“How are you readjusting?” I am often asked, usually by fellow Returned Peace Corps Volunteers.
“It’s bearable,” or “I’m managing,” are sometimes my responses. It’s not awful, and things are much easier now than they were three months ago.
It’s almost six months since I’ve been back in the U.S. I notice things now about life and culture and what’s important that I never fully noticed before. I think more deeply about things that before had flashed through my brain.
I’m not astounded by the vast selections of food at grocery stores or the number of cheeses that exist here. The rushing of the cars only vaguely surprises me and the trains and airplanes sometimes go unnoticed. I’m getting used to living alone but totally surrounded by people. Always people are rushing everywhere.
I am on the verge of becoming the person I always wanted to be. I set goals for myself and I’ve achieved them. Now I’m lost. Like many others in my position- RPCVs and otherwise- I’m almost a young professional. Yet I still yearn for other things, like a solid group of friends or a romantic partner.
I am dissatisfied with the place I live and I do not feel competent to hold down a career. “What is wrong with me?” I wonder. I take comfort in knowing that I am not alone in my feelings.
But for RPCVs, I think the feelings run so much deeper. I don’t want to idolize us, but I had read stories from others about readjusting to American life. It took experiencing it to realize what they meant.
It’s not that I’m unwell. My mental clarity is clearer than it’s been in ages. But I don’t know what I’m doing anymore. I don’t know anything anymore. I’ve seen life from a different perspective. The smallest things are the most important and the biggest things, well, they’re not really so big, after all.
Of course there are the creature comforts I’m glad to have: hot showers, convenience, phones that you can use anytime and anywhere. But now I think about everything I do, everything I use. When you live on an island, where does your waste go? Fiji is by no means a very “undeveloped” country. Nor is it “developed.” It lacks two things that countries like China and the U.S. have: space and money. There is limited land to bury garbage and no money to ship things overseas. So every material thing is disposed of in what way? You can watch your bleach or dish soap or laundry soap go from your receptacle out the pipe and into a drain and then into the ocean. Goodbye, coral. Goodbye, fish. Every plastic bag you put your produce in, that your bread comes in, that you toss out after you finish your sandwich or that you get at any store, goes where?
In no way am I perfect. I still empty a bin of recyclables into a bigger bin every few weeks. I still buy things unnecessarily and then wonder what I did that for. My house is still cluttered with too much stuff. I love my books. I’ve owned far too many computers in my lifetime for a person of my age. Does that really offset the fact that I don’t have a TV or a microwave? Does my excessive need to reuse every scrap of paper or forgo a car count for anything?
I like to think it does. At the end of the day, I’m not being naïve and I’m not being narcissistic. I’m not egotistical. I was in third grade when I remember reading about endangered whales and greenhouse gases. I was in fifth grade when we studied the destruction of the rainforest. I don’t see things as black and white as I did then, but the impact of our actions has finally impacted me.
The glory days of the revolution of science- plastics, medicines, pesticides, chemicals as beauty products- have backfired into unforeseen consequences.
I was a child in Fiji. I had nothing, knew no one, and couldn’t communicate clearly. I had to relearn how to walk, how to sit, how to eat. If I was mad at my family, I had to deal with it. There was no escaping. I relied on people for everything- food, medicine, advice, and help doing the most basic chores.
None of this makes me better than anyone else. It just gives me a new perspective, a different outlook. While convenience is great, it’s not as wonderful as it appears. I rarely eat out anymore. If I didn’t cook it or it isn’t in a consumable state, I don’t eat. I lived from the earth in Fiji. That sounds silly, but it was true. We went out to get our food every day. You had to work for what you wanted. There was no snacking, no coming home at night and opening up the fridge or the phonebook to find food. Water is a precious resource, not an irreplaceable commodity. I think about that with every load of laundry I wash and every shower I take.
Bless the beasts and children- when I thought of that, I meant to refer to what the chemicals do to our ecosystem. The algal blooms from toxic substances dumped in water may look pretty, but they’re deadly. The bleach we use, the powerful cleaners we like for their efficiency and ability to scrub so much, leaves floating fish and drooping grasses in its wake. We hear at the same time that we need religion in our politics, or that religion can save us. But we export individually wrapped junk foods to small island nations and then look critically upon them when the wrappers and sticks and packaging are tossed haphazardly into the ocean. Where is the religion in that? Where is the blessing of the beasts- all creatures great and small- in the careless pitching of plastics? In the tossing of trash? In the factories polluting gray masses of particles into the air, disguised as progress. You may laugh at my venture into making my own cosmetics and toiletries, but who said we must succumb to the beauty norms that say we need them? Do we need pH balanced anti-perspirant/ deodorant? No. Who told us we needed to smell like a lilac bush to snag a man? Do we need shaving cream? Do we need to shave? We’re confined into these contrived notions of a Eurocentric beauty. Don’t get me wrong; I enjoy my People magazines every now and again. But that’s not sustainable or realistic or even pleasurable. I’m not being radical, either. It’s sensible. It makes sense to know what you are putting in and on your body. You have to know what you’re breathing in and ingesting. And you have to think about the full cycle: from inception to use to destruction. Where does it all go?
