that_taco_guy
Well-Known Member
Recently I’ve felt something odd, something I thought I could never identify before, but in my internal debate, I've finally found the answer to my question.
It’s a feeling I would guess not many people experience. Most people grow up, live and die in the same place they were born, or at least the same country, same hemisphere, same general area. Most people live their lives without having to do the thing that I have done and sometimes regret.
Not everyone has to leave everything. Not everyone has to leave their past life and forge a new one with the little knowledge obtained from their short travels to a new place.
I’m one of the people who has.
I don’t use the phrase “had to” because, to be short, this was my decision. I made myself the way that I am and I regret it at times.
Some people may ask, “What are you talking about, Taco?” “What’s wrong?”
Back a few years ago, I moved to a country called Ecuador. It’s located near the Equator, in South America. We speak Spanish here, eat different foods and have a different management system than in the United States. Moving here, while annoying at first to learn the local slang, wasn’t much of a problem when we arrived. We had a place to stay and soon found a better apartment, one which I am living in and typing this blog post from now.
The reason for which we moved here is pretty simple, yet hard to understand. My mother was getting bored of the daily routine we had formed in the United States; we were doing the same thing day after day, year after year with no variation in our schedules. We saw one another briefly during the day, very little time spent in conversation. The only one worried about this was my mother, who seemed to care for me more than my father did. (Disclaimer: My father is a great man, and I do not wish to valor his efforts to raise me well less than my mother’s.) She wanted to live another life, live something new. She wanted to escape from the daily stresses of the world, but all the while doing something for people, to help the world.
Our family on my mother’s side is mostly Seventh Day Adventists, i.e. Christians who observe the Sabbath day as a holy day of rest and are expecting the advent of Jesus Christ. The idea formulated that we could become missionaries and work here, serving God Almighty in return for a better and simpler life.
The decision to come here rested on what I decided, after much debate between my parents.
I said “Yes.” At the time, I thought the idea was a great one; the idea of a new world made me gleeful and expectant of a new world…
How foolish of me, yes.
I’m Bilingual. I speak English and Spanish, raised learning both languages at the same time. I’m fluent in either and can think, speak, read, write and debate in either language with ease. I dominate the English language more than I can Spanish, though, so my primary language, the one I retreat to when trying to express sudden emotions or write a quick thought down is in English.
Here, everyone speaks Spanish(as mentioned earlier). I don’t like thinking or debating in Spanish, although I have to for my education and general socialization. This means that I cannot simply express myself normally; I have to express myself by translating my thoughts and feelings into another tongue.
Everyone also likes to play football (soccer) and other sports. Everyone here is generally fit and built at my age. We’re expected to lift heavy loads and be manly men. I don’t like sports and I’m a weak, pathetic chubby computer addict. The very little socialization I get is purely to talk about schoolwork, which, I can say from experience, gets boring quickly. While in the United States it’s widely acceptable to be a shut-in like myself, it’s not the norm here. I tend to avoid contact for this reason, makes my life less complicated.
My classmates here don’t worry about studying or schoolwork. They worry about life, liberty and the pursuit to buy another beer so that they can forget the last chemistry class they took. I, on the other hand, love learning and wish to devour entire books in days just to obtain the knowledge we have fought for thousands of years to develop and perfect. I tend to not hang out with anyone for this reason as well.
On the internet, mind you, it’s not that much of a different story. People are always talking about the latest technology and the faster internet speeds and how life is getting better. For me, life is simply getting worse.
Recently, I had a person whom I participate with in an RPG group criticize me for something I do a lot of: Pirating. I don’t have the money most of the time to purchase things and saving up money for games that cost too much compared to our budget here is trivial and would take years just to save up $50 for a game which would last me a few months. I torrent media. Piracy laws in this country aren’t enforced well, so we’re free to do whatever we want, most of the time. The accusation was towards how I was a horrible person for stealing money out of the wallet of the developers of video games, yet also saying that he didn’t care if I stole music or movies or not. I explained my situation; I clearly don’t have a way to pay for video games here, which I really do want to support the developers for. (Sidenote: We (my mother and I) did try to pay for a few games on Steam worth $15 collectively. The region coding on the games made it so that we couldn’t purchase the items here, in the Ecuadorian store, with a United States debit card. We tried multiple times. I felt defeated. I’m never trying it again. [But, sidesidenote: I did manage to purchase the latest PC and Android 8 Humble Bundle for $5 without it fussing. So, go DRM free content, eh?])
