Confessions from a Dorm Chapter 4

Chapter 4

Two of my own roommates had been from Ecuador. They both had round faces and hair so dark, it looked black. Elizabet’s hair had bronze highlights and her skin had an almost orange tinge while Abigail had the largest Asian-looking eyes I’d ever seen. They looked to be straight from Anime. When I was facing her it was like looking inside the trunk of a tree, a golden yellow hue with life rings inverted to a darker color.

They were from different cities, yet they were already close. Two weeks after moving into dorm 5, I was still pretty much of a loner. So one day, as I heard Elizabet and Abigail talking about heading down for lunch, I reached for the courage buried deep inside my guts and jumped from my top bunk.

“Can I go with you guys?” I remember how they turned back and looked at me as if barely noticing my existence for the first time. Had that been what they had been waiting for? Had they been expecting me to approach them? Perhaps that was what was expected of me as an ‘American girl’.

       “Sure, come on.” My heart unclenched and relief spread throughout me. Maybe I will fit in after all. From then on, I didn’t have to worry about ever being alone again. I found a family amongst the tight knit community of Ecuadorians on campus, although I made up my mind not enclose myself like many others I had seen around me. I wanted to get to know everyone, I wanted to make the best of my experience in Guatemala.

I began to understand that it didn’t matter if I was scared of being turned away, or nervous inside. They couldn’t see my emotions and that gave me some kind of invisible power. I simply had to put on that face. Act as if I belonged.

Greet them with a smile and nobody seemed to mind if I inducted myself to their already tightknit cliques. It was a formula I learned to use well throughout my two years.

When classes were close to beginning, I remember overhearing the second year students speak animatedly of which course was coming up, which one they looked forward to, or the excitement of certain teachers. Some guest speakers were spoken of as if they were celebrities amongst the
students. They all had their preferred ones. The institute would invite pastors from different countries to teach about a Biblical book or topic such as hermeneutics, ministerial ethics etc... Each course was given in a timespan of one week.

Eventually, I would develop my own preferences for certain speakers as well. But until then, I tried to control my eyes from bulging out when I found out classes lasted for from 8 am to 1 p.m. Five hours? Every day? Five hours on the same topic? For a whole week? I don’t know why I was so overwhelmed. It was shorter than the average school day and I had been to religious seminars where is was much longer.

 Sure, I grew up in the church. I did the whole napping thing on the pews until I was 5, and went through the coloring phase, playing footsies with my brother and chipping my mother’s nail polish during the sermons until I was 9. So why did I feel some dread?

 I had believed to be saved in kindergarten, before I knew the magnitude of life, of sin, and holiness. By fourteen I had decided to be baptized, but it hadn'y made an impression in me as I had thought it would. I can only remember two things from that day: the big argument I had had with my mother that morning and my surprise from the lack of cold I felt at being submerged beneath the ocean’s waves.

Unfortunately I had yet to understand the extent of what I was doing until after coming into my own faith in high school. Till then, it had all been pure religion and tradition for me. Only after pleading with God to fill that utter void and strange unfillable hunger that consumed me from within did I understand that it was God´s presence that I needed every day. And perhaps that was why I was here. Maybe it was because I was still filled with a thirst and hoping I would find satiation here. I wanted to feel God’s presence like I had that morning on my knees when God had finally filled that piece that was missing from my life.

So many times I would cry out to him after causing another argument with my mom, ruining the holidays with my attitude, or being unnecessarily spiteful—God, I messed up again! I wanted that to stop, to put an end to that part of me that was so purposely hurtful to others, but it was as if an invisible force kept me from being the happy person that I so wished to be.

—God! I can’t live with myself anymore. I was tired of fighting that manipulative and bratty child I had been for so long. I was at a constant war with myself trying to be a better person by my own means, but on that morning of my senior year in high school, I realized that it wasn’t just reading the Bible or saying my prayers, and trying to leash my spitefulness, it was a personal relationship with God that I needed. I needed to learn to depend on him and trust him to help me. Before, I had been flying solo, trying to fight my own mental battles and control my actions.

Coming to Guatemala was crossing a barrier that was a personal step of my faith. I felt it was like a chance to redeem myself. So many things that should have been important like my salvation and my baptism had become so meaningless to me in the past, but this…I wanted this to mean something to me. I wasn’t going to mess this up, God please, let me get this right.

Perhaps, I still felt a tinge of dread because my faith was still new to me and the past was still very much alive. But after years of sitting on pews I wanted my understanding and my faith to grow. No more naps, no more footsies under the pews, no more side distractions during the sermons. I was ready to listen. I wanted to listen. I needed to learn to breathe on my own like a baby who comes out of the womb.