Fear

kristin
kristin
Aug 26, 2017 · 3 min read

In a couple of days, my first summer from being Cuba is about to end. It has been healing in ways I would not have, could not have imagined had it been 1 or 2 years ago. One of my biggest fears upon deciding to attend school in Cuba was to leave my family in the state my relationship with them was. The wounds were deep. Would they deepen by moving to a country in which the government of my home country has been at economic war with for at least the past 4 decades? Again, I leave for Cuba but this time knowing that the wounds have started the scarring process.

But not all my fears have gone. I am still scared of losing community being so removed from what is happening in the US, both with the events that make to mainstream news and those that happen to friends and family. I don’t have 24/7 access to the internet. At the least, I connect once a week to a weak wifi signal that logs me on and off 5 minutes at a time for me to be able to see what’s been happening. To get to that weak connection at a wifi hotspot, it takes about an hour, more or less, via a couple of different modes of transportation, and then there’s the trek back to school. I guess I could always wait to use the sole computer on campus that has internet access but it’s only open M-F 8:30am-4:30pm during class hours shared among 2000+ other students. And once connected, how long will it take for the pages to load? How long will the lag be? Will I have enough minutes on my account to look up and get updated on what happened in the past week?

It feels ironic. It’s the people in the US, the only home I know, the communities there, that I chose to pursue my medical education at an institution known for prioritizing the people. But the US blockade-imposed restrictions on communication between me and home makes it hard to feel and stay connected to the people and community back home. Early on, I started a Tumblr to share my experiences and have conversations with people. That didn’t go far. Part of it was the telecommunication challenges. But for the most part (it might’ve gone unnoticed, could’ve easily been blamed on Facebook algorithms), the reason why you hardly saw any posts from me was because I was intentionally silent, very silent. For the past year, I went through a traumatic breakup with a former partner and all that had followed. Although there is too much to share in one post, one memory that impacted me deeply was an email addressed to the “Community” sent to me with all other recipients bcc’d claiming to shed light on my true character, that their experience with me “ha[d] been nothing revolutionary, nothing centered on love nor community.” Feeling like I did not have the power to advocate for myself so far away, I chose to retreat. Even as I write this, I have the fear of my words being misunderstood, misinterpreted, not heard. But I am tired of remaining quiet and feeling alone, which is why I am deciding to share certain details now. May this post, truly the first one at my most vulnerable, be a move forward from a place of pain and fear to creating something beautiful.

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kristin

Written by

kristin

slightly articulated, mostly unpolished. this is for those who are willing to hear me, to witness my growth. this is for me.

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