By Emily - Peace Corps 2006

I used to be able to write. Almost everyday I’d have these sweeping blasts of insight and inspiration and I’d fill pages and pages in my green journal. I don’t anymore. Only when I’m good and crazy can I write. I used to get good and crazy sometimes. Times when I thought I could take air and shape it into matter if only I had a form in mind. Times when I climbed the stairs to the top and sobbed because I couldn’t be in the world at that moment. Times when I let my hand dance to the rhythm of my discman to keep the bus seat next to me vacant. Times when I allowed strange Puerto Ricans to follow me all the way from Grand Central Station to the Museum of Contemporary Art. Times when I gave away belongings and planned my escape. My last departure.

Things used to be easier. Maybe we always think that but this time I think it’s true. I was always alone so I was allowed to sink into my weirdness. Nuzzle its fuzzy softness. But now just as the shapes start dancing behind my eyes, I’m forced to conjugate some irregular verb in the past continuous tense to answer one of these idiots’ questions and everything snaps back into place.

In the good old days I’d wander the streets of LA on my days off just to wear my soles out on the world. Maybe wear my soul out. Maybe I wanted to take a little sandpaper to my soul. To scuff it up. Put it on the train to somewhere and see if it could fend for itself. Maybe that’s what I wanted. Maybe that’s what I still want. Anymore all I find myself wanting is a hot shower and clean sheets. I’d like to go to the hardware store and buy a new hose or wrench or something. Pick up the dry cleaning on the way home. Just a normal little American Saturday. Take the dog for a walk. Hit the mall. You know.

It’s like I can’t justify myself to the world. I can’t make them see. I want to hand them a little card and have it sum things up and have them be impressed. I want them to be awed just enough to leave me alone when I don’t want them around but jump at the chance for my company should I see fit to grace them with it. But it’s hard to do that at twenty-one. I guess I thought I was on the right track but lately I don’t know.

I have always been that girl in the back row, doodling in her notebook but paying just enough attention to the lecture to point out when the professor makes a mistake. You know that girl. Her high SAT score surprised everyone but herself. Her vegetarian phase ended when her nihilist phase began. Tore all the labels off her clothes and a year later spent $160 on jeans. Finally she decided to wipe the slate clean by joining the Peace Corps. Unfortunately it seems that the rag was more grimy than the slate itself.

Anymore I am just a blob. Human colored goo that slogs itself to the village school everyday for an English lesson that couldn’t even be described as half hearted. Maybe an eighth hearted. Otherwise the blob sits alone playing solitaire till its vision blurs, listening to NWA till it swears it hears the LAPD just outside. Sleeping twelve hours a night and dreaming so deeply it has to actively pull its mind back into now in the morning, very reluctantly.

You would think there would be lots of adventures and amusing cross cultural incidents and insights on the human race. Maybe there are. It has been scary and funny and eye opening at times but honestly I’m so weary of this whole thing I can’t bring myself to think about it. I just want to get back to someplace that I feel real. I want to sit on a curb in downtown LA and eat my tres tacos al pastor and know that the world is right. And feel like I control my life. Go to my apartment and get out my vacuum and clean my floor. Scramble an egg for dinner. Walk to the store and get some milk. Lay around on my bed looking out the window at the wall next door. You would not believe how exotic that sounds to me right now.

Sometimes I get stuck in a memory. The tiniest sliver of the past will suddenly stick itself in my brain, refusing to dislodge itself until I’ve given it full attention. Today it might be the exact layout of my bedroom in middle school that will not go away until I’ve opened every drawer and gone through the closet. Tomorrow it will be that burrito I ate with my friend after work one night in the park near her house. Then it will be my eighth birthday party. Then it will be that weird guy I gave my number to on the bus that one time. Then it will be walking on hot bleachers with bare feet. I hate it and I can’t make it stop. It makes my soul ache for a life I can take a hold of and actually live.