Que Sera, Sera

13 Sep. 2011

Today I got a phone call at 8:45 in the morning, it was Jennifer, the medical officer assigned to my case. We have some news from DC she says, call me back. I call her back at 8:55 but she is in with another volunteer so I leave a message, but I am about out of medication so I need to go to the PC office anyway. When I get there, they are still busy so I wait. I am thinking the news is going to be something like, we want you to see a podiatrist in country, we want you to wear these orthotics, we want to see you in DC so you can see a specialist… I waited 2 hours and finally they come to get me. I sit down and I get the news. Well, says Jennifer, your Medical Separation was approved.

You know in the movies when big moments happen it’s like everything is happening in slow motion, suddenly things go out of focus and you can’t seem to grasp what’s happening… It was really like that. I must have been making a weird face because Jennifer stops her nonsensical rambling and says, “I think this is for the best really, here, why don’t you read the response from DC, aren’t you excited?” She asks. I give her a quizzical look… excited? But I read over the DC response… Ortho says that it looks like plantar fasciitis, a condition that normally takes 6-12 months to resolve, due to the difficulty level of the volunteers site and the amount of pain being experienced a medical separation is the best course of action.

I spend today calling my friends in Peace Corps to let them know what happened, I call my family back home, I don’t tell anyone else. It doesn’t feel real.
I am given a timeline and a long list of tasks that need to be accomplished before I can go. I have to go through the close of service procedures, do you want to do this the long way or the short way, asks Jennifer. Long way. I am given a departure date of one week from tomorrow.

14 Sep 2011

I sleep like crap. I never fully reach that state of restful sleep. Instead my mind is whirring, trying to process that what I thought was going to be the next 20 months isn’t. In a week I will be at home… actually I will be at my parents’ house, I haven’t slept in my parents’ house since… highschool? Could it be 6 years ago? Yes. Where will I work? What will I drive? Can I even drive still? I don’t have car insurance. At least I can call up my friends? I don’t have a phone, I don’t have any money. I don’t have a job and I do have broken feet. Broken feet and shitty Peace Corps insurance.

I go to the Clinica Biblica where I have to pee and poop in a cup to make sure I don’t have parasites… they make me use the bathroom in the middle of the waiting area in the middle of the hall. I have to carry my clear cups of pee and poop to the lab desk in front of a hospital full of people. Good thing I no longer feel shame,
I walk down the streets. Is this real? Where I am right now, is it real? I won’t be here in a week. What is it like in America? Are the streets cleaner or is that just my imagination? Suddenly everything in San Jose seems dirtier as I think about the cleanliness of the US. An old man grabs my hip Buenos dias guapa, he breathes in my ear. Are you real? Is this happening? At least I won’t have to put up with that anymore. That’s a point in favor of the US, I giggle.

In the evening I am looking for jobs. I realize there are no jobs, but I apply at Starbucks, because I like how coffee smells. But then, phone number? Address? I don’t really have either. I feel like I am going to throw up. I can’t breathe. And I start crying. In a week, I will be home.

15 Sep 2011

Once again, I didn’t sleep last night. I tried to go to sleep, but I couldn’t stop thinking. What will it be like going back to the YMCA? I will need time. My dream is really over. This thing I wanted my whole life, it’s really over. I feel so much grief. I have experienced a loss and I am ashamed that this loss is affecting me so strongly.
Today, I am angry. I am angry that that they mishandled my case from the very beginning and have blamed the problems on me every step of the way. I am angry that the Peace Corps can take a girl who has wanted nothing more than to serve her whole life and they can ruin my experience. I am angry that I have mostly bitter memories of my service and I will never get the chance to make positive ones.

Today is Costa Rican Independence Day. I am awake at 4:30 when they shoot off the canons to mark this day. I take the bus on a strange route because of parades to the Clinica Biblica to drop off my second sample of feces. I meet some American girls studying abroad. They want to know, how is the Peace Corps? Do I recommend it. Even though I am hurting and angry, I tell them I do.

