Thoughts of a confused grad student

[love-personal]

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deep

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A random stroll in Boston

I took a leap of faith and entered the train. I had no idea where it was going and could not verify because my phone was dead. Like many people my age, I have come to depend on my phone for everything especially when it comes to finding directions. Given that I had never taken this train before and could not verify whether I was going in the right direction, I just stood there hoping for the best.

There was a girl with intense dark skin and breaded hair on the seat closest to the door of the train, and her bag was taking the seat next to her while I stood in the middle holding on the handle above. She had deep brown eyes and was wearing a completely black outfit with tight black cutout pants, a relaxed long sleeve black shirt that looked too cold for a cool Boston spring day, and black boots with high heels making her look like one of those dancers in a 1980s RnB videos. A few minutes after the train left the stop, she moved her bag from the seat and motioned me to seat down, an offer which I readily took. Seating there, I was fidgeting like I always do when I am embarrassed in big city trains when I have no phone or book to look at. After catching my breath, I tapped her shoulder and said: “Excuse me miss, my phone is dead and I am lost. Could you please look up an address for me?” I was trying to get to Cambridge, close to the Kendall stop at MIT but had ended up somewhere in Boston on the B Green line, and it was approaching 1 AM. This girl not only looked up the address for me, she accompanied me outside the train to make sure that I took the right train, and gave me detailed directions on which stop to get off and which street to take afterwards.

A week later, I had started feeling more at home in this new city despite the fact that I knew only knew one person here--John--who had graduated a year earlier from my school down south. It was Saturday morning and I had woken up earlier than usual, and so I decided to take a walk around the City. This time I not only managed to find my way back to Cambridge from my dorm in Longwood, but I had also gotten over my fear of discovering the city alone and with my phone now fully charged, I had found my way on the shores of the Charles River, on the side that is closest to the Boston Commons.

I had never walked this much since my arrival in Boston and I regretted not having done so sooner. On my left side, a few small boats were stationed right under the bridge close to the Massachusetts General Hospital train stop. And to the front I could see MIT, an office building for Microsoft and a Marriott hotel. Two ducks were fronting slowly towards the shores where the small boats were docked, and their heads and neck were moving up and down in unison with the rest of their bodies. As I watched them, I realized that I had never asked myself how ducks, or any bird for that matter, coordinate so that they can move in such uniform fashion. Do they choose their moves randomly, like I had done that morning when I decided to go on that walk?

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A day in grad school

He stands there, his smirk mirroring the radiance of his eyes and scribbles on the board things that I am supposed to understand  but do not. I move my eyes around the class and I see either extreme excitement or pure boredom.

A beautiful mixed girl seats behind me and she is typing on her laptop. Next to her, are two asian students browsing their smartphones while a white student behind them casually discusses with the professor some hypothetical scenarios in which this or that theorem holds as if there aren’t 50 other students sitting in class that day.

A familiar thought comes to mind: what a fucking waste of my time. Yes, I catch a concept here and there, and not all classes go over my head like this one does. Before I know it, I am contemplating my own death. “Let us say I was given an option to either be shot in the head or to just stay here… humm, that’s a tough choice! Well, if it is pistol, then maybe not… But a shotgun… yeah, I would probably take that.”

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Why I chose to part ways with Catholicism

Like many of many peers, when I left home, one of the price that was paid was the loss of my religion. I say my religion despite the fact that it was never truly mine, but my parents’, and had been passed on to them from theirs, and to them directly from the Belgians. It was not hard at first to not have that religion. After all, I was in an American college where being religious is openly laughed at as weak-minded even if that school happens to be a southern, bible belt Episcopal church affiliate. Not only that, but I was still the same person who had posted a prayer on Facebook earlier in that same year when I was notified of my acceptance to the scholarship program that sent me to the US. And so, at first I did go to mass. And I joined the Christian club on campus in my first year until somewhere in my second year when things began to take a different turn.

In secondary school, I used to pray for food, and for being cured when I was sick. At my new school, that that did not seem necessary anymore. I do not mean to paint my prior life before coming here as that of pure poverty however, because in fact, my family was rather well off in my neighborhood, and we never went hungry nor lacked proper clothing nor school tuition. Still, there was this specter of uncertainty that although not openly acknowledged, hung over many families who had not yet forgotten the days when having enough to eat depended on whether Made in USA boxes had been delivered that day by big UN trucks…And so, when waking up and getting a hot shower became routine, and my school cafeteria was open to me for unlimited visits everyday, it became hard to see why I would pray for food anymore.

At first I tried to find other things to believe in so they can become my anchor and I blamed my parents, especially my father, for not giving me the “freedom” to develop at an early age, a spirituality or connection that I could latch on when church stopped making sense to me. Building your own spirituality is very hard and after my failed attempts to read about, and practice buddhism, I completely stopped trying. Some of the reasons why I dislike church are too close to home that it is hard to even face them. The first of those is my father, and although I have tried to empathize, I still cannot get over the fact that he seemed to love church and his church people more than he loved any of us. Yes, he did provide for us, and maybe he really needed that much involvement in church for his own spiritual survival. After all, I don’t know what bothers him, or what traumas he has accumulated over the years that most of the conversation he has with any of us tends to be no more than five sentences. Still, I accuse the church for stealing my father, however absurd that sounds.

My second complaint against church is that I associate it with family; my family. I have asked myself this question since I was in secondary school and although I have told it half jokingly to my mom several times, the idea of family does not have too much appear to me. I have yet to find an answer to the question of why I would ever want to have a family, especially if it were destined to be like mine. Why would I want to have children, all broken in their own ways, and who are no more than strangers to each other? Why would I want a wife to suffer like my mom did raising six difficult beings, loving them, but also cursing them at times that they may die as useless as they were?

Armed with those questions, and the many others whose answers I am yet to find, and probably never will, I have decided that church, or family life, is not going to be the answer. Maybe there never will be an answer and I am trying to become okay with it. What I do know at the moment however, is that I do not want to change. I do not want to become catholic or to get married, or to have kids. Maybe my mother’s wisdom will win, and I will find out later that this was a child in me talking. And maybe the need for companionship will win over and stop me from asking these questions. And if that day comes, I will not actively resist it. But unfortunately today is not that day.