As the Anniversaries Pass...

I suppose the anniversaries I mark from my time in Guinea will become fewer the further I get from Guinea. First there was the counting up of months since I had been home, and suddenly it's been 10 months since I came home. Then there were the things I missed--Ramadan, Tabaski, the return to school, the gradual passing of time as my life and the life of the people I left behind return to yet another normal.

I've been home long enough now that the nostalgia is here in full force. I miss a lot of things about Guinea. I miss the people, ma famille guinéenne. I miss knowing I was doing something tough and worthwhile. I miss some of the food, and the beauty and speaking Susu.

There are also a lot of things I haven't been sad to miss. The elections stress, the recent Ebola outbreak, the propositions, the heat, the mosquitos. And honestly, I don't miss the person I became at the end of my service.

It's been 2 years since I was tackled by a fou. It's been 7 since I survived Lemierre's Syndrome, a rare bacterial infection that nearly killed me in high school. It's been 4 years since I was in a terrible fire in France where 1 student died needlessly in an un-sprinklered dorm. Incredibly, all 3 of those events happened in April. It's also been 1 year since I got a terrible sore throat while in Conakry and started suffering from PTSD, although it's only been about 4 months since I realized that that was what I was going through. Most of you probably had no idea, which I guess means I'm really awesome at coping, but it's been a rough year.

I'm a firm proponent of speaking out about mental illnesses, because I don't think there should be any stigma attached to an illness that I had no control over. I also think it's important that future Peace Corps volunteers don't go into their service unprepared for the possible consequences. I was not unaware. I wrote myself a letter before I left that was intended to be read if anything bad happened to me, to remind myself to make it through, that I am strong and resilient and I can survive anything but death. I read it fairly often, especially at the end, when my mental state was a mess. Huge thank you to my G20 folks, who supported me through my breakdowns and insanity. I wanted so much to finish my Peace Corps service that I pushed myself to a rock bottom place. I cried every day. I laughed every day too, so don't get too lost in that idea that I was just a sad sack, but I was a complete emotional roller-coaster, and it wasn't pretty.

So I came home and didn't really help myself until I started working at the Army, and heard a lot about the Army's efforts to use technology to help their veterans suffering from PTSD. And it sounded incredibly familiar. It turns out that you're more likely to get PTSD if you've had more traumas. So I'm getting help and I'm doing much better, and you know what--I am a survivor. It never even occurred to me that I could take a hit and just stay down. It never occurred to me to put my dreams on hold to heal or live a small, safe life. I jumped directly into grad school and work, and it is very rewarding. I hold on to that knowledge, that I keep taking risks in the face of my fears, on days when I wonder if the fou, the fire, and the disease have won.

I'm the sort of person who marks time very concretely. If you know me, you know how significant my Life Day is, the day I got out of the hospital. Tomorrow is a different sort of anniversary, and I'm not really sure how to feel about it. I just know that it's hard not to wonder "what if". What if I hadn't been in Conakry? What if we'd had our meeting inside? How different would I be today? Would I be more whole?

Many people have asked me, especially after I tell them about all this stuff, about all the pain, mental and physical, that I came home with, whether or not I'd do it again. And you know what my answer is?

Yes.

Yes, I'd do this. I'm not permanently damaged. I had an adventure, and I came back with bruises. I helped some people and had some tough lessons in learning about myself. I saw painful realities and gained an inescapable gratitude. Would I choose a life without Peace Corps? No, never. I made my dreams come true, and my dream was to live without rose colored glasses and still retain my compassion and optimism.