my own nightmare

                    I can hear the plane and it's landing echoes just above our apartment. The eerie, loud sound made me think back to a few days ago when I was still in the Philippines excited and at the same time dreading my flight bound for Rome. Of course during that time I was still having some reservations on leaving due to the fact that I just recently felt that I finally belonged in Manila and a few days later I'd soon be leaving. That same feeling is haunting me now that I'm a thousand miles away from home. What did I ever do to come to this point in my life, where history just seems to repeat itself before my very eyes? I told myself more than a week ago that I'd come here to be a blessing to others. Now I regret ever stepping on that plane and boarding my connecting flight for Rome. People will never understand why I feel the way I feel now. Everyone is telling me how lucky I am and how happy I should be for being given the chance to come here to this magnificent place-- I think otherwise. This place has brought me nothing but pain and mere disappointment. Days and things went by so fast I had my own reality overload! Overloaded information, overloaded emotions, overloaded lies that sank deep within my untainted soul. Within hours I tried to process what a normal person would process for years, and even if I have programmed myself to be prepared I was just caught off guard! Everything seemed to be a blur, and life itself became the question I first had to ask myself. How unfair everything has turned out, and how selfish the world is-- are the facts that I had to swallow whole, and alive. It is so darn hard, and I'm not saying this with metaphors involved. The purpose of life became so distant, so far away, so unattached to me I had to remind myself that I had a God, and that He makes everything work together for good. I now fully understand why God put me in Manila for months, I now understand why I had to be submerged in the life of the church, in the truth of God's Word, and in the love of my brothers and sisters in Christ-- because God already knew that I would need all of it when I come here. He knew I had to be deeply-rooted, and deeply connected with His Word and His people, or else I would die. I would die a horrible, painful, spiritual death. When everything went black for me, the one thing I saw and remembered was the basic teaching: God is good, the devil is bad. Therefore, none of these horrible realities come from God. I'm in a place where faith is the least concern of people, where "my" needs is more important than "others", and where love is a justified way of living in sin. God knows how much I'm trying to be strong, keeping myself intact for all the right reasons, but somehow I just can't help but be drawn by the waves, and cry because there is no other means to feel something else. I just thank God that despite my small tolerance to emotions, I am still alive, and He is continually giving me people that would make me think twice about how I should be, and who I should be in this foreign place. I am still adjusting to a new environment, I do hope I adjust soon enough. Photos soon.