From an Escapist

Am I an escapist? Why do I complain about every small thing in my life even when I have much more than many others who are left without any options? What is my education and all this experience worth when I find hard to relate myself with the other misfortunate people I have left behind? Will I ever go back? Will I ever be able to repay the regards and gratitude and efforts my people have invested in me to make me able to reach this place? Will I ever be able to face all those scary events and brutal politicians they are facing every day?

I complain every day for having to study for tests and do homework when people in my part are even deprived from education and schools are being burnt every other day. I complain every day for gaining weight when people in my part are not getting enough to eat even when they work many times more than I do, even when they are ready to sell their soul and body. I complain every day for getting too much attention from my parents and friends. People in my part don’t meet their parents, children, siblings for ages and still don’t have any options left to show their grievances. I find myself miserable and think as if the whole world’s going to end even when I get small rejection from one of the colleges I had applied to or from the work I wanted to so badly. I don’t realize I still have many other appealing options left for me. Those people don’t have any options in their life but to surrender to the misery their fate has brought. They sell their body, sell their soul, sell their dignity, sell their labor, sell their femininity, and sell everything that’s sellable. Still they are the ones whose life is miserable, full of sorrow, not having enough to eat, nothing to cover their bare body. This is the life of the people I have left behind. Do I want to go back to them? I have never questioned myself. Should I be pragmatic or just flow with my emotions? I am not sure. My parents still want me to study, work hard with the classes, get a well paid job, marry some good guy, have kids and then live happily. What do I want? Do I want to go back and then get stuck in a place where there is gas shortage every other day, where you don’t get ambulance in time even when you are about to die, where prices are soaring up but the economy is stagnant? Probably not. Well, I don’t want to be an escapist. I don’t want to be accused for whatever I am doing later in my life by my descendents. Then I should go back. Options are ambivalent. This ambivalence gives me hard every time I think about the place I come from, about the place I am in present. What should I do? Where should I be? Which emotions should I follow?