Now, I imagined this day a million ways (my departure) and none of them could have prepared me for what it actually was. Dropped off by friends, then up ’til the last second in the arms of Gentleman Caller, saying goodbye. Now, you see, if I hadn’t extended my service I would have never met him. But I did, so I did. And then everything changed. And everything changed again in February when we broke up. That is what love does, it changes everything. But on April 13 it was time for me to leave and move to Tucson and carry on with my life, while I carry Guatemala and so many memories in my heart (and very heavy woven traje in my bags).

So that is how I left the country, despedida after despedida like coats of paint until my departure was fully primed and pigmented and I was checked-in. And I got on the plane while the last coat was still wet, hadn’t even started drying. WET PAINT would have been best displayed on my chest, an advisory warning.

This was the strangest flight I have ever flown, and I’ve flown some strange ones… There were so many emotions that I couldn’t pick one or even identify them so I sat in the window seat of Spirit Airlines and watched Guatemala fade away.

No matter what you’ve heard about Peace Corps, leaving is harder than any single day of service because that chapter of your life closes with a thud like a heavily-bound book slamming shut and dust particles spinning all around. And no matter how much traje I stuffed into my bag, and it was a lot (ask Eunice) all these woven articles became memories when I checked my suitcases. When I pulled them from my bags, they would be souvenirs.

Abby and Javier were nice enough to pick me up from Eunice’s house for my last ride through Guatemala City. We passed through a drive-thru for coffee, & Café, and drove to the airport caffeinating ourselves (except they ordered descafeinado, not me). The goodbye was quick, a bit sad, but not for forever. I know I will see them again.

Then it began, me and the bags on wheels. Javier attached them so I could wheel my life all at once: my heart and my body and my computer and my hair moving together as one patzapik’ unit like a disoriented snail. And the line at Spirit inched along. When I lifted my first bag to the scale I sucked in as if it would make the bag weigh less.. the red numbers flashed and settled on 42 pounds and the attendant pulled it through to her side without pausing. Heavy sigh of relief. I thought I was in the clear.

I lifted the second bag, heavier. Red numbers flashed again and stayed at 48. I sucked in double the air. The limit was 40 pounds and the cost was $20 more for 40-50 pound bags. This time she paused and said: “El límite del pesor es 40 libras….” I responded, desperately: “Puedo quitar unas cosas???” and she responded with a sigh “Sí,” disbelieving me… I laid the bag flat and unzipped it, not unlike a body bag, and pulled out my periwinkle corte, a travel lock and a file folder with some papers. We weighed it again and I had only shaved off 3 pounds. I said: “Es que soy una voluntaria y me estoy mudando del país después de dos años!” and she said: “De veras? Pues solamente está vez, no será así en una próxima…” And I said: “Muchísimas gracias!” and she said: “Espero que vuelva pronto..” Honestly… the nicest gate agent for Spirit Airlines. She said she hopes I come back some day and didn’t charge me for the sobrepeso. And I said: “Que Dios le bendiga.” Which I never really said during my service, ever. And it never worked during my service, pulling the volunteer card to get a discount, until the end, at the airport, with Spirit Airlines. That was the last thing I expected.

I was finally rid of my things…. She said: “Atlanta es su destino final?” And I confirmed: “yes.” Atlanta is my final destination. I don’t think she was asking for my life plans so I didn’t tell her: “Well, I’ll be driving across the country to go to grad school in Arizona. And then after that, who knows!” She meant my final destination today. Not before I die. Not my five year plan. I checked my phone. It was 12 noon. But he is always late so I figured I’d sit upstairs and buy a coffee when I saw him walking up to meet me, as if perfectly timed, to say goodbye. We stood outside so his motorcycle wouldn’t get booted.

