fe looks JK BABY BE BUMPIN’. My host mom takes a deep breath, clearly trying to focus on getting the most footage she can.

The baby just comes back, bigger than ever. Here, my host mom nudges my arm and tells me to say something to the father, the puppet master of this grand affair. I kind of freak out. I hate confronting people. It's not that I don't have experience confronting annoying fellow dance parents (as the older sibling at my sister's dance shows, I was continually sacrificed for this battle: I would push myself to the front of the line and elbow out older moms to get my family to the front row, laying blankets down like a goddamn pro). But to actually talk to someone? I mean, that's just too much. My host mom nudges me again, this time ordering me to say something. I am flattered that we have gotten to the point in our relationship where she can be the bossy mom, but all I mutter back to her is a frantic, "Pero, ah, um mamá realmente no hablo español..".

She just gives me a blank stare (**so so close to being another Taylor Swift reference). I try to make my eyes big to look cute in defense. Without taking her stare away from me, she taps the man on the shoulder and just wags a big finger in his face. Then, she makes a head gesture that can only be translated as 'shove it'.

And I am in hysterics, exuberating deep-throated shimmies. After the show and for the following week, my host mom continues to make fun of me. Her favorite greeting for me becomes, "oh look, it's the girl who can't speak Spanish!". 

I can only smile as my heart plants ever more roots in Bolivia. 

~

The email subject line reads: CONFIRMATION OF WITHDRAWL FROM THE UNIVERSITY OF DENVER. 

I have officially dropped out of school for the quarter to go work on some farm in Bolivia. The feeling that hits me is incredulousness- riveted on some crux that feels both so close and so far away from home. My heart pounds, but it isn't long until I begin to get lost in my daydreams. I float quietly to that distant fifth moon I know all too well...


I face my critics. They are kind of a motely crew, lined up to interrogate me.

I take a deep breath and walk over to my first critic. 

"Okay, let me have it." I announce boldly. Then, I face myself at age 14. She looks so serious, and also so thin. Seriously, is that a collarbone or a razor blade? She stands kind of shaking under a heavy sheet of pressure. She wants to make it to an Ivy League school and is wound so so tight. I hate to see her this way. But she lets me have it. She screams that I am throwing all her hard work away and that this decision of mine is not the dream we had. She's crying as she sees all her struggled hours of work get thrown away for a farm in Bolivia. I stand there saying nothing. I just take it. Then, she reaches out to pinch my elbow. It bruises, and I instinctually reach up to rub the pain away. I try to muster my apologies through a last look at this girl I used to know. I walk to the next person in line as the pain eases (and I must say I am impressed at the force of that elbow pinch, as this was the same girl who couldn't even lift the bar in weight training class).


As I walk, I feel a haze of light start to warm the horizon behind me. 

Next, I face my privilege- mi privilegio. I embody nearly every privileged identity trait (I am really really not saying this to boast). All of these identities, which have helped secure me a much easier path in life, depend on a world violently tilted in my favor. I was unfairly given not only a clear map in life, but the fucking treasure map (and actually, add on a guide to this. He was there waiting on my mountain trail with warm snacks and gave me sweet nothings of encouragement along the way and he was even beautiful with a crooked smile that swarmed butterflies in my stomach). I face my privilege- my very privilege of being able to abandon all responsibilities to stay in Bolivia. I think of all the injustices that are setting fire across the United States and the World and my fiercest critic scathes me. My running away to Bolivia is not working to even out the playing field or to right oh so woeful wrongs- I am running away with everything I have. I fall to my knees. The air is thick with this burden of truth. I feel a gut punch and my nausea grows. 

I stand up to continue on. That hazy light grows to cover half the sky. 

Here, I face all the love of my friends and family. And I am so lucky because this is a lot of love. I have always been the person to be taken care of, never really much of a caretaker (think I'm missing that key maternal instinct). In fact, I have always attracted mom-types- those who continually look at my flushed face and crazed hair and promptly pick me up to put me back together again. Moms are my people. All this love just looks at me with sadness. I have abandoned them for some bullshit noble pursuit of exploring more of myself. It is bullshit because I am telling them that I need to leave them in order to find a piece of myself when they have uncovered and extracted all the most beautiful parts of me. They are the reason I could ever be considered beautiful and whole and alive. I have left them. I feel a gash in my forehead. It's going to need stitches. 

The light is nearly infinite behind me. 

Finally, I face Noah from The Notebook. Yes, Noah. I am Allie (coincidence that we share the same name? I think not). We are in that one scene where Noah and Allie stand outside of his home and they are fighting as Allie tells him she needs to go tell her fiancé about their affair. Okay, so enter scene: 
I try to reach for the door of my car, but Noah slams it shut. He shouts, 

"You’re bored Allie. You're bored and you know it. You wouldn’t be here if there wasn't something missin'."

