The Q word

My apartment is a disaster. What to take and what to leave? I really don't know. Seems strange to take things that I can buy where I'm going. Seems strange to be going some place I might like to buy things. When I left for Peace Corps, I sold all major possessions: car, furniture...er, that was it. I return to owning little of my former life. I did that for a reason.

In telling people that I'm terminating my service/leaving Bulgaria it's been rephrased back to me in terms of something involving quitting. "I didn't know it was so hard," some say. "It's not like you to quit," say others. Um, I'm not. Period. Perhaps it's semantics, but I've quickly grown tired of people implying that I've committed myself to something and am just ditching it. People who know me - REALLY know me - know it's not my style. However, committing to something, finding out it's not what it says it was and then telling it to fuck off certainly is. This move is more like the latter.

Peace Corps is a complex experience and I'm sure I'll be deciphering it long after I leave. There are 101 reasons to stay and just as many (I'd say more) to go. People stay and go for all sorts of reasons. I stayed this long because I was really getting something out of it and felt like I was giving, or beginning to. I used to joke that this was an abusive relationship - you stay under the promise that things will get better and that you just need to have faith and the goodness will appear even if all evidence is to the contrary. For me, that abuse never ended and I committed long ago to not being in any more abusive relationships. People say that the second year is much easier and that people are much more prepared. I suppose. What I see is this: deadened spirits and blank eyes. It makes things easier, that is true. It would make damn near anything easier. One of my 5 goals here was "affect and be affected" - to honor that meant no deadening. No deadening meant it didn't get easier, and in some ways got worse.

Following the lines of "quit" and "quitter" I worry what employers will say about my early departure. I have good reasons, I know, and I'm not afraid to voice them, but still... Peace Corps is this experience that sells people on smiling Americans helping poor but eager brown people. I never really liked that image. I never even believed in it. My reasons for joining we much less marketable. Walking away seems like it could be perceived as some prissy American not being about to hack the "hardships". You know, I grew up poor living in a 1-bedroom house with bad plumbing and questionable structure in a neighborhood often called "the war zone" - the square footage of that house was smaller than my current apartment and I shared it with my parents, sister and aunt. I lived on grilled government cheese sandwiches for about a year - so long that it took a decade for me to ever eat one again. This... really, is nothing.

I leave for many reasons, but one is this: I never grew out of asking "why?". Since a young age, if I didn't like something or thought it was stupid or a waste of time I simply didn't do it. As I grew older the depth of that conviction grew to include things that were offense or inefficient. Try to change the system, but if you can't then walk. It's not quitting it's something people have long since forgotten and have even grown to fear when it's done in a meaningful way: civil disobedience. For reasons I'll get into when this crap is packed and I'm enjoying wi-fi and a cafe mocha, I cannot service this operation any longer. It violates too many things I believe in and fails to do so many other things because it's an outdated program in desperate need of being revamped. There are reasons for volunteers to be out in the world helping people. What we do here isn't one of those reasons.

I sold my material things prepared to come back a different person - with new views and new tastes. I have some of those. I have a lot. What I have more of though is strength and clarity. A stronger belief in my own convictions and moral code. What I'm doing is right and done out of thoughtfulness... even if it does just look like I can't take one more gray meat stick.