This blog post is quintessentially about powerlessness. It is about the loss of agency that I feel given my experiences within Peace Corps and in Morocco. Disclaimer: TW for topics that include sexual aggression and sexual assault. I would also like to highlight that this blog is about the singular, and I do mean
singular, corrosive aspect of my life: my daily struggle to protect my personal space because heighten instances of sexual harassment. Also, let it be known that
there is no such thing as a benign act of sexual harassment.
In America I felt...liberated. Okay, so that isn't necessarily true. I felt liberated up to the point in which I still lived with my mom (shot-out to my mom: I love you, Mom!), was incredibly broke, and without prospect. All the same, there was a certain optimism that guided my actions and kept me buoyant to despair. This certainty that things could feasibly go my way if I tried hard enough was indispensable in allowing my mind to remain free and in a very abstract fashion shielding me from the imprisonment of self-doubt and the bleakness of having my mom drive me to work everyday. This was the very narrow definition of how I personally defined liberation: economic independence, manifest destiny, partying, and other shit that service in Peace Corps has taught does not matter.
I knew upon joining the Peace Corps that I would relinquish some traits and habits that were dear to me in expressing my individuality. I knew that I couldn't really be
me or at least that I couldn't be me as how I practiced being an autonomous being capable of agency and reflection. I knew that I would become someone different, ideally better, but definitely different and I was okay with this. I was okay with this sacrifice. I was okay with no longer being me. In my highly complex and elaborate analysis in what it means to be true to the self, I made the assessment that there were two aspects of personhood: the first being those things which are unshakable, existing as qua, intrinsic to nature, and standing forevermore; the second being shaped by experiences of an a posteriori nature, erratic as unqualified atoms, unstable and central to the dichotomy, capable of change. So when I say, I was okay with, "no longer being me" and you feel as I feel an ickiness at the impeding denial, I mean to say that I was okay with giving up attributes that I felt did not fundamentally define who I perceive myself to be. Those were the parts of myself that I would barter with, those were the parts that I "prepared...to make a commitment to serve abroad" and give-up if need be because all I ever wanted to be was a Peace Corps Volunteer.
The journey to self-discovery is tricky, replete with pitfalls, and involves a series of challenges that test the fortitude of the ego.
