Month 24

Well, here we are. In three days I will have been in Peru for two years. Just a little more than 6 weeks left in service. Peru 21, the replacement group for Peru 17, has landed in Peru and is starting training. This is it guys-- the homestretch.

I have been caught in this weird limbo where I both want to write down everything describing every emotion that runs through me, and at the same time I am seized in paralysis where I can't seem to write a single word of any of it. Like when you trip and fall and there is this moment where you don't know exactly all that is happening and are caught off guard and can't do much about it. It happens so fast, yet so many thoughts flash in that instant that they can't be quantified in normal time.

Does that make sense?

Two years of my life. A life goal almost accomplished. The end of an era.

Simply put, I am overwhelmed.

I am overrun by the past and the present and the future all at once. When you're coming to the end of an experience you can't help but look back at how far you've come; the array of good and bad days that all smash together and create this nostalgic foray that comes out any moment of the day to remind you just how amazing and complicated it has all been and how soon it will end. And the future? Well, to think of life any different than how it has been can be exciting and unsettling in it's own right. Going home, going back to life how it was but at the same time completely different. It makes you wonder if it will all just seem like a dream? All that's left is to try and live in the present, and sometimes the past and the future are pulling so hard that just taking a deep breath and looking around and saying, "this day-- this moment-- is all I have," becomes the most difficult task.

Overwhelmed indeed.

I don't know if many of you know this, but Peace Corps is probably one of the biggest, scariest goals I had set for myself in my entire life. I didn't actually know if it would be made a reality or not someday. Those of you who have known me for a good deal of time know that I can be considered a bit of a "free spirit." I make goals, I accomplish them, but I'm not a "five-year-plan" type of person. I am a "follow-your-heart-and-it-will-all-work-out" type of person. Peace Corps is probably the only thing I've done that could kind of fall under both.

My very first post about Peace Corps, my very first post on this blog, is one about my Peace Corps interview almost three years ago in Oregon; that incredibly exciting and nerve wracking first big step after applying. The very first question the interviewer asked me was: "So, why do you want to join Peace Corps?"

I wrote:

"This is the question I had spent the entire drive to Salem trying to rehearse out loud. It was incredibly difficult to verbalize my answer. How do I explain to someone what I just know to be right? How do I verbalize in a short precise answer all of the events of my past and present that have led me to this moment where this drastic step is not so drastic? .... How do I sum up that when I am older I want to look back and have the Peace Corps as my past?"

That last part, the "when I'm older I want to look back and have Peace Corps as my past" part. I can't seem to get it out of my head. No one really knows what they're getting into when they first join Peace Corps, I don't think. Every country, every region, and every person has such a different experience. It was nothing like I expected it to be, but it was everything I wanted.
And at this moment, I am conflicted on how I feel about making it my "past."

Just like anything in life, change can be scary. Hopefully I will be able to unfreeze my paralysis and write some more about what the end of this wild ride has been like. There are still so many stories to be told, and such little time to tell them.