(Awkward: when you wonder why you never got any comments on a post, and two weeks later find that you accidentally saved it as a draft instead of publishing it. Oops. So, note that this was written September 19th)
I’ve realized, unless I’m asked by someone I can’t tell the truth to, that “How has it been for you adjusting back to America?” is a much easier question to answer than “How was your trip?”
To the second, I’ve just started answering “Great,” because if you wanted a more specific answer you would have come up with a much better question(I used to recite a longer one that I wrote in South Africa, but that got exhausting).
The first question is better, partly because the people asking it are much more concerned for my well being, and mostly because the answer is simply “Awful,” or more specifically, “I haven’t, because I don’t know how to, and I doubt if I ever will.”
I laugh as I answer so they have the option of letting themselves believe I’m being sarcastic; I prefer it if people feel like I can give or take their hugs and kind words, so they’ll only give them out if they’re real.
Anyways, Thursday night on Jimmy Fallon, I finally thought of a metaphor for the past four months(because he had puppies on the show).
It’s like how when a puppy is born, and it lives in a box with its mother, surrounded by its warm puppy siblings, then it gets bigger and someone adopts it, and it gets to its new house with the nice humans and it’s a nice place to live, but it wonders where all the other puppies are and it’s a little sad.
Then the nice humans take the puppy for a walk and it sees another dog and it gets all excited, because humans are great but look, it’s another one of me!
Basically I just called myself and my squadmates dogs.
Really though, it’s just that I know this is the new normal and I love it in ways, but I miss being surrounded by people like me. The people who went through the same stuff I did.
My family is great. My house is great. My job is really really great(and the only place I don’t miss the other puppies). My whole life is great when I think about it. But occasionally I just want another puppy around.
This rant is just making me wish I had an actual puppy…hopefully to anyone else reading it, it’s given you a small idea of what it’s like for me and why I occasionally(read: usually) seem not as happy as I did before I left the country. Grateful for everything but still very, very lonely.
Next up, all the things Jimmy Fallon, Cheryl Strayed and the Oh Hellos have taught me about what I want my life to eventually be like.
