What they don’t tell you about readjustment is that one day
you will wake up and look at the things that were “normal” during your time in
Peace Corps—malnourished kids that you came to view as annoying rather than
heartbreaking, clinics without medicine and schools without books, women reciting
the names of the babies they’ve buried, days spent watching the sky and knowing that if the rains don’t come, your friends might
starve.
What they don’t tell you about readjustment is that one day
you will wake up, after you’ve been in America for a few months, after you’ve started to think like an American again… one day you will wake up and
you will realize that the emotional
calluses you formed in order to preserve your sanity have begun to heal. With a raw heart, you will look back at the last two years and think about the things you thought were normal.
And it will
hurt like hell.
