She decided to join UNICEF and go to Kenya. She felt that helping people that had less than her would allow her to feel good about herself again. It would allow her to feel like everything she was doing made sense, that she was somehow making the world a better place, even if it was in some small way.

When she got to Kenya, she was very nervous indeed. She had no idea what she was doing, no idea how she was supposed to act, and she loved this. She loved that she did not know how to behave, because this allowed her to make mistakes. It allowed her to feel like whatever she was doing was a learning experience, and in learning something new she would allow herself to relearn how to feel, to rationalize the concept of living in a world that no longer had her mother in it.

She became a teacher at a school. She barely earned any money, but it was enough. Her father was always ready to send her money, he was always ready to make it so that she would be comfortable, but Angie would have none of that. She had not come here to be comfortable. No, she had come here to be as uncomfortable as possible.

As a black woman, she was a lot more approachable to the Kenyan kids that she taught than the white teachers. It was not that the white teachers were somehow bad at their jobs, it was just that the Kenyan children did not feel like others around them. She became a very good teacher indeed, and she was proud of this fact.

Over the next ten years, she helped teach dozens of Kenyan children, and all of them found that their lives improved greatly as the result of her tutelage. She was glad that she could make such a difference. She was glad she could help these children so much.

She got over the loss of her mother by becoming a mother herself. She got over the loss of the only woman in her life that had made her feel safe, the woman that had taught her how to act and how to exist in this world that could so often be hostile to people that were not completely and utterly aware of how one should do such things, by becoming this very person in the lives of the children that she taught.

It was a good life. She was proud to have lived it. She was proud because, after all of this time, after going through so much struggle and then enjoying a comfortable life, she was able to make a difference. She didn’t just sit in her marble castle, living a life of comfort, believing that she deserved each and every thing that she had simply because her dad had worked hard. No, she had worked hard for her own happiness, and this was all that mattered now. It made her happy to be this way. It made her happy to have made a difference in the lives of children that no one in the world had cared about.

She became the person that these children turned to. She became the person that these kids came to for protection from people that would want to harm them. Very soon, the children that she taught stopped calling her teacher and started calling her mother. The first time that this happened, Angie felt truly joyous for the first time since her mother had died. It was at that very moment that she realized that she had done the right thing by being there in that moment. She had done the right thing by coming to Kenya to help these children, to teach them the things that her mother had taught her. In a lot of ways, she was able to extend the life of her mother. She was able to pass on her mother’s love, the love that her mother had taught her how to experience, to these children. And that was enough. That was more than enough.

After ten years of doing this, Angie found herself missing home. She found herself missing her father, who she had not seen in ten years. They had talked over video chats and they always spoke on the phone for at least an hour every single day, but it wasn’t the same. She was glad that she was going to be able to go to him and actually hug him. He had been an important part of her life once too. It had all changed after her mother had died for a long time. He had become depressed, as had Angie. However, by now both of them had healed to a great degree. Both of them had rationalized not just their own existence but each other’s existences in a world that Angie’s mother did not exist in. It is a difficult thing to love the reminder of that which you have lost. A very difficult thing indeed. However, time heals all wounds, and they had spent more than enough time apart. They had spent enough time that they would be able to look at each other and truly be happy for once. They had spent enough time that they would be able to live life the way it was supposed to be lived. Angie simply woke up one day and realized that she had healed enough.

And so, she finished that school year and bade goodbye to her children. They were all sad to see her go, but she made sure that the teacher that was coming in to replace her was the very best. She was so proud of all of her children. The very first ones that she had taught were about to graduate from university, and a lot of them had already been promised jobs in a number of good companies. She had taken these children who probably would not have been able to achieve much in their lives due to the immense difficulty that they would have had getting the most basic education and she had given them something. She had given them the hope of a better future.

She would probably come back. This would probably end up being nothing more than a sabbatical, unless she found something worth staying for back home. Even if she ended up resettling in New York again, she would still go back to visit her children and see how they were doing. She was connected with every single one of them on social media, and she was very glad that this was the case. It would have been impossible to leave if she was not able to make herself so available to them at any time of the day.

She sighed and got up. It was not yet time for her meal, but she was getting hungry anyway. She had been so nervous and uncertain about leaving that she had not been able to eat anything before she left, and this mistake was taking its toll now. She knew that she would have to eat something soon, and once again was glad that her father had bought her a first class ticket. She would be able to eat any time she wanted thanks to the luxury that this first class ticket afforded her, and she was very glad about this indeed. She was glad because she would be able to enjoy her flight home, and if she had been in economy class or coach she might have had to undergo a much more stressful journey. She was going through so much emotional turmoil already that the thought of any further stress made her queasy.