In Limbo Grand

In a strange place right now. I knew this place was coming, I saw the signs along the years. I look at my friends back home, a perfect four years for them. They are all by now VPs, Senior Analysts, Associates, Corporate Developers, Acquisitions Specialists, CFA designated, brilliant, successful and on a trajectory to something highly valued in society. They are financially sound, able, and academically qualified to move their lives forward, to graduate studies, starting a family, finding balance and happiness in their lives.

My life amounts to a handful of six month jobs and two years in rural Africa. It’s like I’ve moved no where and have no where to go. The plans and ideas I had in my head at graduation didn’t pan out, the plans changed, and often too quickly life took sharp turns, but I adapted. I don’t regret the decisions and events that led to this very moment and I certainly don’t regret my two years here. I’ve never been happier and purposeful than I have been here. However, I’m underwhelmed by what’s at the end of the road.

It’s somewhat daunting to think of the past four years, my mind has nothing to anchor, everything was so brief and fleeting. A set of dominos laid in a thousand different tracks, and the sequence that fell dropped me here. And the dominoes continue to fall back to America, and then where? To what? I have not a clue but my heart has palpitations merely considering the thought. In a flight to safety, I cling to a world I knew, though not so well as my peers, but it’s all I remember of home.

Will I fit in any more amongst my friends back home? Or will they be so different and so far in their careers and lives, on such a different economic level, that we have nothing in common any longer? Am I smart enough? Capable enough? Have I lost my edge, a sensibility that was sharpened through dedication and persistence on a specific set of tasks? Do I want to start all over? Do I want to do this? If not, what else can I do? This is all I know and this is, if my memory hasn’t failed, is what I was good at, what I enjoyed. Most might not believe it, but I loved what I did.

The friends I knew, I loved. I don’t know if they will be the same people. Two years is a long time and I will have missed that much of their lives. We may no longer have anything in common, no tales to recount, no adventures shared in recent memory. Just a giant hole. A dark empty space of silence. Or worse: perhaps I’m not the same person anymore. Then what? A frightening thought because that’s not something easily changed or controlled. That’s forced exile.

I don’t want to be that guy. The guy in a circle of friends that sometimes carries the burden of failure. Not failure in the sense that they have actually failed at life, but relative failure, failure in comparison to the immense success of others and what society considers as a benchmark of success. They have climbed that ladder in leaps and bounds in a highly competitive field in one of the worst economies in history. It’s a race and I feel like I left the track in the heat of competition. And now when I return, it will be a whole new race and perhaps I’ve forgotten my abilities. Or lost the hunger.

Not a lot in the world more competitive than the finance lot. They have the hunger. I had hunger and I certainly hope I’m famished when I return home.

Part of me is a little frustrated. I worked too hard and scarified too much to get where I had. I had such a different set of expectations for what these two years would be like, what life after would be. As with life, it never goes as you planned. Yet it sometimes takes unexpected but wonderful turns. My two year turn was unexpectedly wonderful, but now what? Is there a turn waiting back home? Will it expedite? Can I catch up? I’m certainly going to try.

The Boxer

April 16^th. The official last day of my Peace Corps service. It’s strange to look upon your home, your community with eyes of finality, with nostalgia, to see things as if it were all about to end. Two years has come and gone in a moment and my mind is making perpetrations, automatically, as if it’s coded in me on some primordial, instinctive level. Mental lists are drafted, what to keep, what to leave, completing paperwork. It’s a little frightening, the need to control change, to not let it surprise you around a corner, and the lack of control we have on virtually everything in life. Yet my mind labors on, occupying itself in fear of some other thought.

With the sound of tearing cloth I suddenly realized that all my boxers were worn and torn. Two years of use and scrubbing with a harsh brush had worn them to thin cotton that tore with stretch of a leg. All of my boxers are deteriorating and each day I throw out another pair. Two years has passed quickly and though it seems to have passed unnoticed it’s strange to see the signs. I am exhausted and have lost the energy, but I can’t seem to pinpoint when it happen. Perhaps it was the daily wear that one day was stretched too thin and tore. Ripped to a halt.

All the furniture, kitchenware and other items are all sold. Hopefully, my laptop will be sold soon. I will leave the country with less than the little I arrived with. Light. Two bags filled with whatever clothes are no longer torn and small keep sakes. And the preparations continue.