Kyle Hepp

December 6, 2009

I take a lot of flack for (seemingly) randomly abandoning the blog for long stretches when I know that people are used to seeing regular posts from me.

However, occasionally I have good reason to do so.

We had a family emergency. It’s nothing I can share, as said family member has not yet chosen to share the news with everyone else yet. While I might not mind having my whole life on the internet, not everyone feels that way, and I respect that.

We got the news in the form of a frighteningly cryptic email (that scared the living daylights out of me, and fortunately made things sound much worse than they actually are) the day after Yael and David’s wedding. Seba and I immediately started making plans. We cut our Argentina/Uruguay trip with Emily and Rodolfo short and began trying to get back to the U.S. in as little time as possible. Seba’s French passport, the one he is able to use to get into the U.S. without a visa, was in Santiago. Lesson learned, never leave the country without all forms of identity. Even if he had been traveling with his French passport though, we still wouldn’t have been able to leave directly from Buenos Aires, seeing as how flights were nearing 4k, and they were less than that for the both of us out of Santiago. We had to buy another return ticket from B.A. to Santiago, but even so, it was still cheaper.

On Wednesday/Thursday of this week, we passed through 3 countries in a 15 hour period. And by passed through, I don’t mean that we had a layover in 3 different countries. I mean, we woke up in Buenos Aires, had lunch in Santiago and were in the U.S. late that night driving to go see the person we’re here for.
This has probably been one of the most harrowing weeks of my life. And while I’ve barely had time to admit it, I’ve missed blogging. Not because it’s an addiction (it is) and not because of the wonderful support system the blogging community provides (it does), but simply because it’s cathartic.

Writing helps me really analyze my feelings. When I sat down to write this, I thought I would probably talk about how I’m scared, I’m stressed, how I’m at the end of my rope, how I’m feeling uncertain. But, now, as I blog, I realize more than anything, I feel an underlying sense of relief and gratitude.

My relief is so strong, because looking back, things could’ve been so much worse. Reading that email in Buenos Aires, I thought someone was going to die, and this family member is going to be ok, thank God, Allah, Buddha and whoever else you do or don’t believe in. I feel an immense relief that Seba and I had the money in savings and didn’t have to take on some kind of huge credit card debt to pay the 3.2k worth of flights we had to buy to get here and relief that the technology to get us from one country to another to another in such an incredibly short time does exist. And I feel immense gratitude to my profession, for allowing Seba and I the flexibility to be able to take a few weeks to come help a person I love in need. I feel gratitude toward the clients that are friends and the friends that our clients, who understand that we have to postpone their session by a few weeks. If we’d had regular jobs, we’d be out on our asses right now, or else the person who needs us would be alone. That’s not a choice anyone should have to make.

So, as much as I possibly can, I just wanted to explain where I’ve been.