Where in the World?

I failed to put up all the pictures I promised... mainly because I put them up on facebook.
And that took like 2 hours. I think I might later, if I get motivated. I'll start with an update though, since I havn't done that in a while. Politics, religion, and the Pacific, will wait for a bit.

I'm still in Majuro. I'll be in Majuro for another 4 months. That should seem like a very short amount of time, especially after looking back and realizing that I have been floating about the Pacific on this ridiculously small and neglected piece of humanity for 18 months and 3 days.
Yet, right now it feels infinately long. I guess you've infered at this point that I am probably nto doing so hot. That would be true.
If I am to be truly honest, I barely feel like waking up in the morning every single day. By barely, I mean I don't. Its an odd feeling to open your eyes in teh morning and to be disappointed. That sounds odd maybe. It's not suicidal, I'm not disappointed or disillusioned by waking up at all... just by waking up here, again, and again, and again.

I think the worst part of this rather deep mote of depression is that I can objectively see everything that I love and care about int his place. I think it might be exactly that that is making it worse. Now, before you go on to think that this is some sentimental and overdramatic early reaction to my having to leave, let me clarify.
I think I've hit reality and sobered up, I've gotten over the euphoria of island beauty and people I'm in love with, I've gotten over the hump of cultural discomfort and extremem negativity over issues that don't really matter, and now I should be in the comfortable place of acceptance and enjoyment of my last few weeks. But I can't be there.
I can't be there because I have to be a teacher to students that are too close to my age and that I sympathize with a lot more than with the administration of the school I work for. While I may be totally comfortable with having to yell at them fo things they should nto be doing, I feel stupid and useless being the agent of petty meaningless rules and archaic conservative usless systems I don't believe in. I feel pressured each day to succumb to this authority, without ever questioning because I am here to serve, but feeling unable and unwilling to do so.
I believe that respecting authority is important, but that should never mean that it should not be questioned, challenged, and sometimes, overturned.
I hate my days because I have to pretedn like I care to be part of the system, when I would choose to dismantle many parts of it overnight if I could.
I hate going to work every single day and pretending to be someone I'm not, I hate not being able to really get to know Marshallese people or have tem know me becasue every day in and outside of school I can never be myself. I hate having to pretend I'm the Catholic I maybe would like to be, but am not yet. I hate having to pretend I'm the person they want me to be or at least I'm told I'm wanted to be, but I'm not.
This is especially hard when adult women will nto speak to me seriously or for a long time because men and women are not friends, they are only intimate or not involved, when adult men are too busy or simply uninterested in another foreigner to deal with, leaving, the only available people left to share genuine thoughts and meaningful conversations with the very kids you have to yell at for things you don't even understand or care about or think are ridiculous and unfair.

I'm an adult, I understand rules, I understand why they exist and why they should be followed. It isn't like I don't understnad those things. But, rules feel oppressive if they aren't convincingly necessary, or if you on a more deep and core level stand against them.

I want to be here for 4 more months because I have many people that I love, though few I really know as well as I could or should because that chance is not available to me being part of JVI and being part of Assumption. I want to be here because I lvoe drinking coconuts, I love talking to my kids, I love running around with Small Island children when I'm not too tired, I love walking on coral, I love Bata's homily's, I love Marshallese singing, I love the half performed dances, I love the Good Night's in the middle of the afternoon, I love the lack of chalk, I love Pablo and Florence, and Sr. Monika, and all teh otehr sisters, I love bubsi the dog, I love going for walks to payless, I love power outages, I love sashimi for free, I love the sunsets, I love peopel who are into things liek Wutmi and YTYIH, I love the youth group when they're doing well, I love the awkward parish events, I love not knowing what to do on saturday nights, I love majuro, I even love the headaches and the toothaches and the waiting and the frustration and the loneliness and the joyfulness and the ukelele and the rice and BBQ chicken all day.

I love it.
But I cannot enjoy it because I cannot be me, and I'm pretty sick of that.

I do strongly believe that Christ and many of the other world's faiths have called us to die to self. But, I believe that that is fighting out own selfishness, dedicating our time to others, and sacrificing of ourselves for the greater good.
But not giving up our person for meaningless and petty things, not being unable to enjoy or be true to ourselves.

I love a lot of things about Marshallese culture, but it is the general attitude of submission at all times, the suffocating fear and the powerlessness that is promoted by the culture that stops people from standing against things that are endangering or destroying their world, the blind and unquestioning bow to authority that is not deserved that depresses me. And me having to be yet another example of not questioning or actively fighting what is unfair or unnecessary, me trying to promote and be an example of that powerlessness sends me hurtling down into a darkness that makes me count the days until I can leave, when all I want to do is enjoy being here, which depresses me even more.

So tommorow, I will force myself out of bed again, and be an example I loathe, but hopefully in the next couple of weeks, I will find a way to enjoy what I love.