KOPE-IN

The thing I have to remember about the Russian language is this:
1. Things that are prounounced similar in both languages (toilet, restaurant, nose) are written entirely differently.
2. Even though some words are written in the same alphabetical letters as English, they are pronounced entirely differently.
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Things are perfect for me, but for the personal matters of the other two volunteers. Thursday night, Adam got distressing news from a wife that apparantly wants to leave him, and Cortney spilled her guts and said her husband is divorcing her and has a 28-year old girlfriend.
What happens in situations like this is that I absorb the situation and it becomes my own. Until I forced myself to stop later that night, I found myself pacing my room and very anxious. I had to actually sit myself down and tell myself I was being incredibly selfish - to myself! - by making their problems my own. I read before bed and in the morning, we all woke up better. Adam has decided to stay in Russia anyways - after talking to his wife, he has decided she is confused. Cortney honestly has not broken down at all. Her strength is really incredible and Russians keep mistaking her for a movie star. **********
Today is a special day in the Russian Orthodox Church (what it is, I do not remember, except people get "baptized" by jumping into the river), and so one of the translators took us to the main Yaroslavl church and we stood through the latter part of the service.
How it works is this: You cross yourself with either two or three fingers, right shoulder first, before you enter the church, when you enter the church, and every time the priest says "Amen," which here, sounds like "Ah-mun." You also buy a thin stick of a candle, cross yourself and light it, cross yourself again. You may also kiss the glass of the picture of your favorite icon (Mary and Jesus are very big), but this I did not do because I could think only of the germs and bacteria on that glass. When I lit my candle, I said a prayer for the young boy outside the gate of the church who was begging. That is when I felt an overwhelming sense of my own atheism - I did not believe for a minute that the world, the universe, god, whatever, was going to do a fucking thing for him. I knew this in my bones. My soul, though I don't believe in "soul."
It came to me (an American thought), that I could simply give him money, a large sum, and that would ensure many things - 1. that the prayer that I said was not in vain and 2. here is the hard part, that I only realized afterwards, a thought so shameful, it hurts me to write it.
So that I would not feel so helpless, so that I would feel better about things, so that I would feel better about myself.
I looked over my shoulder, as though I was a criminal. What I was about to do was strictly against the rules of the organization I am with. I walked towards the boy, and with one last furtive glance, dropped the note in the outstretched bowl. His hands were red. He did not look up. I hated myself truly at that point, because what is the fucking point of any of this?
Am I like the Americans I hated last time? The awful rich women who liked to drop money on developing countries because it made them look good?
Am I like the women I hate, the ones who pose for pictures with AIDS babies and orphans because I like the way I look in those pictures, like someone holy, like Princess Diana?
I was struck by a choking lightening flash of terrible guilt and impotence. I pretty much reeled away from the boy as though he had actually struck me, and stumbled through the snow, up the icy ledge and I hid behind the church for several minutes until I pulled myself together.
I've had these thoughts before. But only now, writing it, does the entirety of the shame seem so fucking gross and true.
In order to come here to work with kids, I had to take some blood tests. I went to my doctor and handed her the paperwork, and she asked what I was going to Russia for, and when I told her, she said, "You're so good, you're making me cry."
"I'm not good," I said with meaning. "It's fun for me, I like doing it."
Well - I do like doing it. I like Maxim, the bad teenage boy who always hits this little girl. She cries, I hold her. But I hold him, too. It's not his fault he grew up badly. He's likely only re-enacting what he's seen for years at home.
I like Kola, and was kinda sad that Thursday was his last day at the hospital. I liked him because he offered me his gloves on the same day that he picked up big sticks and made awful, machine gun sounds with them.
Right now, though, do you know what I am remembering? I am remembering having pity for the little boy this morning, and I feel a kind of rage against myself now, because I am afraid that my "kindness," my "good deeds," are really nothing very much more than ego boosts.
And if this is true, then I do not know myself as well as I thought, and I don't know if I really like myself all that much either.