Family

I am spending my reading week in Florida visiting my grandmother. I have been down in Florida since Saturday night. It has been six days that I have been in Florida. So I was in the shower tonight doing what I do best, thinking. It is the one place where, in this small condo, I can truly get away and be by myself and I don't have to answer 500 questions or be expected to keep up conversation. I don't have to answer why I like to keep some things in my life to myself. I can just be by myself and think. And what do I think about you wonder? My family. I get one moment to get away to have time by myself and what do I think of? the people I am trying to get away from for a brief moment.

I realized that I am not a very big family person. I am not a very communal person and I am very independent. I like to be able to do things by myself and to rely on myself. I always feel bad when I have to lean on someone else. I have structured my life to try to lean as least as possible on other people. I do not like to feel like I am in debt to someone else. I would rather struggle to find my own way than to have to lean on anyone else. With all of that said and done, I am not a scrooge who keeps to herself. I will stretch myself as thin as I can go to give to other people. I will offer rides, I will do extra work, I will do this and that and try my hardest to make people happy. In a way, I have very much adopted to a North American life style of independence (just without the blackberry). I am someone who loves my “home, but I can make that home wherever I am. I find a nice place that I feel safe and that section becomes my home. I find it hard to venture out from my spot and I like to be by myself in my spot. I am very much someone who loves my space that I call “home.

Saying all of that I have been constantly with my family for the past six days. I wake up and I am with my family, I go out and it's with my family, I go to dinner and it's with my family, I go home to relax and it's with my family and finally at the end of the night I go to bed and it's with my family. Now please don't misunderstand me, I love my family and part of the reason that I quit my job was, among many other plentiful reasons, was because I wanted to see my family on our traditional vacation to Florida. I love my family but being constantly around them has been so different. I haven't been with my family like this since I lived with them before moving into university (and all of the other Florida vacations). I have gotten used to being more independent. We are together constantly, and I know these are the times and the trips that I am going to remember forever. This is just vastly different from how I live at home and the contrast has taken some getting used to. I find myself looking forward for my vacation to end and my school to start again, to be able to go back to my little corner that I have made for myself and be comfortable by myself.

This makes me think more and more about this summer which is quickly approaching. I am going to be living with a family in Uganda and developing countries tend to have a more collectivist culture. I am going to have to get used to living in a family unit again; I am going to have to get used to sharing with a family. I am going to become part of a collectivist culture and this may be something that I may find extremely uncomfortable with. I like time to sit and process and be by myself. I have grown so accustomed to having my private life and having it be kept in my comfy space where I can work on it on my own. This summer I may have to lean on other people for help and I may have to be involved in the family unit. This may be one of my most difficult things to take part in. I like my walls and I like my comfy space, I am not going to be comfortable having it be pried open for all to see. Our professor told us a story where one of the old members in the program couldn't change one night because the entire family was in the room talking, expecting her to continue changing. Hello invasion of privacy! Although that is what a family is, among other things, a unit which is, as it is described, unified. I am going to have to learn how to venture out of my comfy space and be with the family. Hello culture shock, my name is Jacquelyn, it is scary to meet you.

A question to follow blog readers: Do you think of yourself as individualistic or community based?