Memorial to the Victims of Communism and to the Resistance

Nearly two years ago I spent a few hours inside one of the world's foremost museums documenting the reign of terror in the Eastern Block: the Terror Museum in Budapest, Hungary. It was overwhelming and incredibly haunting. The museum is housed in the former Nazi and then Communist headquarters, and it creates an atmosphere quite unlike anything I've ever experienced. While not necessarily a similar sort of institution, I got the same feeling I imagine I would get if I visited a former concentration camp. The last part of the museum includes a visit to the torture and prison chambers in the basement that left chills running through my mind for days.

I never thought I would experience that sort of thing again...

Sighetu Marmaţiei was the site of one of the most notorious- and gruesome- prisons in communist Romania. It held political prisoners, dissidents, intellectuals, and anyone who the regime believed could be a challenge. Between the years of 1948 and 1952, 51 of the 180 prisoners held at Sighet died. It was one of the sites of the "re-education" program, an experiment in mind control that used horrific methods. The 2010 edition of the Lonely Planet guidebook to Romania describes it as such:

"Under an experimental system known as 're-education,' from 1949 to 1952, political prisoners were subjected to intolerable levels of abuse as a way of breaking down their identities in order to make them more amenable to the communist system... In the first stage prisoners were subjected to demeaning acts like scrubbing floors with rags between their teeth or having to lick toilets clean. Religious prisoners were humiliated through acts such as being baptized with buckets of urine. Next, prisoners were forced to betray fellow inmates who'd shown them any kindness or sympathy and then to renounce their own families. The point here was to sever any existing bonds of love or loyalty. In the final stage of the program, prisoners were forced to prove their succesful 'regeneration' by inflicting the same acts of mental and physical abuse on new prisoners. Failure to follow through meant having to spend weeks in a tiny isolation cell...."

It's sick, what happened there.

This former prison is now a museum... I spent time in the "black room," the tiny isolation cell mentioned. I closed the door and started my watch and came close to not breathing. I left when I started to panic... I lasted 57 seconds.

It's sick, what happened there. It's sick and awful and makes me question humanity in general.

And then I walked out into the sunshine, breathing normally, and wondering how I got so lucky to be born at a time and in a place of freedom.

Sustainability

A now overused and thus misunderstood and diluted buzz word, sustainability is often defined as "the capacity to endure and remain productive." This term is often used to describe an ecological mindset, a goal of environmentalism, or a category of agriculture. While I am all in favor of saving the planet by whatever means we have available, the kind of sustainability I am discussing flows more deeply than through the fields of crop or tides of politics.

In anticipation of the move to a brand new country and culture, I have experienced a lot of fear and nervousness this past week. Uncertain of the specific cause, and unwilling to investigate enough to identify a reason for these feelings, I have struggled greatly. Part of it, I am sure, is the sharp reality of what is going to happen, and the rapidly approaching time frame of this adventure. As previously written about, this is not the sort of thing that I do. I am the girl with the plan, the steps, the system. I color-coded every single class I took in college. I agonize over simple plans for a visitor and record details with an obsessive bent. I organize my life to fit into a meticulous structure.

I have always hated this about myself, always wished it to change. And so I stepped out onto this branch of uncertainty with a kind of pride in my bravery, an assertion that THIS is the kind of person I wish to be. So I do a little research and lay down my life outline (bullet points included) and decide to teach in Romania. And I know almost nothing.

So on August 30th, 2010, I will arrive at O'Hare International Airport in Chicago with some luggage and family members and anticipation and hope and fear and a certain amount of loneliness. I will meet someone there who seems to be much better at adventure and spontaneity than I (one of the many reasons I am grateful for him), and we will get on a plane and leave the United States for a year. I will probably still be unsure of my living arrangements, my teaching situation or the cultural expectations. I won't know how to navigate my physical or cultural surroundings, and I will have a year of trial and a year of error and a year of growth. And I will be mostly alone.

I find myself envious of the Peace Corps volunteers I know and have read about, especially those serving in Romania. They have 10 weeks of pre-service language training and cultural immersion and group bonding time. I sit in the library alone pouring over cultural guides, travel planners and language tapes. While not trying to negate the tremendous difficulty of their service experiences, they at least have each other. They become familiar with a place while already familiar with some people. I am traveling to Romania with D~ and after a brief orientation he will leave for his city and his school and his job, and I will be left in Bucharest. And again, while tremendously excited, I am also terribly afraid of loneliness.

And so we return to sustainability. Because I know that such thoughts and feelings are neither good for my spirit nor sustainable in my brain, I find myself dwelling in the comfort of friends. I have such meaningful people in my life- those who bring joy and laughter and perspective and thought and prayer and happiness and beauty and inexpressible comfort. They force me to consider the world around me and think about more than myself and dwell in the good. They lift me up in ways unforeseen, in ways I could not ask for nor expect. They enable in me "the capacity to endure and remain productive."

Consider this quote, recently written to me by my dear friend L~. I sit in the library downtown and read this over and over. This little piece of wisdom spoken from the mouth of a true friend and accepted by the heart of one who was searching. This, my friends, is life sustainable.

"We need to flex our strengths and bend our weaknesses under new lights where they may become stronger- taking risks and stretching ourselves until we grow into the giants we hope to be."

Rest and Rejuvenation

I have had very little opportunity to rest in the last four years. There have been brief periods of respite between school terms, or during breaks, but there was always something coming. I have had summer jobs that required a tremendous amount of energy (mentally or physically) and filled my time with activities and work and scholarship. And so every once in a while, usually after a week as stressful as this one, I need some rest and some help.

And every time it happens, I feel bad. I feel somehow inadequate, as if the need to withdraw is not something that I should experience. I should be more stabilized, more prepared to deal with the adult world, more independent. And every time, I am not. I rely on other people to pull me through the time of difficulty and hold my hand and help me function again. And I have wonderful friends and family that come to my aid without question.

But next year, I won't have that. I will still have the support system I do now, but they will all live here, not there. I cannot just call for a quick chat or rely on my parents to rescue me. There are so many unknowns about the coming year, but one particularly frightening one is the lack of help in these times that I need rejuvenation.