More and more people keep talking about how fast internet is and how horrible their speeds are and how life is so bad because they don’t have a perfect connection all of the time. My internet runs off of ADSL. We cannot even get cable internet here. It’s impossible. (No, not monetarily, just physically impossible. Nobody sells the service here. I think the phone company has a monopoly on this.) I’m used to my internet being slow and cutting out every so often. When people complain about a connection that rarely goes down going down for a few minutes to an hour, it really pisses me off to realize that they’re taking one of the things I appreciated about the US for granted.
On another, brief note, I’ve also been having trouble with my life… spiritually, as most would call it. I’m having trouble with the idea of God and science and all of that. Being a person who likes to analyze things, I’m having trouble with what I’ve been taught my entire life and what I’ve read and watched and learned in the past year. I have to lie about what I believe in, because, honestly, I don’t know what to believe in anymore.
But why am I typing all of these things? Why am I saying all of this? I’m rambling off to the heavens, for all I know.
I feel lonely.
I feel abandoned.
And the worst part is that it’s all my fault.
I chose to be here.
I said “Yes” to the idea of coming here and working as a missionary for a purpose which I don’t even want to believe in anymore.
I chose my fate.
When I left the United States, I left with the idea that I could come back and relive my life with the people I knew. But now, when I look back, I feel there’s something past that I can never reclaim. I will never feel whole again.
I left something in my travels. It’s been trampled upon and ripped to shreds and when I try to see the shards of my past, everything seems like it’ll never be the same.
In my rambling, I reach a conclusion:
I can never go back home.
I am alone.
And I don’t want to be.
Thank you for reading,
Much love,
Taco.
It’s a feeling I would guess not many people experience. Most people grow up, live and die in the same place they were born, or at least the same country, same hemisphere, same general area. Most people live their lives without having to do the thing that I have done and sometimes regret.
Not everyone has to leave everything. Not everyone has to leave their past life and forge a new one with the little knowledge obtained from their short travels to a new place.
I’m one of the people who has.
I don’t use the phrase “had to” because, to be short, this was my decision. I made myself the way that I am and I regret it at times.
Some people may ask, “What are you talking about, Taco?” “What’s wrong?”
Back a few years ago, I moved to a country called Ecuador. It’s located near the Equator, in South America. We speak Spanish here, eat different foods and have a different management system than in the United States. Moving here, while annoying at first to learn the local slang, wasn’t much of a problem when we arrived. We had a place to stay and soon found a better apartment, one which I am living in and typing this blog post from now.
The reason for which we moved here is pretty simple, yet hard to understand. My mother was getting bored of the daily routine we had formed in the United States; we were doing the same thing day after day, year after year with no variation in our schedules. We saw one another briefly during the day, very little time spent in conversation. The only one worried about this was my mother, who seemed to care for me more than my father did. (Disclaimer: My father is a great man, and I do not wish to valor his efforts to raise me well less than my mother’s.) She wanted to live another life, live something new. She wanted to escape from the daily stresses of the world, but all the while doing something for people, to help the world.
Our family on my mother’s side is mostly Seventh Day Adventists, i.e. Christians who observe the Sabbath day as a holy day of rest and are expecting the advent of Jesus Christ. The idea formulated that we could become missionaries and work here, serving God Almighty in return for a better and simpler life.
The decision to come here rested on what I decided, after much debate between my parents.
I said “Yes.” At the time, I thought the idea was a great one; the idea of a new world made me gleeful and expectant of a new world…
How foolish of me, yes.
