.welcome

Welcome to the place of indescribable beauty and unspeakable pain.  Welcome to the edge of the world, where heaven and hell and the dark forces in between collide.  Welcome to warm handshakes, real smiles, face melting laughter.  Welcome to quiet, stoic, stories of horror.  Welcome to the place where everyone wants everything you have.  Welcome to the place you want to give everything you have.  Welcome to the place that makes you re-define that hazy medium in between.  Welcome to a pudgy laughing baby you swing on your back, tie with a cloth, as it goes to sleep against you.  Welcome to a tiny wrinkled baby, open sores, swarming with flies, dying in front of you.  Welcome to a nurse that is eager to learn, that asks you so many questions.  Welcome to the same nurse that won’t even take vital signs.  Welcome to the place they don’t take the pulse because they have no watches.  Welcome to the place where you are your own cheerlead, your own psychologist, your own best friend.  Welcome to the place where success is measured in the tiniest of increments.  Where trying to make changes is met by a solid, seemingly impenetrable cultural barrier.  Welcome to the place where you are exhausted.  Welcome to the place where you are exhilarated.  Welcome to the place where you are always sick, always in discomfort, always sweating.  Welcome to the place where you feel profoundly grateful to be alive.  Welcome to the place that brings out the worst in you.  Welcome to the place you can cultivate the best in you.  Welcome to nights that surround you with stars, where the buzzing chirp of crickets lull you zinging to sleep.  Welcome to nights where your family snores all around you, where you would give anything for a moment to be truly alone.  Welcome to a vibrancy you’ve always been missing.  Welcome to a suffering you never wanted to see.  Welcome to an experience as organic as the earth you’re sleeping on.  Welcome to a wanderlust that creeps like delicious poison through your blood.  Welcome to the tears screams hugs laughs fights dust sun and mosquitos.  Welcome to being alive