I glare at him, but maybe he's right. I could be bored. Then (because this is still my daydream) we start to post-fight angry make-out. It's pretty hot. Maybe he even slips a hand under my shirt but over my bra... Okay, I know I'm getting distracted. But I angry make out with Noah for a bit and walk away with a crooked ankle.

Despite all this- despite all of these truths- I choose the selfish route. I choose to be so selfish. I face all of these critics and these wounds and I frantically search for my defense. Words come up short but there is that light so big behind me. That light has grown infinite, and I know it is that first doubt I had back in September. The doubt that I would be ready to leave South America at the end of December- it was a doubt so deep within me. I know it's a selfish doubt but, and now I am addressing my critics, this light and this power and this huge expanse filled with brightness has propelled something infinite within me I swear. Please. Please. I know I don’t what this light is made of- but what if it's fucking stardust?


When I miss people, I do this thing where I imagine that first hug once we are finally reunited. It's just that first moment where I nuzzle my head into someone's neck and I feel arms wrapped so tight around me and I shut my eyes tight to hold back tears. I stand in front of all my critics, and I start to picture hugs. I see hugs at the top of that escalator in DIA and I smile at hugs all across my university campus and I miss all those pairs of arms so much. But I fill myself with that power. I run and run into the arms of others- love booms above me as words from the late Maya Angelou:

 Love recognizes no barriers. It jumps hurdles, leaps fences, penetrates walls to arrive at its destination full of hope.

The words boom, but I ask myself one last time: am I the biggest coward of all? I used to think the decision to drop out school to work on some farm was brave, yet maybe I shouldn’t be protesting these criticisms. Maybe I should just let them sit...

 But I can’t help but fidget under the accusations. Please, can I just add that I am trying to learn? That I am doing all of this to learn? To learn so so differently? I have spent years with words and I just want to learn with my hands, to feel the Earth, to pulse with an unfathomable greatness. I am trying to learn so that I can be better. Look, I know that this might not be enough and that I should just sit with those valid contradictions. I know, and I am so sorry. I fidget again. I fidget with that warm haze behind me. 

To my dearest critics, I promise I am going to chase the bright bright light. I will hunt the most profound beauty! I am trying to find that fucking stardust.

And so, I press the button to withdraw from school. I drop all of my classes, one by one. I sign the form and scan it in. I press the final confirmation. I drop out of school to go work on some organic farm in Bolivia.

I really don't know what to say. 

Before & After

The Time I Was Going to Save the World

I have always had potential. Everyone throughout my schooling career has told me so.

Like the model student I was, I read those textbooks closer and I made those worksheets neater and I was always so easily the apple of my teacher’s eye.

Then, like any young student with potential, I started to rack up my leadership experiences. I was paving my pathway to success through my carefully calculated volunteer hours at the homeless shelter. Thank god those kids are on free and reduced lunch- I now have the perfect unpaid internship opportunity for the summer.

This volunteer work will look great on my college application.

Conveniently, there was always so much pain in the world to fill my resume with. I got my straight A’s and they told me I was going to be something great so I dreamt myself onto podiums. God, the crowd was cheering and I was waving and I was making people cry in inspiration and I was holding all of the organizations and people I have ‘helped’ on my impressive resume, showing the world that I am not only a model student but a good person.

Don't mind those people’s souls or their dreams or what makes them weep or what makes them come alive, dear Alyssa! All those people in need have already been reduced to your dimensions of 8 by 11.

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Enter.

They told me I was gifted and talented as they wrung bodies in the streets. Please don’t spill anything on our high-achieving classes. They are the future.

But they told me I was the future and that I was gifted and that I was most likely to succeed because I never questioned anything.

I read textbooks cover-to-cover, copious notes and a wicked fast memory, yet I never stopped to fill myself with poetry. I always raised my hand to give them answers- but where were my questions? I always had potential because I looked like them, walked like them, talked like them,

Thought like them.

They told me I had potential and that I was going to save the world.
I never questioned anything.

~

An open letter to myself from that little piece of Universe inside me:

Let's begin with forgiveness. I know that you have made some mistakes along the way. You were so artfully seduced by fictitious notions of success, and you spent many years chasing dreams that were not yours. However, you cannot allow yourself to be paralyzed by this indignant perfectionism- hallowing yourself out only leaves emptiness. Yes, you tried too hard to be Superman and failed to see that what Lois Lane really needed was a systematic shift of the culture of violence that targeted her as a woman instead of those strong arms and red cape. Yes, you should never be Superman. You should be a listener with every figment of your arched soul- let’s bare ourselves open to listen.

