The High Begins to Wear Off

Today was not such a great day. I mean, nothing bad happened per se, but I've just felt down and lonely since the minute I woke up.

I've been getting up really early and today was no exception. At 6:11am I was jolted out of a sound sleep by the loudest thunderclap I've heard in a long time. The rains came to Maputo this morning, full of lightning and heavy clouds. It was actually a nice change from the way I usually wake up...

You see, the neighbor that lives above us on the terrace of our building has a water tank (caixa d'agua) for which he refuses, for some unknown reason, to purchase and install a buoy. The result is that every morning between 5:00 and 6:00, when the City water starts to flow in for the day, the neighbor's water tank overflows and overflows like an urban waterfall right above our bedroom window. The sound is actually quite soothing - the annoying part is that every morning as soon as the water tank spills over, I have to make a mad dash to the bathroom to pee. After a while it gets really old.

Anyhow, I'm still meditating in the mornings and am proud of myself for keeping up with this routine. It's one of the few I've managed to make stick lately. Meditating definitely makes me feel better, but it just wasn't enough to get me over the hump today.

I feel lonely and I feel like a big loser. This is rather ironic since I've done more things and seen more people in the last 2 weeks than I have in the entire past year. I guess all of my lunches and meetings and trips and new friendships have simply served to illustrate exactly how limited my life has been up until now. Granted I live in Mozambique and the circumstances are unique, but I can totally see how so many women manage to lose themselves in relationships.

I've been so happy with Ricardo, so content to be with him and have our own little 2-person world, that I've completely neglected any sort of outside life. Sure it's hard to find people I identify with, and yes I did live in the middle of freaking nowhere for 9 months of my time in Mozambique, but it's just ridiculous that I, Ali la Loca, independent and extroverted woman that meets people on the bus and in line at the bank, should have no fucking life of my own to speak of!

More than anything I'm shocked to really realize how dependent I've let myself become over the last year. I'm not angry, and I don't regret the way I've dealt with life in Mozambique thus far, but I'm certainly ready to get over my fears and create a fun life for myself.

To be fair, Ricardo and I do have our own lives, but they revolve around very introspective interests. He reads news on the internet about economics and politics. I write in my blog and journal. He likes to fix things. I make jewelry and create yummy things in the kitchen. What neither of us have in Maputo, at least until now in my case, is any friends or activities outside our flat.

I've been asking myself a lot this week why I never made the effort to get out and make friends or create an independent life for myself. The answer is actually very simple, but hard as hell for me to admit: I've been afraid.

It makes no sense, really. I find it no big deal to pick up and move halfway across the world to a random African country. If Ricardo and I decided tomorrow to move to Sri Lanka, I'd be like, "Yeah, great idea for an adventure." And I'd really mean it. I love to do new things, experience new cultures, create a new identity and life depending on where I am. I love it all on a macro-level and am honestly not intimidated with these kinds of changes. It's the little shit that gets me, the micro-level...

I'm afraid to go to the post office or the bank if I've never been before. Why? Because I'm afraid to look lost and stupid and like an uninformed tourist. I'm afraid to walk down the street by myself. Why? Because I'm afraid I'll take a wrong turn and have to ask for directions, exposing myself as a silly white girl who can't manage a foreign country. I'm afraid to drive a car because I just know that if I have to parallel park I'll do a terrible job and people will laugh at my lack of skills. I'm afraid to go to the supermarket by myself because I am certain I'll make some mistake and either buy more things than I have money for, or pay with the wrong amount of money, or get the wrong change and not notice (all fears based on lack of confidence in my math skills, which is ridiculous because I made it through Calculus II for heaven's sake).

I find the small things that make up a day-to-day existance absolutely petrifying sometimes, and it's these fears more than anything that have limited me here in Mozambique. Only now, over a year into this game, do I even feel remotely confident enough to get out there and make it on my own, explore a little, make friends, get the hell out of the house. Still there are many times during the day that I am scared and nervous. I think what got me down today was a combination of realizing what a loser I've been for the last year and coming to terms with the fact that I'm still afraid of small, insignificant things.

For example this afternoon I decided to go out to get my nails done. My new friend T. had told me about a nail spa just past the Jardim dos Namorados, a park with a playground and several restaurants that I've been to multiple times with Rico. I made myself leave the house (after that little voice in my head making a million excuses for why I shouldn't), then walked down towards the park. I've been on this street tons of times, it's a nice part of town, and nobody was hassling me. But it didn't matter. I still felt the panic set in when the location of the nail spa wasn't immediately apparent. "Oh my God, I'm lost," I thought. "I'm going to walk to the end of the street and have to turn around and everyone is going to laugh at me because I obviously don't know where I'm going." All I wanted to do was turn the next corner, as if that's what I'd meant to do all along, and head back home. But I didn't. I made myself keep going, and eventually I found the nail place. They didn't have any appointments for today so I made one for tomorrow.

Since I'd walked all the way down to the Jardim dos Namorados and it was a beautiful day, I figured I'd sit on the patio of one of the restaurants and have a cappuccino. No big deal, right? Ha. What is it about sitting at a table by myself and having a coffee at 3pm that I find so terrifying? Something, apparently, because even though the view of the Indian Ocean was fabulous and the caffeine delicious, I was nervous and sweaty-palmed the entire time.

Maybe I'll find over the next 4 months that this all gets easier...

Sum total of today's stressing out? A whopping case of allergies. Ugh.

And just to end on a high note, I've managed to give myself tendonitis in my right forearm from repetitive and excessive use of the mouse. I'm on day 2 now of a self-imposed ban on the computer where I only use the darn thing for essential communication and business. As you may have guessed, it's not going so well and I have to ice down my arm every evening.

PS - when I sat down to write this evening I hadn't planned on spilling any of these feelings. I feel much better now that I did.