irrational

Peace Corps sure wreaks havoc on my emotional state. Well I guess that isn’t fair. Some famous person, maybe Eleanor Roosevelt (I don’t remember) said that no one can make you feel anything you don’t allow yourself to feel. With that said, I guess I allow my PC experience to wreak havoc on my emotions. How’s that for taking responsibility? So back to the point.

I like to think of my self as a fairly rational person. I don’t generally like chaos, I try to keep things orderly and base my decisions on logic and try to keep relatively cool and, rational about things. I haven’t been doing so well in that realm these days. There’s always been a list of things that get me really riled up and send me into long, passionate, sometimes angry, rants. That list is being augmented at an unprecedented rate. Little things send me into a tailspin these days.

As an example: In one of my most recent trips to Chiclayo I spent the day visiting with my PC friends and enjoying good food (vegetables are great!) and relaxing. I ended the day with some quality time with Skype (a true gift from the gods) talking with my dad and my long lost friends in the States, whom I miss sometimes unbearably. To sum it all up, I left the café where I use the internet in a great mood, headed back out site. Because it was late and dark, a Peruvian friend of mine, Leo, offered to accompany me. Some background, Leo is fairly well educated, really intelligent, the farthest thing from the stereotypical machistic Peruvian male. He’s great. And he puts up with a lot of my shit. So we head out into the street and the first 2 taxis I hail try to charge me more than double the normal rate. My blood started heating up but I was in front of a nice hotel so I have them the benefit of the doubt and tried to let it go. My friend, noticing how annoyed I was (and knowing how much I hate when people try to rip me off) decided to try to hail a cab, with the hopes they wouldn’t be as eager to rip off a Peruvian as they are a random blonde wandering around. Here my irrationality began. I got frustrated with him, and blamed his actions on his machismo (instead of his honest desire to help me) and began to spout out the reasons why Peru bothers me.

He, as always, allowed me to whine and exaggerate and we continued trying to get a cab. Finally someone agrees so a fair fee and I head off. Well there are two places where I can catch my bus. The first (where I normally go) is a terminal that’s pretty dangerous outside but once I’m in I feel safe because the people know me and watch out for me. The second is on a corner on the outside of the time. I hate going there. I have watched drunk men beat the shit out of each other; drunk men beat the shit out of women, drunk men crash cars, etc. from the windows of my bus as we pass by. I don’t like being there in the day, it’s worse at night. (I also don’t like drunk men. Machismo stinks; drunken machismo is the most awful thing I’ve experienced in this country). So for times sake I have to go the second place. Again blood boiling. My head is scanning the many (irrational) reasons why I sometimes hate Peru.

Get to the terminal and just in time catch my bus. It’s full. Not just full, packed. There’s not even really standing room. Luckily for me, I spent a large part of my time at the U of M riding overcrowded campus busses. Standing on a bus doesn’t bother me. Except this time. The bus is short. I’m to tall. I can’t even stand; it only goes to about my shoulder. Then a drunk guy pushes me so he can get on. Here my blood is at a rolling boil. I cuss at him in Spanish (I am learning useful things). Irrational. The bus is filled with 15ish year old boys who begin to giggle and point at me and take pictures of me with their cell phones (damn all those nifty gadgets that cell phones have). I try to remember my conversation with my friends in the States. Try to picture my friend he drank, played volleyball, and talked to me at the same time. He has a distinct laugh when he’s drinking that always makes me smile, I try to think of that. My blood still boils. I try to think of my dad golfing and meeting people from his tiny home town, but the sound of the 15 year olds giggling eats away at me. Irrational.

I ride the whole 45 minutes that way. Smacking my head against the metal bar every few minutes. I’m incredibly annoyed by this point. In my head I’m reciting the mean things I want to say the drunk man standing next to me (and trying to smell his breath). I am thinking of everything I hate about Peru and how much I want to go home. I kept trying to think of good things but it wasn’t working.

I finally get home and my host family (that never drinks) is having a party. There are drunk people everywhere. No one says anything to me. No one invites me in. They don’t even say hello. I go inside to drop my stuff off, knowing that I’m in an irrational state of mind, and go outside again. Again, no one says anything. Fine they don’t want me at their stupid party. I don’t want to be there anyway. I go back inside and watch a movie on my computer. Still angry, sad, frustrated, annoyed etc. And the feelings are amplified because I know how silly it is to get so worked up by this stuff and I ‘m mad I can’t control that better.

Well the story continues in the same manner. My irrational anger basically follows me into the next morning and into the afternoon. Slowly it loses steam and I begin to cool down. And that’s it. I never really resolve anything I just kinda cool off. Now, in my more rational state of mind, I see how foolish it all was and feel slightly embarrassed of my anger. All this did make me realize that I am letting myself give way to too many of these negative emotions. I need to focus more on things that make me happy and healthy ways (pouting in my room alone doesn’t qualify) to combat my increasingly illogical emotions. I breath, I run, I think of home, and the most effective, hang out with my amazingly cute puppy. It’s slightly ridiculous how much a dog can mean to me and affect my overall state of being. But I suppose that’s not necessarily and unhealthy actualization of irrationality. Lesson learned. Anti-climatic huh?

Oh yeah, and drunken machismo is still one of the ugliest things in the world.