You chose to study in Bolivia for a few reasons. The first reason dates back to the sixth grade. It was your very first Spanish class and you didn’t understand a word of it. Mr. Hinkle was talking so incredibly fast that all those unfamiliar sounds blended into something between knock-kneed poetry and a quiet challenge to learn that stream of words. Mr. Hinkle would later share his stories of traveling down the coast of South America and right there under the atypical inspiration of florescent light, you knew you had to get to that place somehow. And then after many more years in classrooms under florescent light, you came to realize that you wanted to hear a different story about the world. I am not quite sure how you knew, but I will forever be thankful to that persistent roar inside you. You wanted a paradigm shift- to understand the world differently. You wanted to shed light on dusty corners that have been violently abandoned and so, you came to Bolivia to listen to a new knowledge (I think this really is the first time you acted to listen rather than to create).

This pursuit of a careful collision between adventure and new knowledge has brought you to the indigenous university. The intercultural context fuels all your pursuits of new knowledge because it reveals all the gaps you were never taught to see. You talk and share and try to connect- of course with flaws and incompleteness. But this time, you are not working to reduce anyone to the little slip of your resume. You are here to learn vulnerably and to value those small personal moments as vital slivers of knowledge. This knowledge- not available in textbooks- is working to revalue humanity. I know that the journey to revalue humanity is not just poetic prose from your rosy-shaded mouth: it is the lethal weapon against the many interlocking systems that function from the destruction of humanity. This destruction was every history class that pioneered American expansion as heroic. This destruction was and is colonialism. This destruction was assigning a market value to a tree.

The systems feed you things to memorize but they never stop to teach you humanity. So here, through small memories and talks about dreams you are trying to transform personal knowledge into power. In the future, you want to work in education reform. It is both infuriating and emboldening that are so many different ways in which the secondary education system needs reform. The two main issues that plague the system today are inequality and an unwillingness to welcome new styles of teaching into the classroom. These two issues intersect intimately- many students have been left behind by the school system because the pedagogic techniques were designed to only value one dominant form of knowledge. So the solution is intersectional. You might not know in what capacity you are going to work to reform education because you are not going to be Superman. I know you will figure out your role some day. Right now, I say that you continue to be a learner. Recognize the deep paradox that the classroom that tried to strip you of your humanity was also the very first place you ever felt alive.

As the little bit of Universe inside you, I want you to know that I will always love you. I will love you more than you could ever possibly know because my love is infinite. I will love all these fragmented pieces of memories and friendship that cement as a mosaic within you- these will become your most powerful allies of knowledge. And I am writing as that little piece of Universe inside you because I am a part of you, I am made of you, and I will be here as you fight for something bigger than you.

Xoxo,

U.

Punk

I again find myself on a bus. We are five hours in, and my palms have begun to sweat as I remember that I have no idea where I am going. We pass huge expanses of rainforest, sheets of green licking valley walls in all directions. The highway is dusty and through the open windows the air turns thick. I am on my way to the Casimiro Huanca Quechua Indigenous University, traveling alone for the first time in Bolivia.

And I’ll be on my own for a month. I often hyperventilate at this realization. Well actually, I straddle two types of hyperventilation, each one threatening to take over at any given dusty turn-

Type One: GOD DAMNIT YOU DON’T EVEN KNOW SPANISH AND YOU CHOSE TO GO MEET COLLEGE STUDENTS WHO ARE PROBABLY GOING TO BE SO COOL AND YOU THINK YOU’RE COOL WHEN YOU SAY ‘YOU’RE COOL LIKE A CUCUMBER’. ARE CUCUMBERS EVEN COOL?

Or Type Two, as I pause momentarily to ‘collect myself’: You came to Bolivia for an adventure, Aly. And don’t you fucking know that Aly and adventure both start with ‘A’? Isn’t that a sign? Get your shit together, loser.

So I straddle. The imaginary horse I straddle is my one strong steed of faith for my time at the university- a faith crazy enough that it just might work. A faith deliriously foolish and lavish in lunacy. It comes up in my darkest hour of hyperventilation:

Aly, you’re going to make friends.  

~

I stand in sweltering heat on the side of the road. I had begged the bus driver to tell me if this was the right stop for the university. He had grumbled some sort of throaty sniff and waved to the right. I took that as my cue.

