Poker Face

You never leave someone behind, you take a part of them with you and leave a part of yourself behind.
-- Author Unknown

Dear friend,

    There are no easy answers, no healing words of clarity. All I can give you are these words, from my heart to yours.
    I remember you as the first person I met outside of our first Beyond Borders class, and from what I noticed, you were certainly not one to hide in the shadows. I remember thinking of how you were one of the coolest, most individualistic people I have ever met: with your rolled up jeans, grey converse, and sweet long board. In an instant I tagged you as someone who marches to the beat of their own drummer, and I am happy to say my impressions were not wrong about you. Your vivacious personality and larger than life heart is what drew me to you, and is what makes you a truly inspirational person.
    When I think about it, it is unfortunate how little humans know about each others pain. They can sit in the same classroom for months and months, ride the same bus, hang out with the same friends even, but their pain will remain hidden, undiscovered by our ‘knowing’ eyes. In today’s class an idea was sparked in me and illuminated first hand — that we are truly the masters of the poker face. This mask shrouds our deepest anxieties, allows our true selves to walk unnoticed throughout the world, but it is not who we are. As connected as we are to it, and as much as we depend on it for our sanity and to keep comfort levels in line around us, that face is something alien to us.
    As I learn new things about you, a part of your mask begins to slip away, revealing your struggles but not your weaknesses. The other day you wrote me with a blog request, and here it is, in all its inadequacy. I am not sure what created the distance between you and your friend, nor do I claim to hold an omniscient view on where you should go from here, but what I do know is that you are a strong, powerful person that has the ability to direct her own path in life. We all try to fill various voids in our lives, in the hopes of eliminating the feelings of emptiness and sorrow we feel, but what we soon realize is that those fillers are just placeholders —they cannot disintegrate the pain, only mask it until another wave of sorrow hits. It is only when we stop aimlessly filling, and start reaching beneath the surface to the real issues that we begin to heal. You may feel like you do not know who you are without this person, that you are lost without him in your life, but what I see is not fragmentation or brokenness, but what it means to be human. Like many of us, you have a choice to make. It may be difficult, it may mean letting some of those walls down and reaching out to him despite the issue that separated you two, or it may mean realizing that there is no turning back, that the light is brighter on the other side. Moving forward does not necessarily mean eliminating your past from your current life, for the past, as I know too well, has a way of haunting the present. Moving forward means not letting the events of the past cripple the person you are or strive to be. I hope that in time you can heal from this pain, and move on to a place where you realize you are whole, with or without him. Maybe your placement in India will open you up to this, and I hope it does.
    Whatever happens, just remember that the crew and I will always be there —to listen and to love.
  
This brings me to a question regarding the person I will be when I am in Uganda: What face will I adorn? Will I open myself up to a population and culture I am not familiar with, one that may judge me or misunderstand me? Or will I cower, and let them see only what I let them see? I hope that I can take what I have learned from Beyond Borders and the wonderful friends in this program, and shed the poker face, to make this experience a real one.