Refugee in my own country. Thoughts on leaving everything behind to follow your dream.

I feel like a refugee in my own country.  I know that the Peace Corps tells you not to make any major life changes until you have your invitation in hand, but because of the nature of my job, in order to go when I wanted to (as soon as possible), I had to leave before the legislative session started.  So I said a goodbye to my job, my boyfriend, my friends and my home of eleven years to come to Idaho, save money and wait for a placement.

So I am a refugee, in my own hometown as a matter of fact.  I have left everything that was familiar  in the hopes that I can create a new trajectory for my life by following the Peace Corps dream that has haunted me since I was a child.  Unlike a refugee however, the war that  I’ve been running from is taking place inside me and so in a way, it is inescapable.  I find myself in a Boise, Idaho winter (but at least one that is verging on Spring) waiting.  And waiting. And waiting.  Desperate to hear where I will go and when.  There is no point in settling in, so it becomes difficult to make friends or to create any kind of coherent, stable life.  I suppose it's a good trial run for my Peace Corps service. I’m living with my family, and while I’ve loved the opportunity to get closer with them, I am struggling as an adult to cope with not having my own space and feeling the need to justify my time and activities  I’m not used to accounting to anyone but myself, it’s a very strange reality.  I’m also struggling with the feeling that I am going backwards.  I feel like going into the Peace Corps is something you do in your early twenties (even though the data says that I actually am close to the median age of volunteers). It seems very bohemian, if not adolescent, to abandon a career and an established life and place the next couple years of my life completely into the hands of the federal government.  It takes a supreme ability to let go of control, which is something that is hard for me in just the day to day reality.  And I have no plan B, so I can't even think of where I will be or what I will do if this doesn't pan out.

So aside from work and a relatively stable workout routine, I am here with this void of time in front of me and the way that I attempt to cope with the unknown is that I walk around this town.  I put my headphones in my ears and walk.  For hours.  Down neighborhood streets, passing by houses where I lived as a kid.  Up the hills of Camel’s Back Park.  Downtown, up to the top of the parking garage just to look out at the city.  Sometimes I walk buoyantly, sometimes dejectedly, sometimes so overwhelmed with sadness I can’t stop crying, sometimes so overwhelmed by joy that I can’t stop crying, sometimes simply afraid of the future being so unknown, sometimes energized and excited for the new adventures ahead.  Sometimes I am intensely aware of strangers and their gazes on me, and I become so frozen with self-consciousness that I sniff, widening my nostrils, or I cough, or look at my iPhone to make it seem as if I am doing something, or simply avert my gaze or turn it stony and unseeing.  And sometimes, as is the case more and more recently, I can openly and sincerely smile.  Sometimes I try, but it feels pinched on my face and pained and insincere.

So, I have come to the realization recently that the worst seems to have passed, and I feel immensely grateful for that.  I laughed out loud when I realized the enormity of what I have been through (much of it self-inflicted) to get where I am right now and to get where I plan to be going.  So although, I don’t feel completely healed, completely ready, I feel like the load is lifting and is slowly being replaced with the sense of purpose and excitement that I have been so desperately waiting for. 

I’m seeing now that these things take time.  Not to say everyone I’ve spoken with hasn’t said the same thing.  But it has felt like one thing after another after another with so little room to breathe let alone to smile in between, that the idea of every truly feeling like I could make this happen seemed impossible.  I was having a conversation with my mother the other day about focusing on the positive, seeing the signs, keeping the hope and I remembered myself as the girl who saw signs in rainbows and birds and flowers and the weather.  Basically everything.  My mother described herself as a Pollyanna, and all I could think was “Man, I remember when I was like that!”  And I wish that I could get it back, because although it can be irritating when you are faced with the eternal optimist (or so I’ve been told by jaded friends), it is such a happy place to live. There was a time when my smile was unfailing, my bouncy greeting sincere, my optimism about the future never soured, I was charming with strangers and I could always say that things would get better and make plans with no doubts that they would work out somehow.  I just knew that everything happened for a reason.  And now?  I overcome a hurtle and I look to the near horizon for the next one that I just know will be bigger or more impossible to overcome.  When I laugh, it ends in this hollow sound, it kind of trails off into nothing because in every moment of happiness, I remember within seconds that it is likely to be replaced by despair.  But you can’t fake the Pollyanna worldview. It has to come from a place of truly experiencing the world in that way.  I desperately want it back.  I feel it in bits and pieces, which I will take with joy, because for the past few years, those moments have been scattered and sparse.

So for now, I’m a refugee, slowly clearing my head of the overwhelming changes in my life, reorienting to a new place and planning for a new life that is nothing like the one in my past.   I continue on, working to cheer as the applicants whose blogs I read get their invitations (and feeling slightly jealous).  I find myself staring lustfully at the picture on the Peace Corps wiki site of the invitation packet and I can’t wait for that crush of paperwork and information so that I can shift into gear and start making plans!