What is it?

I’m awake again. It’s about 1:30am. There is no electricity, so I’m just running on the remainder of my computer battery. By the time I post this message, it will be a day late.

I can’t remember a time in my life when I have fought so hard to sleep. I always considered myself one of the lucky ones—someone who could fall asleep under any circumstances, be it loud noise, extreme heat and even on an empty stomach. In school, this would often prove to be more of a curse than a blessing, seeing as how it took little more than the sound of my teacher’s voice to send me off to dreamland. But now, now I wish for that ease. I’ve tried putting a movie into my computer, listening to music, reading a dull book, but each attempt to tire myself fails. I wind up not watching the movie, not listening to the music and staring blankly at the page in front of me. I don’t know what it is. There is something on my mind, something unsettling or at the very least, distracting. I’ve tried to pinpoint it by writing in my journal but the task of free writing proves to be overwhelming.

I miss my family terribly. I think about my friends all of the time. I find myself retracing my entire life over and over, reliving the greatest and worst moments, until I find myself back here, in Haiti, surrounded by four walls of dirt, alone, laying on this hard mattress, looking up at the dark ceiling, to the loud hum of my fan.

Then I think about what it’s like when I wake up in the morning. The rising sun that fills my room with bright light, the cool morning breeze that has forced me under my sheets and of course, the sound of roosters crowing, cows mooing and children laughing. I look forward to the moment I first step outside of my room, for I will surely hear my name called by at least a half dozen smiling children.

It’s no secret, the emotional strain that comes with leaving those you love behind and moving to a place like Haiti. Faced daily with sickness, disease, hunger and suffering, I would have surely believed that after several months, my heart would have hardened into a rock, impenetrable by the injustices one becomes accustomed to seeing here. However, that was not the case. If anything, I find myself ever the more sensitive. I’ve been here 3 ½ months. I’ve learned the language, traveled the country, met with some of Haiti’s elite and treated some of its poorest. I don’t claim to have seen everything, but I’ve seen a lot and I’ve grown immeasurably over these last few months. I’ve been changed by this country.