I am terrified.
I am terrified of what it will feel like 2 months from now when I am back here sitting in this cubicle again. I wonder if I've just set myself up for the greatest heart break I've experienced yet?
Last time I came home from Uganda it took me a few months to adjust to being back. I had a hard time purchasing nice things. I had a hard time enjoying restaurants and alcohol. I struggled to pick up old friendships where they left off. I hated television shows and song lyrics and thought the latest trends were idiotic. I rolled my eyes at headlines and billboards and fast food commercials. I felt spoiled. And selfish. And undeserving. This American, backwards, consumerist lifestyle wasn't fitting me anymore. I was having a hard time fitting in where I'd called home for 23 years.
My friends noticed a big difference in me as well. It was hard to carry conversation past small talk. There weren't words to convey what I was feeling. Weeks simply went by and I slowly recovered as the human mind tends to do for itself with time. I got my first teaching job and dove face-first into my work and my love for students. I slowly became American again. But I never lost that ache.
I don't know what I am going to do when I get back from this trip. There's a hard lump formed in my throat as I write this. How do you live with your feet in separate places? How you do make both halves of you content? How could I justify my lifestyle while my best friends were searching for food?
My biggest fear? That my homecoming in December will only be to box up my apartment and sell my car and get back on a returning flight.
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