Growing Pains

There is a cartoonist who used simple and elegant lines to depict closeness of relationships throughout a person’s life. I first saw it a few years ago, but I remember thinking how beautiful it was that she was able to boil down the complexities of relationships into lines. The beauty that I found in it was also heartbreaking––because when we are surrounded by people who seem so pivotal to our existence, we might not realize the moment when our paths begin to veer away from one another; it’s only in hind site that we notice how far away they are.

Over the past few years, I have begun to come to terms with the fact that I won’t be friends with everyone forever. I understand that people come into our lives for various reasons, and that I can be thankful for the impact that they had, without lamenting the fact that we aren’t friends anymore.

I do think there is something to be said for the people who stick around. Those who mirror and challenge the growth that I experience. Whenever I returned home from college for breaks, I felt a lot of self loathing for my inability to connect with all the people I once considered my closest friends.

It took me a long time to admit that I wasn’t the same person that I was in high school despite feeling like I had to fit the same mold. Realistically, I had far outgrown that mold. Just like putting on a pair of jeans that’s far too tight, even if you can button them, they’re going to make you absolutely miserable the entire time you’re wearing them.

My time in India has been nothing short of extraordinary in every sense of that work––the good, the bad, and the ugly. This is to say that I’m not the same person that I was when I graduated from college, nor the same person as when I frantically threw my bags onto the weight at Logan Airports check-in counter, through muffled tears as I said goodbye to Kiernan. I’m not the same person as when I got here and stayed in the hotel, nor the same as when I first moved into my apartment. The reality is that with so much uncertainty and stimulation every single day, my sense of self changes dramatically from one day to the next. I have found that my flexibility and accommodation for the unplanned and unknown is far greater than it ever has been––I attribute this solely my forced adherence to utter uncertainty.

Because nothing is the same here. The things that I thought would be the most challenging, I can do with ease and those that I thought would be easiest pose the most challenges.

When you wake up and walk down your street every single day to see families sleeping on cement sidewalks under a haze of air pollution while you fall asleep on the second floor to the hum of your air purifier, when you walk into a train station with a backpacking backpack and a day pack full of everything you’ll need for the next two months, and look around to realize that everyone around you has the clothes on their back and maybe a little something on the side, you gain a lot of perspective.

Because poverty is never pretty. In the US, we glorify poverty. A lot. Poverty can tear at our heartstrings and make us question our life choices, but it’s never pretty.

I ran a half marathon a month ago. I ran it because I wanted to run far outside––it seems like a simple pleasure that could be afforded to me nearly anywhere. In Delhi, that wasn’t a realistic expectation. Running the half marathon isn’t the point though. The point is that when you run a half marathon, the organizers give out goodie bags with food and souvenirs. When I exited the gates of the stadium, small children swarmed, begging for food. I counted at least twenty of them pulling at my clothing. I didn’t need the food or the juice, or really anything in the gift bag. One by one, I pulled out fruits and juice boxes, and handed them out. When I had nothing left, because those bags are only meant for one person, the children kept begging. This is what I mean when I say that poverty is never pretty. I had nothing left to give. I quite literally carried my cell phone and the clothes on my back. They kept pulling at me, begging for more that I simply didn’t have. In a rush of guilt and frustration I grew angry at the children for their inability to recognize that I didn’t have anything left. I was angry with a world that has propelled poverty cycles that children are born into––because it's not their fault either, nor their parents.

I angrily said peeche chordo which essentially means go away or drop it and pushed through the crowd of begging hands that quickly swarmed runner after runner who exited the stadium.

After that I was emotionally distraught. No matter how much a person gives here and to whom, it’s never enough. In the most populated city in the world, there will still be another child, at the next corner and they will ask you for more money.

When you have to grapple with that kind of poverty and simultaneously understand your privilege in it, mundane problems, or “three car garage problems” as my friends and I sometimes call them, seem really small.

I want to emphasize that I’m not saying that we should all understand what it’s like to sleep on the streets of Delhi, rather that being bombarded by seemingly endless gentrification and wealth disparity can be debilitating and confusing. These compounded with the language barrier, the cultural nuances that make it challenging to connect with people, and several other parts of living here gave me a new perspective.

This is all to say that it seems extraordinary to find people who grow in parallel to us. Who allow us to grow through the molds that no longer suit us and reveal the beauty that can accompany movement through each iteration of our comfort zones.