if things had gone as planned (written august 8th, 2010)

if things had gone as planned with the Peace Corps, with my life in Mali, with my life in general, i'd just be coming home... thats weighing heavily on me these days. i miss Dabi, i miss the simplicity, i miss the effort and the rewards. today, i'm a copywriter in Washington, this time last year i was a girl struggling to sleep and eat, and this time the year before last, i was off on a big fantastic adventure in West Africa.
these last three years have been the biggest. the biggest changes. the biggest happiness. the biggest sadness. the biggest hurt. the biggest love. the biggest disappointments. the biggest achievements. the biggest desert. the biggest mountains. the biggest medical problems. the biggest mental problems.
i've over come, bypassed and returned to these "biggest"s and find myself in a grey state of mind. the good doesn't seem to be outweighing the bad, nor the other way around. the sunshine isn't coming through the clouds but the clouds aren't so bad. i feel as though i'm in a state of limbo and i, like the catholics, have a strong distaste for this position. that is probably the only time, ever, that i'll equate myself to a catholic. weird.

do things ever go as we plan? why do we even plan if we know, really and truly, that its going to unfold and from there its going to get even more complicated and then eventually its all going to circle back and you'll be sitting in a cafe somewhere and you'll smell something that someone else thinks is disgusting and they'll leave the table in a flurry to dry heave and you'll be off in your memory-world, happy, and take another sip of your coffee.

if things had gone as i had planned, i probably wouldn't be the person i am today. and depending on how much you like my personality, is either a grave or grand scenario. either way, its different and that makes me wonder... what will my current life look like to my next life? i don't mean afterlife, i mean, how will these next 2 years effect my being? yeesh, too much to think of for sunday morning.