this month is one long day

the days are better, the nights are still so lonely
-Train

I facilitated my second high school retreat last Thurs-Fri, and its theme was Diversity and Conflict Resolution. It was surprisingly more subdued than the first one about healthy relationships, despite a number of them who make regular racist or sexist remarks, so it was a pleasant and less stressful experience than expected. My biggest problem actually came from my co-facilitator who was questionably appropriate for the job, considering he taught the kids that it was okay to make discriminatory comments/jokes as long as they were told to friends who understood that intent wasn't serious. And he dropped the "n" word on occasion because he assumed a) if it ends with -a instead of -er, it's cool and b) as a white frat boy in Juneau, he felt himself an exception to white frat boys down south who would get their asses kicked for using that lingo in the wrong place with the wrong crowd. I also presented on Filipino heritage and discrimination in Juneau and made sure to highlight that Asians don't belong to one homogenous culture, typically viewed as having Chinese and Japanese traits. In the Philippines alone, there are 156 languages spoken--not counting English or Spanish.

..I'm still struggling with my grandmother's illness and precarious situation. I don't talk much about it to people because I keep the dearest things silent, and I tend to withdraw from "whining". I don't think anyone really understands how miserable I've been about it, even my own family. I practically slept from 7pm Friday to Sunday noon. I skipped out on going tubing and a CPR training. I missed my roommate's opera and seeing the Northern Lights. I worry that people think I'm being lazy or purposefully anti-social. But I should stop worrying about what other people think; there are enough, larger concerns.

...I used to count the days, but I don't anymore. They feel less and less disparate. I wake up and two days have passed. I wake up and only 2 hours have. I wake up, and I'm still here and not where I should be, and the ache from this stretches indiscriminately from one moment to the next. He asks me every other morning if I'm feeling any better, and my answer has been, "It comes and goes." But that's not really true. It's always there; it's just my ability to mask it that fluctuates.