I talk to my mom. She is so excited for me to come home. She says that. I am so excited for you to come home. She starts reminding me of the details, I have boxes of things to sort through in the barn. That’s a full time job she says. She expects me to live with them. I know I can’t do it.
A black hole has opened beneath me and is sucking my life into it. I can do nothing but watch. This is for good I realize. I have built my whole life on the foundation of Peace Corps, and now it is over. My life plan has ended and I don’t know where to start in drafting a new one.

16 Sep. 2011

I have my final physical today. The doctor tells me that it’s funny because if it weren’t for my feet, I would be in perfect health. I have excellent blood pressure and I may be one of the healthiest volunteers in Costa Rica.

Last night I finally slept for the first time, so I am able to better control my emotions. I have lunch with a couple of friends, one of whom is the closest volunteer to my site who happens to be in San Jose on her way to a friend’s birthday party. We eat pasta and they talk about all the things they miss from the US and how jealous they are that I get to go back and watch news and drink good beer and eat tacos. I say, well, at least you didn’t have your dream stolen from you. We sit in silence.

17 Sep. 2011

I ride the bus back to my site and can’t stop thinking about how beautiful this country is. I am really going to miss it here. I am not going to miss the 9 hour bus ride with no shocks and worn out seats.

When I get to my site, it was like I never left. I meet my friend Jessie and feel comforted. I feel good about my site as I show it to a friend. I am calm. I am back at site and of course I will stay here forever. This is home. This is normal.


18 Sep. 2011

Jessie is staying with me, which is nice because it breaks some of the tension. We have a huge typical breakfast, complete with my favorite, fried cheese.
After breakfast we walk to the beach. It is a long walk. 5 km there, 5 km back and I don’t care how long the walk is because I just want to go to the beach one last time. We meet a woman who owns a hotel on the beach and she buys us lunch to thank us for our service in the Peace Corps. I feel a twinge of guilt because I accept her gift even though I am leaving the country for good. But that’s not real. I think. It just can’t be real, because I am here in my site where nothing has changed and I will be here for the next 20 months, of course.

I have a really good day with Jessie, showing her my town and how I lived. I am really going to miss her. Maybe more than losing a dream, being separated from this friendship will be hardest part. Surely we can stay in contact. But our life paths have shifted. She will continue on this one, and I will wander off into the unknown.

19 Sep. 2011

It’s time to leave my site. I am glad that Moises, my program manager, has come to help me move. This way I don’t have to put all my crap on the 5 am bus, and then on a taxi.
At breakfast my host mom asks me about payment for the last two months, during which time I have been in San Jose, not eating at her house, not using her electricity, not washing my clothes. She wants me to pay the full amount. The amount I normally pay every month of which 60 percent is food costs. I tell her that I will pay for rent, but not for food because that isn’t right. She didn’t have to pay for that food, so why should I pay her for food she didn’t buy? She says it isn’t fair because she could have rented out my room to someone who would have paid for food. I want to tell her that life isn’t fair. Instead I tell her that when she agreed to host a Peace Corps volunteer she was given a pamphlet with rules for payment, and I am following these rules in my payment. This argument makes me feel a little glad that I am leaving, because we would have had this argument eventually, only I would have had to go on living in the house afterward.

We drive along the coastal road back to San Jose. In bus, the trip to San Jose is anywhere from 8-10 hours, in car we make it in 6 and stop for lunch. It’s beautiful to drive along the beach.

Later I am telling my friends the whole story, step by step of how I went from normal to a medical separation. I am angry about how the story goes and as I tell it, I realize how unfair the situation is.

I feel weird today. Part of me feels like I am back in the US already driving along the coastal road. Parts of me feel as if I will never leave.

