#5
I feel lonely.
I have been feeling this within me for about a week, daily. It's the first thing I think about when I wake up, and I notice it heavily every night when I turn off the light and try to fall asleep in a 2x2m bed. I feel lonely, in a foreign country with a culture that is not mine. Away from my family, my friends. Held in my house most of the time, or going out alone for a walk.
Our group of volunteers within the organization has never stand as one. While there might be a team feeling when we worked daily in the office, at the end of the day we have rarely met the four of us to hang out. I would say never. Since the social distancing norm began and the events began to be canceled, everything has been magnified. We have become much more individualistic, if possible.
The activists are very nice people, with some I have a very good relationship. But COVID has changed the priorities of the whole world, of course, and everyone here has their own life. Their family.
I also can't travel to visit other wonderful volunteers I met at my Arrival Training, some of them also feel like me, others long ago accepted that their stay in Latvia was going to be an introspective experience, not a social one.
But I am a person of collective spirit. My blood is warm thanks to the Mediterranean sun and the energy of its people. I am a social animal, my friends and family are the most basic pillar on which I base myself. From there, I can start to grow. I have always been a tree flower, I grow together with hundreds of others, I have never been a tulip that grows alone.
Every day I wonder why I am here. And the only answer that gives me a minimum of sense is that soon everything will be for the better. But I live in the now, not the future or the past, and this now appears sad, gray. The biggest challenge of my life is happenig right now: having no one except myself. And from this I will come out either stronger than ever, or with a suitcase to Spain (and neither is incompatible with the other), but in both situations with my head held high, because I am not ashamed to admit that in Latvia I have discovered that the most important in my life is my culture, my climate, my people and their light.