Human Trafficking

While doing research for my internship, I had to look at a number of web sites devoted to helping victims of human trafficking, the illegal slave and forced labor trade that is flourishing in the 21st century. They made me cry, especially the PSAs some of these sites produce. It's so unbelievably horrifying, the worst nightmare of a free person. Some experts say that almost 4 million people a year (only a year) are sold into slavery. I mean, real slavery, where you work and work and never make enough money to pay off the thousands of dollars of debt you make getting out of your poverty-stricken town. You hope for a new life, and are forced (women and children) into prostitution, agriculture camps, and sweatshops. I'll post some of the URLs later on, but check out IRC and IOM International. The department of state also has some good resources. It's amazing how many people are sold into forced labor here in the U.S.

It makes you sick to think that you are here, and comfortable, and safe, and your only worries are relationships, and making enough money to buy a car or pay the rent, or what to eat for dinner, if you can afford that new thing you want, etc. And these people send their children, themselves away to what they think will be a better life, and they are betrayed by their family members, their parents, their siblings, thier friends, their spouses, believing the lies of those who would prey upon the desperate and the destitute. It makes you want to leap up and protect these people, every single one of them. It hurts me so much to see people suffering.

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Every day, a battle rages within me. I want to help everyone, because I can't stand to feel their suffering. I really do, it hurts me to watch those who have no shelter, no basic needs, who face injustice and pain in their lives. But I get so bogged down by the hopelessness of it all that I want to run away. I want to lead the comfortable life. I feel as though I have been struggling for years, but I don't know who or what my demons are, what I am trying to escape from. At times, I just want to let the world fend for itself, to say that I can't do it, I don't want to. The drive for me to succeed is strong, but my need to help people runs deep. I don't know why I feel things so much, when sometimes I can be so cruel to the people around me and not care at all. But always I have a sense of empathy. I don't like to see people struggling needlessly, to watch someone's heart be broken, to see embarassment and shame on another's face. I always want to break through to the tough cases, to reach out.

But I don't like to fail. So I keep at things that are hopeless, sometimes, just because they have become symbols of winning or losing to me. And I hate it so much. That's one of the things that I have been changing about myself: my definition of success, my striving towards empty goals that don't bring me happiness. And with the realization that failure was my biggest fear, suddenly a lot of my past behavior oddities and relationship problems made sense. I would fight to hold on to things or to people that I wasn't happy with, and so would be depressed, feel that I had no future even if my partner was planning it with me. I would say, so, you won, you won an argument, you got the grade, now what do you want? And it would always be some inconsequential thing, that I hated doing, wanting to be accepted or loved, or hoping to win accolades and be the center of attention. At the same time, I needed my space, my distance, my walls. Before I had anger and coldness, then, I couldn't find them, so I used arguments and goals, tests and declarations. I used shyness as a curtain until I outgrew it. And then I used calculations. Always calculations.

Maybe that's why I liked math and astrophysics so much. I was always so calculating.
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I went through life as an actress, and a chameleon, not looking for acceptance but for applause for a part well played. It got to the point when, in college, I realized what I was, and I hated it. I'd wish I could tear open my skin and see if I had a heart. And I could never find that part of your brain that tells me what I felt, if I were in love, if I liked this or that. I was always ambivalent about a lot of things. Friends and significant others were a matter of convenience, or inconvenience, or of me simply accepting a date as an equal-opportunity dater. And so I gave people what I thought they wanted and waited for them to go away. I was surprised when they didn't. And I confused life with drama, so I would say things just to see their affect on people, and to get the reassurances we all need. But, here's the thing: I didn't even want those reassurances of love or friendship in most cases. I just thought it was better to have a full, worry-filled life than it was to be content and bored. Not to say that I hurt people out of boredom. It was like getting revenge against people who had never done anything for me to react to, but I could, so I would. Only to a few people. And no one is a saint.
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So I took a break, went abroad, and took a new attitude. I re-examined my life after a trip my junior year to Central America, and I didn't like what I saw. But when I went to study abroad the next year, I went with no expectations, especially of myself, except that I would pass my courses and travel. I didn't seek to make friends, to cultivate a new family, to find love. I decided that I would play a new character: myself. And it wasn't hard, because I stopped needing to find me. At some point, I had stopped being an imposter in my own skin. I don't know exactly how or when, but I know I did it. And I didn't realize what had driven me before I found me until the winter after I returned to my home. But, anyway, I just took things as they came, worried only about speaking in grammatically correct sentences and learning a new culture. Maybe the fact that it was harder to express myself in another language made me stop concentrating on getting results and let my feelings show.

I made mistakes still, huge ones, that I do regret, but they ended up for the best, and I don't mind having guilt on my conscience. I'm used to it, have been for years. I just don't let it overrun me. And it helps that I know that no one is perfect, almost everyone lives in a fragile house made of reservations, preconceptions, and fear. And when people like me come along, who shatter those houses accidentally, devastation can follow. That's why I like to build, not destroy (haha, I only use my power for good, not evil!). But I am off topic. The point is, I came back changed, better, a more solidified person, but more forgiving and adaptable. I adopted a philosophy I learned in training and from my friends, and from my own spirit: to take people as they come. They are people, they change, their interests and feelings change, their hatred, love, and apathy change. People are surprising. I always try to give people as many chances as they need to have with me (in general, I don't mean relationship-wise, that is difficult to do when you're in a relationship and someone comes back to you and asks for another chance, not a good idea to say yes then). They come back, they hurt too, they need a friend, and eventually they understand that while you are not too accepting, a pushover, a doormat, you are forgiving. And forgiveness is a huge gift to give.

Hee hee! Way over the top, Mandala!

No point, just happy! Got my head facing forward again, able to look in all directions, feeling kind of like I can do whatever I put my mind to.
So I'm not going to pick any one thing yet. Just some insurance.
Here's a little something to pick you up: I love this show!
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Unhelpful event of the day: Mirror, mirror, soon to be on my wall? Ikea, you're the oddest of them all!