"I would often fantasize that maybe someday I could be one of those stoic badasses whose emotions are mostly comprised of rock music and not being afraid of things"

Two weeks ago, I accidentally poured boiling water on to my hand. It led to a pretty decent first or second degree burn that I now show off proudly. However, it didn't need to have happened.

After I burned myself, I was too afraid of inconveniencing my host family, that I didn't ask for the help I needed, this time, access to cold water. Instead, I spent much of time afterwards trying to convince them I was fine, while trying to find cold water...without them realizing that I was in pain.

To say that was completely idiotic would be putting it lightly. And now I've got a scar to remind me of it.

I've always had a problem with asking for help. This hasn't manifested itself as much when I was in the US, because I knew how to do most of the things I wanted/needed to do. In south africa, everything is completely new.

And instead of asking for help...I've tried to act like a stoic badass. And it usually hasn't worked that well. Besides burning my hand, I've gotten incredibly lost on the streets of pretoria, really messed up doing my laundry, gotten sick in several cars, got caught in a thunderstorm... And that's just off the top of my head.

But I can see right now, if I continue this, I can't be a good peace corps volunteer. I need to ask for help from my counterparts, from my host family, from peace corps, from my friends, from the clinic, from bundu. And truth, that almost paralyzes me. I am incredibly scared. Maybe of rejection, maybe because I fear people thinking less of me, of failure.

But in order to get where I want to go, in order to be a good peace corps volunteer, in order to be the person I want to be, I got to face my fear and do it anyway.

Time for the 80's pump up music!