I'm falling out of love with Armenia

I'm starting to fall out of love with Armenia. I find most days are a struggle in attempt to enjoy basic life under the lack of simple infrastructure. For the past week, and the weeks before, Internet access has been abysmal. Barely capable of connecting, constant buffering of videos and endless reloading of broken pages. It took me thirty minutes to attempt to pay for my phone internet moments ago, to which I simply gave up and left my home without it. Roaming through the streets, I noticed a familiar pattern of utter annoyance: power outages. The businesses on the streets are reduced to an idle nature, their customers sitting there with nothing to do. Women sitting in their chairs mid haircut. This is normal here. The endless burning of plastic can fill the rooms during the day and night, an insufferable smell of chemicals as you attempt to catch a moment of fresh air due to the dry and hot environment.

Armenia has a large rate of diaspora, and I really do not question as to why. For anyone in the modern world, with such reliance on the bare essentials of modern living, this is no place to call home. This place holds no future for the tech-savvy future builders of the planet. But don't get me wrong, Armenia is an incredibly beautiful country... Sometimes. It holds vast landscapes of incredible beauty, diverse nature that'll have you feeling as if you have entered the realm of a fantasy novel. It just refuses to grow beyond this in the right manner. Development runs rampant here suddenly, Armenia is now considered a fast-growing economy despite the fact that exports are down 14% this year and tourism itself has also plummeted. It seeks cheap labour (not to be mistaken with support for the lie of a worker shortage) in the form of mass migration, Indians build the new apartment buildings here, and that will make developers rich and happy as the Indians are also the ones to fill them. This is nothing new to the wold as of now, which nation isn't doing this? But here is the problem: what good is trying to house new citizens if you can't even provide basic functioning power and water to it's existing ones? That is too simple of a question to answer, though the answer is one that brings up manner more questions: corruption.

It's evident that here's a select few profiting massively here. It's evident that there is capital almost endlessly flowing through the nation, but none of it goes where it should. The infrastructure struggles as the elites clearly expand upon their homes or even, in many cases, simply join the other diaspora and live better lives elsewhere. I'm not even sure I should be writing this, to be honest. But hey, this is the reality of present Armenia. It's said that to know a place, one must live in it. Beyond exploration. I really see and experience the ways in which the citizens truly live. That includes witnessing their hardships firsthand. Many would make the claim that Armenians are lazy, and at a glance (the stomach is usually a telling sign) there is truth to this, but these issues are clearly not the fault of heavy eaters, instead a systematic flaw at the hands of elites that thrive on a lack of questions asked, and more so a lack of demands made from its more idle population. This comes as no surprise from a former Soviet Republic, in which communism enforced hard workers, but also told people that the government would be those who fix things and maintain a working order alongside them. The idea that the government would eventually come and save them from their problems. Makes sense, right?

I think a lot of this has allowed to me realise what sort of patience level I have. How much I can tolerate around me until I start to feel my breaking point growing close. I'm clearly someone that enjoys nature, clean air, a space that is more quiet and peaceful. Wanting soke basic necessities in life but not needing a whole lot. Back in England I had all the necessities and started to witness a lot of that quality of life deteriorating. But here it's the total opposite. The thing is, I don't mind older places at all. In fact I love that side of the nation, but I can tell that this place is losing me the more I live here, and I'm starting to feel that part of me that says I should explore more, escape and move on to a place that might be a bit more suitable for my interests. Particularly as I grow closer to my 30s and feel that need to get my things together. Wanting to focus and work hard, but seeing how an environment can start to shape and even limit that potential. I thought Armenia was actually a place of great opportunity for me, and in certain industries it definitely is, but is it good enough for me as a person? I just don't think it is anymore. And this does begin to bring questions: who am I? What do I want from life? Is there a place where I feel comfortable enough to really settle down? I feel that those in the South America environment know a lot of what I'm writing about here, with many similarities to the struggles. I can see how citizens just want to have a life that they can pursue with interests and good times, only struggling to make it anywhere because of a place that doesn't support them.

I think we all need a place that encourages us to grow. That provides us with the essentials to do something that promotes creativity and gives a safe, healthy environment to do so. It's a shame so few places really do this. I want to love Armenia, I want to see this place as a home I could spend years enjoying. But this world is rapidly changing, and so rarely does this fast-paced, get-rich-quick mentality align with my own. I understand the slower life of the Armenian, I follow that lifestyle. But how do we just allow ourselves to flourish and enjoy a life that is constantly pushing us down? It makes me question: how often do people really feel stuck? Limited by their environment? Is there growth in understanding a place is holding you back?