I look up to see a taxi stand, and my heart fills with love at the thought of entering one of my beloved trufis. I drag my two backpacks and sleeping bag across the highway, dripping beads of sweat like breadcrumbs behind me. When I get to the taxi stand, I only see a series of motorcycles, or motos. I timidly ask one of the drivers if they know the best way to get to the university. He smiles and points at his moto.

I honestly believe he is kidding. I stand under the weight of my large backpacking backpack (a green monster I comically attempt to drag around with my pencil-thin noodle arms) and stare at the motorcycle. I know I am being a gringa princess, but I just think it’s physics: there’s no way a moto could really fit two people and all of my crap, right?

He grabs the backpack and throws it on the motorcycle, apparently deciding that the world has no time for my princessness. I breathe slowly and then hectically put all of my faith into this man’s motorcycle. I squeeze into the narrow space between the driver and my bag and clutch my other things tightly. Another driver tells me that I must hold onto to my large backpack, so I nervously stretch myself over the back of the moto. I lace one arm through the straps of my bag, put my small backpack around my neck and wrap my final limb around the waist of the driver.

The motorcycle leaps forward and all of a sudden wind is rushing. I scramble to plant my feet for balance and look up to see the highway caressed by sprawling canopy. I look behind me to see rows of semi-trucks rushing forward.

And even though I am scared as hell on my very first motorcycle ride, this becomes one of those moments where I can only say to life: Oh fuck yeah.

~

I chose to come to the university because I was entranced by its view on education. In the wake of centuries of colonization under the Spanish Empire, decades of violent oppression under US-funded dictatorships and years spent enduring Reagan’s horrifically cruel War on Drugs, Bolivia is now beginning to recuperate its indigenous knowledge, culture and identity. The three indigenous universities were established as centers of community learning. They offer coursework in indigenous languages and offer practical majors that will encourage students from rural areas to return to their communities in order to enact projects of change for both people and the environment. I have spent my whole life huddled in a desperate love affair with education, so I decided to fall in love once again at the university. I spend my first week attending classes, roaming the university’s forested campus and shamelessly trying to make friends (like, actually very aggressively forcing myself and my unbundled personality on a myriad of unsuspecting strangers). It’s been an adventure.

But now I sit in my hotel room weeping. Hard.

I haven’t wept like this in a long time. I am split open, cracked raggedly and relentlessly. I cry waterfalls and let the pain excavate through me, leaving me erect on the linoleum chair. I am shaking, pulling my eyes tight and breathing large, half-leashed gasps. This is when I get scared. I’ve never undone myself without the subconscious comfort that someone is waiting for me in the next room. And now I sit in this sticky heat in a hotel room very very far away from home, and I am scared. 

I know this sounds alarming. And I know that this blog is supposed to be quaint stories of my time abroad. I know that to you, I could be just a girl you knew in high school. To you, I could be an old lab partner, a dear friend, a friendly wave on campus, a sister, or a daughter. I know that you just might care about me and that this sounds alarming. So here, I offer you, whoever you are, this: my story ends in spectacular happiness. Warm and steady, it ends in happiness.

The sadness that overcomes me is an accumulation of various moments that have passed during my time abroad. But I attribute the final cracking to two people: Peter Pan and the Universe.

I sit crying with the final page of Peter Pan open on my lap. Now, the novel has its problems (namely strong racist sentiments and a rigid dependence on patriarchal gender roles), but I am taking away its thoughts on growing up. Peter Pan has a horribly sad ending. Wendy leaves Neverland with her brothers and the Lost Boys and grows up. She gets married and she becomes a mother. Peter, the forever boy, continues to visit as Wendy grows up- hopelessly in awe of her. But one day, when Wendy is all grown up, he comes and she tells him that she can never go to Neverland again. She is a woman now. Peter collapses in tears, screaming that he is so angry and confused that Wendy had decided to grow up and leave him.

You could say I am also facing a crisis about growing up. Honestly, I haven’t really thought about my life after Bolivia. As a young girl, I dreamt of middle school, and then I dreamt of high school. I made all my feverish dreams about college and finally I dreamt of making it to South America (I have always been so immensely privileged to be able to dream). But now it’s all stopped. Of course I have passions and hopes and vague ideas about my future, but they don’t take any formal shape, and I am not ready for them. And Peter Pan is supposed to be a wonderful boy and now he is crying too because he lost someone to the age-old epidemic of growing up. I am overcome by romanticized nostalgia- she greets me with a big friendly wave and tells me to come back. But I am already spiraling, every moment and every minute closer to the future that I cannot picture.

