A Delayed Reaction

I don’t even know what to say anymore. I made the mistake of reading Kara’s blog post about her revelation that she is angry with me. Well, while I understand her anger with me I am angry with her too. Not because of anything that happened during the trip but that she is airing all her anger at me on the Internet for everyone to bash me after only hearing her side of the story. I do not want to make a bigger deal of this so I am going to make my side short.

I have a relatively small family that I am very close with. The morning we left for our trip my dad came over and told me that my uncle, his only sibling and last remaining member of his immediate family had died. We were devastated. We are still devastated. But he told me to go on the trip, so I went.

In trying to keep myself pulled together and not let my grief take over I held it all in. This made me feel sick pretty much the entire time we were there. That coupled with Ramadan and the lack of available food, made me very weak. Yes, being in a third world country by yourself is terrifying; and I 100% understand Kara’s anger. But I felt uneasy and unsafe at times when there were two of us; namely in Fez. And that is what was the final straw that made me leave. I was shaking and my heart was racing. I was having, what I now know as an anxiety attack. And it wasn’t the first one I had on that trip. I was scared.

There were a number of factors that I am not going to get into because I don’t need to explain them to anyone. What it comes down to is that I left because I was devastated by the loss of my uncle and I needed to be with people that understood that and would allow me to grieve, not because I thought they needed me.

I have apologized for leaving. There isn’t any more that I can do. Kara is pissed, and she has every right. But is the anger because I left? Or, is the anger because the trip didn’t turn out like she though it would?

Life happens, no one knows how they are going to react to loss until it slaps them in the face. The loss has changed me. I am not the same person I was when we planned our trip. I am not asking for an apology, just some understanding.