It’s 11pm on a Sunday night. It’s my second to last Sunday in site. Tomorrow I have a session to observe and some tasks to accomplish, and then I go to another school in the afternoon. I will put my traje on, ask Clara to help me do it, and go to work with my coffee traveler gripped in my right hand as I say “Saqirik Nan, Saqirik Tat” when I walk by the same folks I walk by every morning.

You know, when I end service, I will have lived here 917 days. I was in the States for 38 of them, and Mexico for 5, but during those visits, Guatemala was home.

Now I am leaving and everything has been pushed to the forefront. I mean everything: reflections about how I could have been a better, more committed volunteer, what I will miss about Guatemala, how anxious it makes me to think of taking on the pace of the USA, my last tuk-tuk ride, my last time paying pasaje (bus ticket), my last time paying rent (two weeks ago), the culture of conversation and generosity not cell phones, family, community, K’iche’, Spanish, tortillas, the perpetual crow of roosters, the annoying sting of flea bites, the cold in my room that always makes the tip of my nose frigid at night, no A/C, Abuelita’s laugh.

Ever since I went through the break-up in February, I have been somewhere between broken, processing, crying, and numb to get through the day. I didn’t feel stable, only fragile, and alone. And now all of these other feelings about my break-up with Guatemala are getting mixed in like fruit sauce with a souffle (I watched Masterchef, The Professionals today) and I can’t distinguish what emotions are coming from where? And how intensely I ‘should’ be feeling them. ‘Should’ is a word that you ‘should’ never apply to emotions.. but still hard not to.

In early 2018, still early on in my second year, I watched the show Community at night from my external hard-drive. There’s an episode I love where a character’s mom dies. In the episode she makes a CD so her kid would listen to it after her passing. She says to her kid: “Life is only worth a damn because it’s short. It’s designed to be consumed, used, spent, lived, felt. We’re supposed to fill it with every mistake and miracle we can manage. And then we’re supposed to let go.”

I remember hearing the quote and agreeing with every word of it. But making mistakes and learning from them/living through them is easier said than done. In your country of origin or in Peace Corps.

And that is where I am: The Psychology of Letting Go (the name of the episode but also, the name of this season in my life). Guatemala is always going to be with me, I hope, and I hope I never drink a cup of coffee without remembering the over-sugared instant coffee I was always offered with pan, or the days I spent picking coffee with my host mom, or the million meals I cooked over the fire with my host family, or the coloring dates I had around town with kids.

I’m not even sure that “Peace Corps was hard” for all of the reasons that you might think. Yes, I lived without a fridge or a washing machine but those were things I could adjust to. I always had running water, and usually lukewarm/hot water if I needed it. I wasn’t living out in the bush. But still, between ‘not the bush’ and ‘the USA’ fit a world of differences, challenges, unexpecteds. And I did have to rise to the occasion in those middle school classrooms, speaking in a second language, learning as I went. Rural Guatemala is a totally different way of life than what I lived before I moved here. Just yesterday, my host mom was telling me: “you better be careful because cold air can enter your body through your belly button” which is undoubtedly the most cockamamie thing I’ve ever heard but Clareños believe it! Even that I find charming now because I am leaving.

The first few months I got to site, against Peace Corps’ warning I bought a faulty water filter and I, consequently, had very unfortunate bathroom dates. A month and a half of them. I got skinny from it actually. So much so that I wrote on a card, and put it next to my toilet, “This Too Shall Pass.” I haven’t had violent poops in a long time, but last night they started up again and all day I couldn’t leave my bed from feeling sick. I had a crazy fever during the night and couldn’t lift my head up to eat the rice and plantain Host Mom and Sister brought up for me for lunch. I was so dramatic, lifting up the spoon like Scarlet O’Hara and side-feeding it into my mouth.

What’s worse is that I was supposed to go to a despedida lunch today. I don’t have that family’s phone number, only the facebook of the older sister. WELL I tried messaging her, calling her several times on facebook, I even sent Clara down the street to a relative of the family who might have their number. No luck. You see, many people have their phones on them, but their phones run out of data like track phones. So I am sure that Clarivel had her phone but the messages say ‘unread.’ So frustrating because tomorrow when I see them, they will tell me how sad they were yesterday, all six of the children waiting for me to come and I never did… But I couldn’t move for most of the day. I hope they forgive me, but I couldn’t overcome pueblo conditions to let them know.

Tonight I looked at the little note I left myself by the toilet back in early 2019, “This Too Shall Pass,” and I was reminded of those days at the beginning, and how they aren’t that different than these days at the end. Now I speak Spanish, now I have a second country I call home, but hopefully I will come out of this period of sadness and loss stronger, and with more ‘coping skills’ on how to grieve and adjust to change.

This period of grief is making me more aware of everyone else’s struggles… I find myself wondering about the dark underbelly of appearances, of the follies of social media and how unhealthy appearances, and collecting likes, can be. I’m like reaching out to people to ask them how they really are, or how I can help them, or what hurts? I think this is the most defendable argument as to why we suffer, so we can understand our neighbor, but it doesn’t make the pain hurt any less or move any faster or slow the tears. It just is.

And I think it’s important that, as I accept my own process, I accept that not everyone has to understand it, or know how to support me in it. We are all in different spots at any given moment, so I will just take the support from those who have been here or a similar place, anyway.

Gosh, I told my mom today, I haven’t cried like this since 2013.. A tough year. I appreciate all of your support, texts, phone calls, hugs and check-ins along the way.