It was around 8:00 a.m. in Cambodia.
I was not too thrilled about being alive.
I laid on the tile floor, engulfed by the symphony of the fan humming directly in my face and mosquitos furiously buzzing in my ear. I grabbed at my clay covered clothes, desperate for some relief from the oppressive Cambodian heat. The wagon was honking outside, ready to take me to a nearby village. Yet, it was all I could do to peel my body off of the floor. My muscles ached from hours prior of manual labor when I had carried thick, red dirt in straw baskets. My head spun and my stomach ached for more rice. Emotionally, I was enervated.
“I think I’m a melancholy person.” I would tell my mom.
I feel things deeply. I allow myself to sit in pain. My days often feel like they are tinted blue.
Perhaps a more accurate analysis is that we choose our emotions. The statements we make about ourselves become self-fulfilling prophecies. If I say I am sad, then I will view the world with a melancholy lens. This past month has led me to take this idea a step further; we choose whether or not we feel anything at all. Despite being on the other side of the planet, novelty only lasts so long. New tasks quickly become old routines; days rapidly transform in weeks.
“God, give me eyes to see what you see.”
Overwhelming beauty engulfed me.
I saw tan faces with little creases around their eyes from smiling. I saw older women serenely squatting in the shade. I saw the colors of the children’s clothes as they ran and danced around. I saw the yellow flowers of pumpkin vines growing over a shed. I saw the street of stilted shacks, painted in now-faded pastels.
A crowd of children surrounded me, stroking my arms and intertwining our fingers. Unaware of what I was going to be doing, I was led to a wooden table. Children climbed on top of it, laying with their bellies down and their heads dangling off the side. I was given a small bottle of an amber colored liquid.
“Louse Removal,” it read.
And so, one by one, I washed about fifty heads.
