6/9. Tuesday is not the best day ever.

Have you ever had one of those days where you are incapable of focusing on anything? Each time you try to pay attention or really get into what you’re doing or learning, something else keeps bringing you out of it and back into a seemingly endless chain of thoughts?

Tuesday was one of those days. I couldn’t stop thinking about the dead man. Every time something new was explained, I would wonder off into my thoughts. Well really anytime anything was discussed; I withdrew back into my head. I walked down the steps where his body lied to get to the metro and wanted to throw up or scream or cry. I wanted to do anything but be walking down the steps. All I wanted all day was for class to be done. I wanted to be back in the apartment and in my bed.

When class was over at 4, I headed straight for the metro and was really overwhelmed with this feeling of detachment. Why would I come to a place where a dead body is seen as a jacket or a door might be? Why on Earth would I voluntarily come to a place like this when I could just as easily be at home, riding my bike, and being with my family and friends? I chose being with people who could care less about a dead person lying on the street than being with my closest friends who love me. Way to go Jules.

I walked up the steps, looking at the freshly hosed off area, and felt sick with resentment. WHY AM I HERE?? I got to the top of the steps and saw someone smiling. My first thought was, “What is their deal? Don’t they know what a cruel and awful place this is? Why are they so freakin’ happy?”

I realized only a moment later that I was in the Russian mindset Sergei had told me about on the 3^rd day I was here. I resented and criticized the happiness other people felt and reacted by frowning and thinking other awful things. Woah. Is this why so few people smile here? They’ve learned that death happens everywhere and that no one cares enough to clean it up. This isn’t something that has so solidly been engraved in their minds after seeing one body though. This concept is something that has aggressively been taught over and over again to children, adults…everyone.

Because the average age of death for both men and women is 15-20 years less than that of a Western European country or the U.S, Russians have had to start dealing with the death of parents, siblings, grandparents, and friends at a much younger age. These deaths occur between that age range when you’re developing opinions about life and the way the world works-when you’re finally starting to understand how other people’s actions, along with your own have a big impact on how you feel. The society here is still so closed off from other parts of the world, despite no longer having an iron curtain. If they’re unable to communicate and bounce ideas off of people from other parts of the world, then essentially it is a lot of the same ideas from the same place bouncing between the people who came up with the ideas in the first place. It’s a vicious cycle of round about ideas and affecting people that can’t end until Russia opens up. So how do you encourage a country that has been so closed off to open up and change their beliefs about the world?

I only started analyzing my thoughts after Irina got home that night. She had been at work doing the same thing for four hours, and then wasn’t let off until 7:30pm. I had eaten macaroni noodles, minus the cheese, with ketchup (it tasted like America and I feel like Irina subconsciously knew I was missing home and needed food that reminded me of it) for dinner, but sat with Irina as she ate and drank her tea. We both had such stupid days. Days filled with stuff we didn’t want to do or think about. Plus it was still raining which was stupid. We smiled at each other sympathetically and I started to laugh. She said we might have bad days but things are better at home. We have each other, she said. I smiled and agreed.

At this point in my “stupid” day, as I’ve chosen to describe it, my mindset changed. Maybe I was still emotionally recovering, but tomorrow would be better. I would make sure it was better. I decided that instead of cringing as I walked down the steps, I would send love to the soul that had been set free there. I would think positively rather than negatively, and I would smile. If someone else’s smile could force me to re-evaluate my frown, perhaps my smile can have that same effect on someone else. There is only one way to find out.