Adjusting Back

As I was scrolling through my Facebook newsfeed the other day I saw a few of my fellow Peace Corps group members post links to their latest blog posts, and then it dawned on me that I have not written a post or really written down my thoughts at all since I left my site and Ethiopia almost 4 months ago.

            When I was in Ethiopia I was itching to leave. Not that my time there had been bad, but I was ready to be what I considered home (America). I was done with being stared at, with not having toilets and plumbing, with eating the same thing every single day, with not understanding what was being said around me, and with the overall frustration of living as an outsider, even after 2 years.

            What I realized as soon as I got on the plane to come back to America, and what I have lived with every day since then is that Adwa will always be a little bit of home to me, and that the people I met and the things I experienced changed my life only in the most positive sense. People use the expression “You don’t know what you have until it’s gone,” and I always rolled my eyes at that. I thought they were using that as some excuse to make me realize how lucky I am to have what I have. However, since coming back and having to readjust to such a different life, I am realizing just how true that expression is.

            I think the hardest part about coming home has been realizing how much I have changed in comparison to the rest of the life I left. I still have many friends from before, and they are still my closest friends. We still hang out and chat, they are still the people I text when I need a pick me up, but something is a little disconnected. It’s no one’s fault, but our lives have moved at different paces and the past 2 years have held vastly different experiences. I knew my friends would live their lives when I was gone, but what I didn’t realize is how I would feel “behind” when I returned. My friends are moving, going to grad school, and getting promoted, they are engaged, married, and pregnant. And yet here I am, trying to find a job, dealing with finding an apartment, and yet I feel more mature and grown up than others my age.

            At my COS conference the Peace Corps staff warned us that we would have to face many questions about our service and experience, but also forewarned us that people didn’t want to hear all about it. Maybe they were curious, but they don’t want to hear a story about a goat for 20 minutes. We learned how to pick and choose the anecdotes we tell, and they also let us sort through our emotions to try to explain how we feel about our experience. What they didn’t tell us is how different our narrative would be depending on the day. I have days where I gush and gush about my experience, the people, and that world. There are other days where I just shrug and say, “I’m glad to be back”. The difficult part of the narrative of my story is that it can’t be summed up in an “elevator speech”. It can’t be summed up by a 45-minute presentation. It can’t even be summed up by continuous stories. It can only be experienced, and that’s something I’m still trying to understand.

            Another hard part about readjusting is trying not to slip into a place of judgment at everything and comparisons that are not fair to make. I knew life was difficult there in a lot of ways, but I also knew the easiness of it in others. I saw the poverty, but I also saw the happiness. I saw the oppression, but I compared that to America and saw that there are some similarities that you won’t see unless you experience both countries. I came back and tried hard to not be “that person” who would scoff at a complaint and say, “It could be worse.” I mean, it could be—but it’s all in perspective and I’m learning that it’s not ok to diminish someone’s suffering just because someone else might also be having a difficult time. If nothing else, my time in Ethiopia taught me perspective, but that can be a lot to try to bring to a life where many things for me in America are easy. Whenever I feel a sense of complaining, I remind myself of the times I struggled during my service, or someone else, and it brings me to a sense of gratitude for my own life. However, that same sense of perspective sometimes lets me pass judgment onto others, which can be unfair.

            The single, most difficult, and most complex question someone can ask me is, “How do you feel now?” because my answer is, and I think will continue to be, “I don’t know.” Whenever anyone asks me that I want to scream that at them, and then run away, because I don’t think I will ever truly know how I feel about my time and being back. Readjusting to things like Target, cars, air conditioning, cuddling with dogs, and debit cards have been easy. Slipping into old routines with friends, unlimited texting, and constant power have been blessings. But the sense that I left a piece of me on the other side of the world, the knowledge that some of my girl students are currently sitting at home married instead of pursuing their dreams, the feeling that even through the hard times I learned more than I knew was possible, those stick with me and make being back in America more difficult.

            I think I am still at the place where I am creating a much different picture of my service in my mind than what it was. I know there were difficult moments, I still remember wanting to quit many times, and I still sometimes dream of my awful classes, my hardest days, and that feeling of not belonging. I think I am at the point in the return where I’m remembering everything fondly and so every time I talk about my service it’s all positive, nothing negative to be said. I know from talking to other Returned Volunteers that these feelings come in waves, that I will eventually go back to a place of acceptance. Acceptance of what my service was, which was an extremely amazing yet difficult life for 2 years. Acceptance that I grew and learned and experienced more than most people ever will. Acceptance that I may never fit in completely to my old life because of that- but that I can create a new one. And acceptance that the world is not perfect, that I know that more than most people, but that through my service I can hopefully help others along with my sense of empathy and desire to help others that I gained and strengthened while there.