There's a term that people, as writers, as fangirl amd fanboys use quite often. The term I'm referring to is called 'feels'. Feels are basically what the word implies; feelings. But not just feeling, but feeling that are worthy of writing about, feelings that can make you laugh or cry or sit there in silence and just think. Feels are things that we find in everyday situtaions but amplified, or sometimes, you find feels in not so ordinary situations. Most of my CAS life has consisted of services and programs that bring me many, many feels. I'm glad to say that here, in OSC, I've found my service feels.
I have, in the short time I've been here, had the honour and absolute priviledge to visit the Alzheimers association with the rest of the Alzheimers group members. This activity gave me so many feels, enough that when went home after the day I did all of the following:
I ranted
and raved
and laughed
and nearly cried
and just about exhausted myself with feels.
I cannot, I cannot, cannot, cannot explain the immensity of what I felt after the Alzheimers visit. It was something that etched itself into my core and made me want to go back to do more. Let me explain the happening of that day and maybe you can get a glimpse of what I felt.
Here. We. Go:
I'm going to start off by saying that I didn't really know my group that well when I started off, so, I simply went ahead and sat in the bus and thought about what my experience would be like. I thought, I'm ashamed to admit, that it would be bad. That I wouldn't know how to speak to the people or I wouldn't have anything to say. I thought it'll be like manual labour, something I have to do. I thought I'd screw it up royally and I really didn't want to go.
I did however, step off the bus with a smile on my face. I was nervous and stupid. I was stupid because as soon as we walked into the sitting area of the association, I knew that my gut was wrong. I was, for once, truly happy to have been proved wrong. All I saw was smiling old ladies and gentlemen and I felt with them what I feel with my grand-family. I felt... I felt... quiet belonging.
I've always found that I'm better with kids smaller than myself and with rather old people and this was no different. After a few minutes of awkward loitering around and getting my bearing, I approached the Sinhala speaking patients (I was the only one that spoke Sinhalese) and began, well, speaking. It was so natural and it touched something inside me.
This one old lady, I have now designated her as my favourite, her name was Francesca and she was the one that I stuck to like glue. She was small and sweet and talked with a lisp and she was, from what I got from her interactions, terribly happy that we were all here. Several times she mentioned how nice it was to see all these people coming to visit and several times over, I agreed. I agred because of the quiet desperation in her eyes to not let us go, in the way she held my hand whenever she said it and in the way when we were leaving she stroked my hands again and told me to come back.
Somewhere in me, the shrivelled black thing I call a heart, became gold. It became gold in the way the old ladies and gentleman clapped and danced and sung their songs. Gold in the way they never forgot the rythm and words despite forgetting everything else. Gold the way when they smiled you knew it was genuine and you knew that you'd do so much to keep them smiling. Gold in the way I wanted to come back.
It was so very hard to leave. Francesca didn't want me to go and neither did I. I saw in her the same thing I see in my grand-uncle. Beyond the smile there's a longing to to hang onto a fast moving, fleeing world and in our leaving, they just lose hold of and forget more.
I should probably talk about how I interacted with the rest of my group now but that's very basic. I talked, they talked, we danced, we sang and I made new friends but it was the other stuff that mattered to me. As a rule I don't like humans, we're not a very nice species, and I hardly like people my age unless they're special in one way or the other, but the oldies I loved and that was what I got out of the Alzheimers visit. I got:
Humanity
and quiet sadness
the desire to help
a need to do something beyond myself
And a reason to keep helping the association regardless of whether I was in the group or not.
I, ummm, I don't know. It's just the need to do something that'll help people that can't help themselves and the sadness but pride in knowing you did something worthwhile even if they won't remember it,
I know now. I know to talk without wanting anything out of the conversation, to speak the same words over and over again with patience, to sometimes just smile and nod because that's how the world works, and how to feel pity, but beyond that reverence, for the people that manage their lives even like that.
I know and that's enough.
I'm not entirely sure exactly what all that rambling was but I got so much out of the experience that I can't put into words. I can tell you the new skills I learnt when dealing with the patients and how I'm improving my language by speaking it more but I really don't care about that. I care about the human experience and that's what I tried to write about. The feels are immense, an entire novel could be written out of it, I'm probably going to fail CAS because of these reflections, but seriously, screw that. That doesn't matter.
I'm here to feel and grow as a person on the inside and I'm doing that. Service is not a job anymore like I thought it'd be, it's something that's a part of me. I've found my passion in CAS, found what makes it beyond a chore and I love it. I feel so much and I lear, grow so much and that's all I ever wanted.
This is perfect.
This is, in a way, mine.
<3
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