I've Got Nothing, Part One

I'll be honest here.

I'm a people pleaser, chronically so. I've got a couple of hypotheses on why I am this way, but it's a real part of me, one that I've had to struggle with for a while. Maybe in my youth, after being picked on one too many times, I decided that I'd learn how to get people to like me.

When you're in elementary school, learning how to get people to like you, want you, want to spend time with you was relatively easy. As long as you had something shiny and new, it was cake. Moving on to middle and high school, the game changed a bit. I had to switch from "having" something new to "being" something new. It wasn't about having the newest Power Ranger or wearing the newest sneakers with the pumps on them. Now, I had to have hair on my face. Instead of having coming books, I had to have the gall to listen to Black Rob and quote half of Biggie's "Ready To Die" album. Remember when cell phones first came out, and everyone engaged in this contest to see who had the coolest ringtone, or who was the nicest with 'Snake'? Yeah. I was on the sidelines, phone-less.

Fortunately, I learned a better way, and I observed how to attract people with a few things and still hold on to a few shards of my self.

Enter T.O.M. 2011.

I didn't know what I was getting myself into. I really didn't. A group of men from all over the Eastern Seaboard were going to the country of Nicaragua for a week together for, to put it simply, God's work. Whatever that may be. 'Being fluid' is what the team leader called it.

I decided to take advantage of this opportunity and leave it all behind. (#teamFE)

At this point, I had amassed a few objects that would entertain (read: trap) friends at my apartment, should they ever show interest. Wanna play Uno? I got that. Feel up to some Madden? I'm not good, but you're welcome to a free win. How's about laughing collectively at my spiffy Chuck Norris poster? Sounds like a plan. I wasn't in my prepubescent mind state, which thought that my stuff defined me, by any means. I had come a long way, but I still knew how to turn around, feel me?

I couldn't take any of this stuff with me. Not to Nicaragua, at least. I told myself, what would be the point? I doubt they have WiFi anyway.

So, off I went into the Central American country, the most expensive, look at me now-esque object being my cell phone. We ventured into a community by the name of San Antonio. Ruggedly developed, this village of people barely had the bare essentials. As a matter of fact, our first day in the San Antonio was part-introductory, part-inventory. We need to know what they needed, and one of those things were doors for their bathrooms - if you can call them bathrooms. They were more like concrete vases melded into the ground with a D.I.Y. infrastructure. Missionaries had come before and gotten the ball rolling on assisting this community on further development; we were basically doing a check-up.

This was not the tourist friendly side of Nicaragua. You won't see this photograph on any greeting cards.

They did not have. Not 'they didn't have much' or 'they didn't have a lot'. No.

They. Did. Not. Have.

The basics, maybe. A few crops of corn and coffee, probably. But the towers of blahblah that I complain about not having enough of? That was a joke, and I instantly felt ashamed.

Ashamed, because just a few days ago, I was in central Virginia, driving in my air conditioned car, anxiously awaiting for Batman: Arkham City to come out. I was trying to decide if it'd be worth it to buy it the minute it came out, or if I should pre-order it.

Ashamed, because after I leave...that's just it. I can leave. I can take my plane ticket and fly right back to security. Sure, I'm poor like church rat, but I still have SO MUCH. Health, health insurance (which are obviously two different things, but worthy of mentioning, given the context), transportation, relative reliability, et cetera.

I built my life around a security of stuff. Even now, I'm starting to feel the effects of the reverse culture-shock. An internal torment; do I want something just because it's available to me? Or do I really need it?

San Antonians, Delirians, the street kids of Matagalpa were surviving off of the bare minimum.

Did I need...anything?

to be continued...