20 Sep. 2011

I go into the Peace Corps office to finish my final paperwork. It should take a couple of hours. All of my friends are waiting for me back at the hostel, everyone is in town for the 50th anniversary celebration. I feel as if these events are happening to someone else. My final paperwork takes all morning and several hours of my afternoon. Even though I had been in the medical office on Friday to get things together, and they had known for a week that I would be leaving today, it still took the medical office two hours to get my paperwork together. I called it the Close of Service scavenger hunt. Basically you have to perform a series of tasks and then get almost every staff member in the Peace Corps office to sign somewhere on this form. At the end you are rewarded with a plane ticket and 32 dollars for the airport on the way home. It seemed like an awful lot of trouble for someone who didn’t want to go home in the first place.

I have dinner with all my friends and tell them the whole story, start to finish, of how things came to be this way. As I tell it I realize how very unfair the whole thing is.
We stay up till 1:30 talking, laughing, making jokes I know that no one back home will understand. I don’t want to go to bed, because then it will all be over. I am in the middle of a giant group hug. Leaving these people is the hardest part of leaving.

21 Sep. 2011

My friends wake up with me at 4:00 to see me off. I cry when I get into the taxi because these are my best friends and they have been with me through a really difficult part of my life.

The San Jose airport makes you go through security twice. In the airport it feels like I must be going on vacation. I can’t be leaving for good, so this must be a vacation. There is an adorable little girl sitting next to me on the plane. Her mom tells me she is going back home after three months of visiting her grandfather, but she doesn’t want to go. I tell her I am also going home after a long time in Costa Rica, and I don’t want to go home either. But because she’s being so brave, I’ll be brave.

I do a pretty good job too, until the pilot announces we will be landing in Atlanta. All of a sudden it hits me. I am really back in the states. My new friend tells me not to cry because we are supposed to be brave together. Touché little girl… touché. We end up spending a lot of time together in the Atlanta airport, because she is in a stroller and I am in a wheelchair. I feel like a real idiot in the wheelchair because everyone else is in their 90’s. People keep asking me what’s wrong with me, because I cry the whole time in the airport, and I’m a 24 year old in a wheelchair. I try to explain about how I am going home 20 months early, and people don’t get it. To them I should be excited to get back to “the real world.”

I chat with a couple from Costa Rica going to see their daughter in Albuquerque. We have a long conversation in Spanish while we wait for someone to come push our wheel chair through the next part of the airport. They invite me to lunch, but I’m not hungry.
I am overwhelmed by the staff at the airport. Everyone is so short, so businesslike in their interactions. Strangers are speaking to me in English, and I expect them to be speaking in Spanish, so I don’t understand what they are saying. They have to repeat themselves multiple times. Hot water comes out of the sink when I wash my hands.
When I get on my flight to Tulsa, I am sitting next to a whole bunch of people from Oklahoma. The southern drawl, the lacsidasical grammar, the overwhelming politeness, it was the final step to believing that I was really going home.

The streets are cleaner, and everything is so flat and open, and bigger than I remember. Everything is just so much bigger. I feel a little panicky at how open everything is. But I take a deep breath and I swallow the feeling.

22 Sep. 2011

I’m sitting on the couch at my parents’ house, watching satellite TV. Last night I went out with my friends, and I didn’t know what to say to them, or how to talk to them. No one can possibly understand what this feels like. So today I am hiding out. I need to figure out what to do about my thesis, I need to find a job, I need to get a new phone, I need to unpack and wash my clothes (because they all smell really awful, even the clean ones). I need to find my packed away warm-clothes, because even though it’s in the 70’s, its cold. But today, I am just going to sit on the couch and watch satellite TV. Maybe tomorrow I will go out and try to do some things.

So the option has been proposed to me that I could get treatment, get better and then apply to be reinstated. I have a couple of options for how I could continue my PC service, but neither option is particularly promising. I’m not ready to start dealing with these kinds of decisions. I still feel shell shocked by the fact that I am really here and this is really permanent. I have no plan for the future. For the first time in my life, I don’t know what the next step should be, what the future holds. It’s a terrifying prospect, but I can either waste my time worrying, or accept that what will be, will be. Que sera, sera.