As I review recent posts, I keep promising myself that I will make a concerted effort to write a series of posts that do not relate to Peace Corps or contain the words, “when I was in Bulgaria.”

We’ll start that another time…

The truth is, my thoughts often turn to Bulgaria and the Peace Corps, but not in the way I thought they would.  I remember snippets of it, images and feelings, and (shockingly) I find myself grasping at the bad stuff in my memories and remembering those moments of contentment much more easily.

I haven’t written a whole lot about what’s been going on in my life lately, because so much is up in the air.  And I am treading carefully, amazed at how the good moments are outnumbering the bad.  I find it difficult to let myself enjoy them.  Bulgaria was an emotional minefield.  Things would be going swimmingly for a little while and then all of a sudden, something would happen (or not happen) and I would be cursing everything and everyone, on a complete emotional downward spiral.  It became such a fact of life that I couldn’t even enjoy good hours or days or weeks because I knew the bottom would drop out.  It is difficult to make anyone who wasn’t there understand it and I am sure it made me sound crazy when I would call friends on Skype, crying, working my way through a bottle of wine and a pack of Victorys.

The even crazier thing is that there is so much I miss about it and people understand that even less.  The people who know that I cried every day for a year, who listened to me fall apart, who read my rambling emails, just don’t know what to do with me anymore.  Frankly, I don’t blame them.

Anyway, the real reason I am writing this is because the B-26 group is leaving for Bulgaria soon and there is no shortage of new blogs popping up on Peace Corps Journals.  I have observed the following: everyone is very concerned about saying goodbye to their life in America.  I know I was the same way and this got me thinking.  For most of us fresh-out-of-college PCVs, this opportunity marks the last time in our lives that we can compartmentalize.  There was grade school, then high school, then college.  Life exists in a period of pre-this and post-that.  “After I got my driver’s license” or “before I turned twenty-one” or “before I broke up with this person.”

I thought I was going to be so different when I came back from Peace Corps.  I think I am in some ways.  But what is most different is that I no longer strive to be an entirely different person.  I suppose Peace Corps can be used to entirely reinvent yourself, but I found that in the case of me and many of my friends, under duress, you cannot be anything but you.  The good, the bad, the ugly.  And you live with it at every moment and you take it home to your tiny apartment at the end of the day.  You learn to handle it, even though sometimes you just cannot.  You run or you write or you drink or you set out to be a super volunteer.  And the most beautiful thing you will have is the friendships with other volunteers.  Because they are right there with you and they can handle it when you can’t.  So I guess, simply put, my advice is this: be who you are, don’t apologize for it, and lean on your group members.  You need them and they need you.

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