Nostalgia is met by my ruthless self-criticism and an open ‘fuck you’ to the Universe. I chose to come to Bolivia because I wanted to experience a paradigm shift. I wanted to understand the world differently- to shed light on dusty corners that are violently abandoned- but I forgot to take into account how deeply I feel things. I have seen my paradigm shift, but where others can see problems with the world and remove them to a safe distance (using their newfound understanding to harden a revolutionary resolve), I tremble while I fill my heart with them, pouring until I overflow. I picture the Universe as this kind of punk kid. He leans back in his chair with his hands clutched at the base of his neck, resting his heavy spiked boots on my heart. Sometimes this kid has his moments; he laughs and he grins and he sits back just enjoying life. During these slivers of punk-rocked sunshine, I feel elation too. But then in other moments, he becomes cold, throwing his chair to the ground and kicking a striking blow to my heart. It’s here that I become undone and scream: WHY ARE YOU BEING SUCH AN ASSHOLE TO SO MANY PEOPLE IN THE WORLD? All of my breath leaves in gasps. To this, he responds wickedly by dragging me through all of my imperfect memories, my darkest mistakes. I am left churning in reconsiderations of my own happiness.

I think it’s the heat that eventually calms me down. I can no longer tell the difference between tears and sweat, so I stop and wipe it all away. I am left with a thudding feeling, somewhere between raw and utterly hard-boiled. I realize I have been sitting in my hotel room for hours. I need to do something. I nudge the Universe awake (he’s been snoozing dreamily this whole time) and tell him we are going on a walk.

But I have already made several laps around the town’s main plaza and feel like I need something more. I pause. After a moment, it comes to me. I decide to do something so completely cliché, not even pausing to relish in the laughable douchness of my impulse.

I grab my copy of Eat, Pray, Love and rush out in search of a tub of ice cream, smiling a goddamn grin the whole way out the door.

~

I sit reading Eat, Pray, Love in the plaza while stuffing mounds of sweetness into my mouth and into my heart. A few days earlier, I had fallen during a game of soccer on campus. My wound was kind of oozing and now small buzzing insects were feasting on it. I didn’t even care because I was eating ice cream and reading about Elizabeth Gilbert’s first pizza experience in Italy. I had kicked my punk Universe out for the moment. Told him to go for a walk.

After about an hour of reading, my attention starts to wane. I start wading in and out of daydreams, kind of wishing the Universe would come back now as I meet my first itches of loneliness. I lean back and decide to nap for a bit. I try to be one with the wind.

Just as I begin to drift off, I feel the shadow of someone standing over me. I wink one eye open and see Deborah. I met Deborah a few days ago, and she quickly became one of my closest friends at the university.

“I’ve been looking for you,”, she smiles.

And I can’t even begin to tell you how good it felt to be found.

~

My time here has mostly been characterized by small and plentiful highs. Maybe it’d be good to share a few. I know I got a little intense there, so if you’re still here, I’d like to thank you for sticking with me. You are really sexy.

Okay, well. To start, the campus and the residence halls at the university are separated by a large expanse of forest. I walk through the forest every day and have found a small wooden desk nuzzled in all the greenery. It is all so hauntingly beautiful, and I am so lucky to wander through it in my day-to-day life.

Next. The food at the residence hall legit rocks. The other day I was eating warm arroz con leche and chuleta, which is a T-bone steak over rice. I was trying to cut through the steak with a spoon and was completely failing. My friend Elizabeth had already eaten her steak to bits and was now licking the bones clean. I attacked my steak even harder, spurting piles of rice all over my shirt. Elizabeth took my plate from me and promptly began to cut my steak into small pieces. I felt like a toddler. A hot-mess toddler. She handed it back, and I was so thankful and also kind of in awe of her magic because I mean, how the hell did she just cut that steak?

Then, I just need to tell the world how completely lovely my advisor Evelyn is. She is one of the most intelligent and caring people I have ever met. During my first few nights at the university, she let me stay in her room. I had only met her once before, and yet, she let me, sweaty and crazed after that motorcycle ride, stay in her home. As I slept that first morning, Evelyn woke up at the crack of dawn. I heard her soft morning sounds and continued to doze. When she left the room, she pulled another blanket over me, tucking me in and smoothing my hair back. Evelyn, you deserve all of my millions of thank you’s.

And finally, I have found a group of friends through one of the classes I have been attending. I ate dinner with them the other night, and after, my friends Rolly and Paola offered to drive me back to my hotel on their motorcycle. The three of us climbed onto the moto and then Rolly rushed us onto the dark highway. I looked up for the first time to see a breathtaking expanse of stars. The sight of them smacked me hard in the chest. They hit my heart so hard that I could only raise my hands high in the wind. In this moment, I appreciated, loved, ogled, basked, bathed, admired, breathed in… Yes, that’s the word!

I breathed in the Universe.