Yet I’m torn. I’m stuck in this grey area of not fully belonging to a place. Life has moved on in Madison without me. It’s hard to comprehend, but I have to do it. Madison and I have grown apart. This is a place that holds many happy memories, but those are in the past. I’m not trying to elicit pity; it’s the truth. If we don’t take advantage of all the truths that we learn, what is the point?
The truth is, time keeps moving. People keep changing. We try to move forward. Sometimes we’re pushed backwards, but we continue on. I don’t just subtly mean politics I mean people and circumstances. We can hang on to material possessions, but they’ll fade or break or tarnish. Pictures will fade or rip or scratch. Each generation experiences different traditions and skills and styles and places. We’re not static. We’re ever changing. We learn from the past and we cajole in it. But we have to keep moving forward, even if it means returning to some ideas we’ve let go of, like a return to simplicity. Like understanding where things go when we’re done with them. Physical objects, they go nowhere. Organic objects return to the earth. People go to our hearts and memories. My memory is not your memory. What I hold dear is not what you hold dear. We have to embrace what is important to each of us. It makes us human. It makes us unique. It connects us.
I’m not callous. After all this, I’ve learned to accept things. I’m not pessimistic. I’m not too idealistic. I know that our earth is in trouble, and we’re wasting time arguing over evidence and numbers and money and politics. I know I have opportunities to seize and I’ll take them while I can.
I’m the feminist my mother put on hold and justified with the “I had a choice” argument. It’s a fine one, really. I admire her for it. But I set out to do only four things: graduate college, join the Peace Corps, go to graduate school, and have a partner and kids around age 30. Check, check, semi check, close. I was raised with the idea that I can do anything. I'm doing it.
My thoughts are scattered. I wanted to comment on readjusting to life after Peace Corps. It’s a wake up call. I wouldn’t regret my experience for anything in the world. Did I miss out on a lot of cool things that happened those two years I was discovering who I really am? Of course. Did I miss out on family events and happenings? Of course. Does that mean my family doesn’t matter? No. Does that mean nothing cool will ever happen again? No. I learned a lot of other valuable lessons. I re-evaluated my values and re-enforced important life tenets.
I told myself a long time ago not to regret anything. While I would change things that happened in my life, I can’t feel guilty. I can’t hang on to regret. I cannot apologize for needing to find my way in life. Family matters, of course, but part of being a family means you grow together and develop into more courageous and sensible beings. I have family in all corners of the world. From my Fijian family who took me in and made me a part of their family and shared everything with me and taught me an infinite number of lessons to my family in Wisconsin who raised me and has seen me through my entire life to my friends who are like sisters and brothers and cousins to me and who now live from the west coast to east coast.
I titled this “Bless the Beasts.” When I composed this piece, walking home from work one night, I focused heavily on things and life cycles of things. I included some quips about religion and environmentalism. When I sat down to write, my thoughts steered towards family and commitments and regrets. “I do not regret the things I’ve done but those I did not do.” I’m sure it’s actually famous, but I remember that quote from Empire Records.
I think I wanted to justify my Peace Corps experience. It was the most powerful thing I’ve ever done in my short life. It was the most meaningful. I wouldn’t take it back for anything in the world, not even every Christmas with my family. Those Christmases wouldn’t mean nearly as much to me now if I hadn’t missed two of them. I feel insurmountable. And like I can do anything. I was challenged, and I succeeded. I survived. I made it through those 27 months, through the best and very worst experiences of my entire life. I learned so much more than I had ever dreamed I could.
Compounding the readjustment process is the realization that almost everyone my age- mid to late 20’s- is going through the same thing. Adolescence is hard, of course, but then you enjoy your early 20’s with invincibility and forming life-long bonds only to be catapulted into post-college, pre-marriage/ partnership womanhood. (I can only speak on behalf of women, my main source of knowledge.)
Am I readjusting? Slowly. Slowly. I’m moving forward, and that’s a good sign.
(When I saved this document as a Word file, I titled it: "In Defense of Peace Corps." Comments?)