At 1:25pm, I left the outside of the airport running. I had my boarding passes and my passport, but my purse was unwieldy with the weight of the miscellany I had to stuff into it last minute, the lock, the corte, the file folders. In security, the attendant looked at my ticket and said: “Oh your plane is about to leave, you have 10 minutes!” And I didn’t know that. I thought I had at least 35. But I didn’t regret any second that I took outside, I was going to have to make this work. I walked into security and slipped out of my zipper boots and pulled out my computer quick like a bunny, but of course, the thick güipil I was wearing left some doubt as to the area around my bra. They had to call a lady over to pat me down. Which meant I had to wait longer. As she ran over she patted under my bra area. This situation, the pat down, would be repeated three times this day. 

I was so scattered, not sure what time it was but relieved I made it to the gate in more than enough. As a rule, I don’t like to be scattered while traveling, I pack my bags a week in advance, but I think that I wedged myself in a bit of chaos to distract myself from the permanence of goodbye. Can you blame me? 

Then there was Customs. I miraculously found a pen and scrawled on my customs form, quickly, while in line for the agent. FLIGHT 383. Spirit. Address: 5518 Sylvania… Georgia. Country of Origin: USA Country of Destination: USA. Country of Departure: Guatemala.

The line seemed to inch along (Guatemala) so I asked a lady if I could skip ahead because I had 10 minutes until my flight. She looked at me like I told her the date of my last menstrual cycle. But then she held her arm out like: “If you wish.” After a pause she asked: “A dónde va?” “Houston” I said and she responded: “Sí hace ratos que la estaban llamando..” Um- they’ve been calling me? How does she know that? When I walked up to the glass counter, the agent was in no hurry at all and was chitchatting with a woman behind her (Guatemala) but eventually stamped my passport and wrote her initials in the space, passing it through the opening in the glass. The last time I will use my Peace Corps passport.

I ran up to the screen projecting airlines and gates but I helplessly held out my boarding pass to the policeman, it’s not his job to show me around, and he said: Puerta 6. And pointed to his right. In 50 steps I was there, and what was better, there was still a line of people boarding the plane (Guatemala). I’ve never been so happy to see a line to board. I remembered I hadn’t eaten lunch. Coca-cola! But I didn’t have time to run to a fast-food spot, so I paced into the bar just by the gate and asked: “Tiene Coca-Cola?” and she pointed: Sí. “Para cuánto?” I asked. “Tres dólares” she said. And I laughed. Who this bish thinking I think in dólares?” And I said: “En quetzales?” and she said: veinticuatro. OMGaseosa: Q24 for a coke when that the bottle is worth Q7 in Santa Clara. That’s airports, but still. Cheap liquid lunch for me.

I walked onto the plane and felt the confusion of my hips when neither people nor seats rubbed against them. I’m not on a camioneta. 

18D. 

When I made it to 18D, Aisle seat (not bad!), we heard over the loudspeaker: Who is willing to give up their seat so that a mother and daughter can sit together? I looked to the man to my right and asked: “Do you want to?” He said: “Sure” and I raised my hand. But it appeared that a couple in the front had already offered. But in 5 minutes time, the flight attendant had made it to our row and asked us if we would still move. We said sure and got up. And I was in a window seat. The couple next to me didn’t speak but they seemed nice. I looked out of the window at the sunny day and the plane that said: “American” a few over from us. Even the word American is strange to me now. Guatemala is a part of America, Central America, and so is Canada and Mexico and South America. Still we call US citizens Americans.

And for the first time, in all these months of crying and sadness, I looked out at the flat concrete, and I cried for myself. Not for saying goodbye to someone else, my host family, gentleman caller, my site, or for the weight of goodbye, but I cried because I did this thing: this wildly hilarious, frustrating, boring, confusing, chaotic, HARD, amazing, challenging, beautiful thing of living in a pueblo for 2.5 years and brought my whole self with me: the good, bad, and ugly. I wrote in my journal: “I look out the plane window and feel the vast expanse of myself. ‘I did this thing.’ And I am not the same… I’ve never seen mountains like Guatemala.” 

