Tell me about it
(Originally published here: https://dcvito.medium.com/tell-me-about-it-bc69780417f8)
Upon my discharge from the hospital in Washington D.C., the Peace Corps offered me two very stark offers:
- Return to Mali and serve out the rest of my service.
- Fly back home to Colorado, and permanently sever my relationship with the Peace Corps.
Now, I will offer up that this decision proved incredibly jarring. I felt grossly sick every hour of the day, and no improvement on that front materialized. The idea of stumbling onto a jet plane and curling up into a shivering, nauseous ball for the 13 hour flight to Mali paralyzed me. But the other option of hightailing it back to the Mile High City and abandoning my childhood dream filled me with shame and guilt. It wasn’t fair. I felt like I’d cheated that 7-year old boy who dreamed of devoting his live to the service of others (I could also hear the voice of my Vietnam vet, Drill Sergeant father hollering “I didn’t raise a QUITTER!”). With much dread and insecurity, I opted for the flight back to Colorado.
What I left behind as the aircraft lifted off the tarmac stung me with a regular dose of ‘He’s a quitter’ venom. Distance from that proved as the perfect antidote. But what waited for me upon my arrival, I had no grasp of — Hero’s welcome? Shameful disregard? A head nod and back to their lives? It ended up being an amalgam of all three, some components more concentrated than others.
One of my biggest idols growing up was Albert Einstein, and I harbored so much enchantment for his proclamations about a person traveling at the speed of light from Earth, that upon returning they would’ve only aged a few hours, whereas those left behind would’ve aged decades. What my homecoming presented me with felt very much the same. People had moved on. They’d gone forward with their lives (as expected) and had essentially erased my silhouette from their mental canvass. Of course, the one that stung the most was my beloved girlfriend.
When she picked me up from the airport, an air of complacency filled the not so intimate space between us. I fought vomit traveling up my throat as she drove us from the airport to her Boulder apartment, feeling every each inch of rising elevation, wondering why all of this — her numb reaction to seeing me, to the way she thoughtlessly tossed my luggage into the back of her car — felt wrong. She had her own room and bathroom in a unit shared with two other male friends of ours. What she didn’t have was a bed big enough for two people, and due to my frequent involuntary trips to the bathroom throughout the night, it made sense that I “slept…on…the…floor”. In hindsight, I eventually saw the cruelty of this edict, but in that moment, all I just wanted was to be as close to her as I could.
Some things sear themselves into your memory — you don’t get to decide which ones or their level of pleasure or pain they delivered. I still remember the conversation I had with my father once I’d come home. Taking up the apartment’s frequently used landline, I knew I had to make the polemic with him short, so I zeroed in and asked him for advice:
“Hey pop, with all that has happened, I’m struggling to figure out what to do next. I’d love some advice.”
“Okay…”
“Well, I’m 23, the Peace Corps didn’t work out. I guess…what did you do when you were my age?”
“Your age? I had a wife, a house, kids and a solid paying job.”
“…got it…”
I could see that somehow my departure to Africa had frayed already tenuous relationships. My father didn’t want to engage or really help. My mother conveniently transported her passive-aggressive circus to another plane, so I never heard from her. My sister got wrapped up in all her own difficult personal trials. And all the ‘best friends’ I made in college looked upon me like I was that twenty-year old still showing up to the homecoming football game with the hopes of hooking up with the head cheerleader. I faced the reality — like I’d always ranted as truth — that I was all…alone.
So, I focused my energies on two things:
- Get a job
- Propose to my girl
Neither of which, over time, proved wise.