I’m Bilingual. I speak English and Spanish, raised learning both languages at the same time. I’m fluent in either and can think, speak, read, write and debate in either language with ease. I dominate the English language more than I can Spanish, though, so my primary language, the one I retreat to when trying to express sudden emotions or write a quick thought down is in English.
Here, everyone speaks Spanish(as mentioned earlier). I don’t like thinking or debating in Spanish, although I have to for my education and general socialization. This means that I cannot simply express myself normally; I have to express myself by translating my thoughts and feelings into another tongue.
Everyone also likes to play football (soccer) and other sports. Everyone here is generally fit and built at my age. We’re expected to lift heavy loads and be manly men. I don’t like sports and I’m a weak, pathetic chubby computer addict. The very little socialization I get is purely to talk about schoolwork, which, I can say from experience, gets boring quickly. While in the United States it’s widely acceptable to be a shut-in like myself, it’s not the norm here. I tend to avoid contact for this reason, makes my life less complicated.
My classmates here don’t worry about studying or schoolwork. They worry about life, liberty and the pursuit to buy another beer so that they can forget the last chemistry class they took. I, on the other hand, love learning and wish to devour entire books in days just to obtain the knowledge we have fought for thousands of years to develop and perfect. I tend to not hang out with anyone for this reason as well.
On the internet, mind you, it’s not that much of a different story. People are always talking about the latest technology and the faster internet speeds and how life is getting better. For me, life is simply getting worse.
Recently, I had a person whom I participate with in an RPG group criticize me for something I do a lot of: Pirating. I don’t have the money most of the time to purchase things and saving up money for games that cost too much compared to our budget here is trivial and would take years just to save up $50 for a game which would last me a few months. I torrent media. Piracy laws in this country aren’t enforced well, so we’re free to do whatever we want, most of the time. The accusation was towards how I was a horrible person for stealing money out of the wallet of the developers of video games, yet also saying that he didn’t care if I stole music or movies or not. I explained my situation; I clearly don’t have a way to pay for video games here, which I really do want to support the developers for. (Sidenote: We (my mother and I) did try to pay for a few games on Steam worth $15 collectively. The region coding on the games made it so that we couldn’t purchase the items here, in the Ecuadorian store, with a United States debit card. We tried multiple times. I felt defeated. I’m never trying it again. [But, sidesidenote: I did manage to purchase the latest PC and Android 8 Humble Bundle for $5 without it fussing. So, go DRM free content, eh?])
More and more people keep talking about how fast internet is and how horrible their speeds are and how life is so bad because they don’t have a perfect connection all of the time. My internet runs off of ADSL. We cannot even get cable internet here. It’s impossible. (No, not monetarily, just physically impossible. Nobody sells the service here. I think the phone company has a monopoly on this.) I’m used to my internet being slow and cutting out every so often. When people complain about a connection that rarely goes down going down for a few minutes to an hour, it really pisses me off to realize that they’re taking one of the things I appreciated about the US for granted.
On another, brief note, I’ve also been having trouble with my life… spiritually, as most would call it. I’m having trouble with the idea of God and science and all of that. Being a person who likes to analyze things, I’m having trouble with what I’ve been taught my entire life and what I’ve read and watched and learned in the past year. I have to lie about what I believe in, because, honestly, I don’t know what to believe in anymore.
But why am I typing all of these things? Why am I saying all of this? I’m rambling off to the heavens, for all I know.
I feel lonely.
I feel abandoned.
And the worst part is that it’s all my fault.
I chose to be here.
I said “Yes” to the idea of coming here and working as a missionary for a purpose which I don’t even want to believe in anymore.
I chose my fate.
When I left the United States, I left with the idea that I could come back and relive my life with the people I knew. But now, when I look back, I feel there’s something past that I can never reclaim. I will never feel whole again.
I left something in my travels. It’s been trampled upon and ripped to shreds and when I try to see the shards of my past, everything seems like it’ll never be the same.
In my rambling, I reach a conclusion:
I can never go back home.
I am alone.
And I don’t want to be.
Thank you for reading,
Much love,
Taco.
♥
You have us who love ya.