Along this 2.5 year journey, my perspective was challenged from its toes to tendrils, and now I know I am more of the person I want to be. Because I lost a little bit of myself everyday and that helped me sprout new fibers, challenge my thoughts, consider alternatives, question why things are the way they are and bend, bend, bend.

I learned to bend. And I cried for all of the richness of experience that came from the bend and the embrace. And for being newer, perhaps more sensitive and definitely more alert to the world outside of myself. 

We had a super-smooth ascent (foreshadowing) and I got to look out over Guatemala for the last time, like it was the first. 

You know, I’ve never seen such mountains. Now that I’ve been to most of Guatemala (well, 4 corners and a lot of in between) the place is so beautifully mountainous and green. And I couldn’t really get out my computer or my phone to take pictures or bother to listen to podcasts during the ride. I was too emotional and my heart was too frenetic, so I sat and let the green of Guatemala pass by me as I sipped my Coca-Cola, noticing that the label is in Spanish, and that it’s the last thing I bought with quetzales in Guatemala.

After an hour, I thought I’d trouble the picturesque couple to my left to let me out for the bathroom. When I saw the red OCCUPIED marked on the bathroom door, I walked back down the aisle for a minute. When I realized the older Caballero with glasses and big buggy eyes wasn’t waiting, I let myself in. I never thought airplane bathrooms were nice until this moment. After I hice pipi, I stood with my used toilet paper folded in my hand and turning around in a circle, looking for a trashcan for 20 seconds before it dawned on me: “Oh yes, it goes in.” In the toilet. What a riot. When the sink water hit my hands it was instantly warm. Warm sink water. Maybe my hands wouldn’t remain frigid all day from washing my hands in the pila anymore. Do people on this plane even appreciate this instant warm water? I should do a PSA over the loudspeaker. 

The finality of the act of putting the paper into the toilet was what bothered me. It’s not like I want to take it with me. But every time I’ve had to adapt to toilet customs, it’s been for a visit, not for a return. Not for forever. Now the toilet paper will become a non-issue again. I won’t have to dump my used toilet paper into the downstairs sauna to burn it in the middle of the morning so I don’t have to pay for trash pick-up. And soon I’ll forget about the miracle of warm water out of the sink for good, maybe forever. What else will my body readjust to and forget is a modern miracle? 

The flight attendant offered me a menu, asked if I wanted anything. (It’s because I gave my seat up for the Mom and Kid). I opted for the cheese plate and when they said: “Are you sure that’s all you want?” I wanted to say: “Do you know how amazing a cheese plate is?” I peeled it open and ate the different cheeses with a tiny, wooden fork, with the dried apples and cranberries medley.

Eventually messy, green, wild Guatemala transitioned into ocean. The water passed beneath and I wrote in my journal, noting all of the strange details of this experience: Flying Home. I wavered between tears, doubts, and the question: “When Will I Go Back To Guatemala?” Not if, but when. I don’t know that it will be soon, but I know that it will be. How will it be? I don’t know. Probably just as strange as this.

When Texas presented itself, I was struck by it’s, well, Texasness. And for once I didn’t mean how big everything was. It actually didn’t look big or monstrous. Instead, the world was manicured, controlled and stunted by highways, residential zoning, towers, treatment plants and retention ponds. Not a single grass blade was out of place. The earth went from miraculous, unkempt beauty like a toddler’s unbrushed hair to tight, restrictive braids. I grieved the trees and how they looked like props for man’s amusement instead of vitality and freedom. The trees looked sad.

I was sure I was the only person on this plane undergoing a significant life change. I just knew it. You know how you feel these things sometimes even when you don’t know them? Or maybe I just wanted to feel unique, so I convinced myself that I was. But it was perhaps possible that I was the only RPCV on this flight leaving the country. Either way, I felt alone and frozen between grief and satisfaction. The positive and negative was exquisitely split down the middle and I didn’t know what to feel except the weight of the departure and the finality of the change. Perhaps no one could understand me even if I tried to explain the complexity of my experience and therefore departure: no I didn’t change the world or save lives, I just did the best I could for two years in a less-than-perfect development effort that certainly enriched my life and self more than I could have accomplished in return.

