Its been almost four years since I left for the peace corps, a scarred unsure recent college graduate, and about a year and a half since I've moved back to the U.S. I have for the most part readjusted to life in the States, every waking moment of my life is no longer spent yearning for a land I called home for over two years. However, one sentence that encapsulates the essence of St. Lucia in someone else's facebook status, yes a facebook status, can make me weak in the knees and pull at my heart till it aches and my eyes fill with tears wanting more than anything to go back to my place in the valley on my island in the sun.
This place I want to go back to no longer exists though. Of course the geographic location is still there, I'm sure the roosters still crow at all hours, the goats roam free, there are banana fields as far as the eye can see, and the beach is just a bus ride away in any direction. These are not the things I want to go back to, this is not what I miss with that aching in my heart. I miss being a peace corps in that place. I miss the overwhelming feeling of pride when one of my kids accomplished well practically anything. I miss that feeling when a kid I taught stopped saying I can't and started saying I can, or a vaulter cleared a new personal best, or just sitting on my balcony as the kids in my community ran around free to be a kid. I miss that feeling of being a part of something so much bigger then me, and being pushed past whatever I thought were my limits, learning I am capable of so much more than I ever realized.
I've been told by other returned volunteers that no other job they do compares to peace corps, no matter how long they have been back. I can't help but wonder if this is because our peace corps experiences was so much more than any job, it changed the essence of us. Made us realize that there are no such things as limits, understand a completely different way of life, view the world differently, and know that we changed lives that have faces we can see whenever we close our eyes.
