peace out.: the after...

I always thought I knew how I would feel when it was over. An enormous sense of accomplishment, a relief, a freedom, an excitement about pushing forward with my life. But that was not how it was. I felt a loss, a penetrating and profound loss. The feeling that it was all over, not that it was just beginning.

My journey through Peace Corps was rough, in the sense that life is rough. Peace Corps isn’t any different than what my life would have been like in the U.S. (crappy days, amazing days, love and heartbreak, terrible bosses and wonderful bosses, hectic days and relaxing days). We are humans, and no matter where in the world we find ourselves, these emotions and challenges find us. Period.

I sometimes try to imagine what my life would be like right now if I had not become a Peace Corps volunteer. And it’s funny, because normally I love exercises like that, dreaming up the ‘what-if’s, but I’m drawing a blank on this one. I have no idea what I would be doing if I weren’t here, lounging on my bed with a computer in my lap in the highlands of Guatemala. This is place where I feel so very right at this very moment.

But I suppose that’s the joke of it all. When you go into the Peace Corps, you can’t imagine what it will be like. And when you leave the Peace Corps, you can’t imagine your life without that experience.

What was it like down there?

How will I answer this question? How have I answered this question? It was transformative down here. Absolutely and irrevocably transformative.

Yesterday, I felt a loss. A heartache. I felt an ending.

But today, with the sun pouring through my dirty window, my dog cuddled up for her morning nap, my second cup of coffee by my side, I feel a possibility in my room, bouncing around like the lone fly that has managed to enter. I feel a calm. I feel that even though I don’t have my future mapped out, even though I’m not ever quite sure, that it’s okay. That I made the right decision taking some time off to write, to think, to enjoy life ‘down here’.

And while a part of me wishes that I had gone home, wishes that today I was on a plane Cleveland bound, another part of me knows that I would be a wreck. That I would be selfish and sour, not at all the person I want to be. That I would be grieving the loss of so much that I have fought so hard to gain here. So for now, it’s for the best to work through my story here. Work through all of the chapters that have piled up in my brain and put back together the scraps that were once, my heart.