Cultural differences

What did I expect out of life while living in Costa Rica? I had ideals and dreams that love could solve everything. Bring some kind of paradise on earth. What did I expect out of relationships? Stability and security? Knowing that ticos grow up in more poverty, more alcoholism, drugs, violence, and neglect? For generations their trauma doesn’t heal because unhealthy coping is ingrained and considered normal. All I ever learned was how to deal with their neediness for both money and love. Their deranged narcissism. I learned that I was forcing my priviledge upon it, asking it to be perfect and fulfill my needs. Am I even here in the name of love or in the name of adventure? As a writer investigating the savage heart? It’s not realistic to have the happily ever after. I must lower my expectations. But something else more bizarre and transformative: for a chance for two unlikely personalities to meet and learn from each other, creating a new thread in the fabric of social consciousness, like a brave tendril venturing from its parent vine. Across not only social and economic status but across differences in the love received during our upbringing. It really asks the question, what is the value of a person? Who is a person? Can a person be more than what love they were given at birth?