Following Up

I’d mentioned in an earlier entry that I had a few thoughts about going, being gone, and coming home that I would share later. Well, it’s later.

I’d made the decision to take this trip back in September. My mom had just died, and I’m not sure that my going away was unrelated. I’ve had a long time to think about being gone. Folks have asked if I’m scared, and I’ve said that my apprehensions have been more intra-psychic than anything external. I have separation issues, concerns that I’m going to be forgotten or replaced. Those concerns aren’t unrelated to how I’ve interpreted and made sense of my childhood. I had an experience recently that has allowed me to let go of some of that. I’m less concerned about being forgotten or replaced. It’s occurred to me that if I really have a place in someone’s world, then they’ll perhaps look for me when I’m gone. And if they don’t look, then perhaps I never really had a place in their world to begin with. Coming to some acceptance and peace around the idea that that’s true regarding some people currently in my world is taking some work. It seems to be pressing a bit more the closer I come to leaving, and I know that I have a tendency to push people away and then withdraw myself. At the heart of my being I want not to do that.

Also tapping a bit more clearly the closer I get to my trip is the reality of what I’m doing. Travelling alone to an area where I’m no kind of fluent in the language or culture, an area too familiar with hurricanes, political unrest, drugs, and gangs. Traveling with few plans and relying on the kindness of strangers. Traveling with little more than faith and the knowledge that money could buy my way home, my way out. Those are not small things, and I want very much for them to be enough.

Being gone? I have no idea what to write about that. I remember my first experience in Oaxaca and my second experience in Oaxaca, and I know that the places I’m going are different than Oaxaca … and maybe not so different. I know I’m different. Since those first two trips, the second one more than two years ago now, my awareness of the disparity between those with and those without – money, freedom, security, peace – has become greater, and my dis-ease with that disease has increased in response.

Which brings me to coming home. I’ve been saying that I’m already annoyed with America and don’t imagine that three months in Central America is going to improve that any. I’m a bit afraid of how I’ll feel coming home – overwhelmed, ashamed, frustrated, pained. I remember re-entry from my first trip to Oaxaca. We were only gone eight days, and I travelled with other people, but re-entry was really hard. And … I know what that trip did to me, how it changed me. I think I’ve changed a lot in the past four years, and I’m moving further and further from who I knew Janet to be, which moves me further and further from who I understand others to be.

I’m going with the hopes of being changed, I don’t know what will bring about the change while I’m there, and I’m worried about what that change will mean when I return. The only thing to do, I know, is to put the business of transformation into the hands of the only one who manages it anyway. Thanks be to God.