The feelings didn’t end, they just stayed in my chest.

Nothing hurried me when we landed and taxied to the gate. I remembered: only in the United States are people in such a hurry to stand-up when everyone knows the line won’t budge until the plane door opens. Anyway I had 4 hours until my next flight. When I left my seat, I still had the nagging feeling that I’d forgotten something around the seat. I think that’s used to living life with whatever you can carry, you carry everything and you don’t want to leave a piece behind or forget. When I heard them announce: “Luggage to Carousel 1” I knew it didn’t apply to me because I wasn’t staying in Houston. My final destination was Atlanta.

I walked into the large, shiny, air-conditioned airport of Houston and found the first set of obligations: the kiosks at customs. There was a large group, loud and proud, of chatty teenagers and adults filing up behind me all with matching green t-shirts that read: “Globally Aware.” I almost barfed. “Weren’t they patting themselves on the back?” I thought. “Were they aware that most of the developing world can’t afford to even get a passport and/or travel visa to BE “Globally Aware” and what an incredible privilege that is?” As I listened to tweenagers list all the stamps on their passports and talk excitedly about the actress who played somebody in Hunger Games is now in this other movie. And you know what? Those people didn’t do anything wrong. I am just a salty PCV who can’t be minded. They were only people in t-shirts and “Globally Aware” is just a title, much like “Peace Corps Volunteer.”

I found myself unusually attached to the plastic coke bottle in my hand. The last thing I bought in Guatemala. I didn’t want to throw it away.

We were quickly directed to thin, space-like kiosks, (after I listened to a Globally Aware lady recount the time Leonardo DiCaprio bought $3,000 worth of her brand during the shoot of Wolf of Wall Street when she worked in LA). The kiosk took my picture and I chuckled at the image of my face printed on a sheet and looking back at me in black and white lines. I looked like a prisoner. Or I was just posing for the picture like a Guatemalan. And I followed the horde of people to the next line. 

I was directed to a white man, tall, standing at a table. He took my papers, my passport. “Are you declaring anything?” My soul. “No” I said. 

“Okay. You’re good. Have a nice day.” As he set my papers in front of me. I smiled down at my papers and passport and looked up: “I just finished the Peace Corps” but when I looked back at him he had turned away. He hadn’t heard. He looked back and said: “Okay you’re all good. Have a nice day.” He meant: “Get out of the way, please.” 

Thud. Somewhere in Guatemala a tree fell to the ground only to be replaced by a manicured, sad tree in Texas. I walked on and found the tram after very confusing signage. This tram was so weird, and so slow. A man walked on and said: “Better to sit down” and took a seat. He seemed friendly. And we stopped at a Hilton Hotel at which point I wondered if I was still in the airport. Then we got to Terminal A, where I went through security and had to get padded down around my güipil in the same spot as before.

I made it to the food court near my next gate where I bought Panda Express “Hamina hamina?” asked the girl with fake eyelashes that dusted her eyebrows like chimney sweeps and I didn’t understand a word she had said: “I’m sorry?” She slowed down: “Rice or noodles?” “Oh. <Pause> Noodles.” I sat with the cashew chicken and lost the battle against wifi. I connected. After I listened to my latest WhatsApp voice note and cried a little as I looked into the Starbucks I couldn’t afford to patron, an email titled BAGGAGE popped up on my phone. Uh Oh.

I was at one end of this massive airport and International Arrivals was at the other. It was 8:15pm and my next flight was at 9:45. I quickly finished my food and tried to find an information desk but there wasn’t one. The security lady told me that I have to get my bags and transfer them (what is this, my first time flying??) and that I needed to go back to Terminal E. (I was at Terminal A). When I got to Terminal E, passing the Hilton Hotel again, it was not evident where I should go. So I had to ask a lady who was also a security agent. She said: “Spirit Airlines is at Terminal A.” “But I just came from Terminal A because the email said I needed to pick up my luggage at International Arrivals.” “Oh, Cindy do you know what this lady needs?” And Cindy read the email and asked: “Did you call the number on the email?”……… “I just got out of the Peace Corps, I don’t have a SIM card to make calls.” It’s true, where your phone says Verizon or T-Mobile, mine said: NO SIM. She spoke into the phone: “now where is that? Okay I’ll tell her. She is wearing a turquoise top and carrying a hobo bag.” (A hobo bag? My host family wove this for me…).

