5/18/09 – PLANE BETWEEN DETROIT AND AMSTERDAM

I am so high maintenance! I never would have guessed or admitted to it. But, now, as I sit on the plane and think about how much STUFF I have with me, I keep trying to think of what I could have left back, left home. The worst part? I’m convinced right now there isn’t anything. I’m confident I need everything I took along. I’m sure the weeks ahead will reveal otherwise. I need so many items to be “content” and I wonder about the items I left so hesitantly behind. Will I make it three weeks without my own pillow and the stuffed animal I sleep with every night? But then too, I think about all of the “extra” things I took. The things not necessarily on everyone else’s packing lists. My medicines, my prescribed foot machine, my ace bandages and knee brace. The mouth wash I use after I puke. The other little things I need because I’m...sick? I never considered myself “sick” before. Honestly. Ironically enough, it was a label I claimed didn’t fit. Packing made me feel sick. Something about realizing that my day to day life is indeed different because of the last year and a half. Because of words and diagnoses. Makes me wonder what labels we give to the people of Uganda. What causes them to buy into the labels given? Mine might actually, unfortunately, be accurate...are theirs? On any account, I bet no one has ever called them high maintenance!