She sent me to International Arrivals. When I got there, I didn’t know what I was supposed to do. I saw (finally!) an information desk and I showed him the email, because he didn’t believe me. He told me that I couldn’t access the luggage carousel because it was on the other side of customs. Finally I saw a woman with a yellow Spirit shirt on, wheeling my bags out to me. Apparently this was Veronica Garcia of the email. I asked her where I needed to take them and she said: “the check-in counter for spirit.” That was at Terminal A. I was at Terminal E. She offered me the cart. But when I got to the tram (the one with the Hilton Hotel stop) it wouldn’t allow luggage carts. So I wheeled all 80-something pounds of luggage onto the tram, passed the Hilton, then got to Terminal A, the Spirit terminal, with enough time to drop my bags (thank goodness). Then I had to find my gate, again, but before that, I had to go through security (again), where they tapped around my blouse in the same spot for the third time that day. The agent said: “Pain?” and I said: “what?” And she said: “is there pain, does it hurt?” “Oh, no.” And she padded me down.

When I boarded the plane, the chatty man from the tram (the first time I rode it) was in the seat next to me: a Guatemalan who moved to Atlanta 20 years ago. The pilot took off and swerved the plane in odd directions: it didn’t feel like turbulence, it just felt like a crazy pilot on a cocaine trip. People let out gasps and it even made me a little nervous. I thought about my sister who gets flying anxiety and was glad she wasn’t on this flight. My fellow passenger started chatting with me in English and then switched to Spanish. He buys electronics in the States and sells them in Guatemala, by the thousands. He showed me pictures of his family and his visits to see his mother on his phone. After I’d oohed and aahed over his photos, I was too tired to care much about his stories of his three children. I didn’t sleep but I closed my eyes., I wrote in my journal. I think I even wrote on my computer, trying to remember all the ways I felt on this strange day in Guatemala to Texas and now to Atlanta.

When we got to Atlanta, the train was not running because it was 12:45am, so all of the tired passengers ended up walking from terminal C all the way to domestic arrivals and my bag was digging into my shoulder with every step. I never seemed to get there. Moving sidewalk after escalator after moving sidewalk after more moving sidewalks and all of the interesting art installations on the way. The modern art confused me into thinking maybe I was just hallucinating. I could already feel the humidity in the air, the thickness of it.

My sister was waiting for me at the top of the escalator and ran out to hug me. My family hadn’t come because it was so late, and I was too emotional and tired to not feel hurt (but it wasn’t hurtful, I was too fragile and tired to manage my emotions). We waited another 30 minutes for my bags doing the dizzying luggage carousel routine. Adrienne drove me home. “How was your flight?” I didn’t know where to begin. I thanked her for picking me up and when we get home, I pulled my things inside. “How was your flight?”

She offered me snacks but I was very tired. I laid down on her twin mattress and remembered what it felt like to sleep under a ceiling fan, in an air-conditioned house, and for my sister to be more grown-up than me. For me to sleep in her guest room, eat her food, and visit her in her established, married, pet-owning life. And I felt like I needed my parents so I said: “I’m going to Mom and Dad’s tomorrow night.” I couldn’t identify all the feelings I was having but I felt like I needed full-reign of a fridge and not to feel like I was in someone else’s house but a house that was at least a little mine.

But I was just feeling some type of way after the day, and the departure, I had lived. Just like that, I was an RPCV. A RETURN PEACE CORPS VOLUNTEER. I had returned to my country for better and for worse. Now I needed sleep, all of me, body and soul.