This is the fourth country I’ve lived in; USA, Brasil, Hong Kong, Guatemala. As an international teacher, that sounds weirdly average to me, but I realize living in even four different counties or four different states in a lifetime is a wild idea. And it is. Moving is a lot.
Imagine how many “lost” chargers and hair ties (RAGE) you find when you move? Expired gift certificates? How many table cloths you never needed or used and the knick-knacks and paddy-wacks and checks you forgot to cash that are now invalid? The melted Werthers at the bottom of your carry-on, the sticky mess of sunscreen let loose in a travel bag, the stash of currency you cleverly hid from yourself and will now never get to spend in (insert the country). Drives you mad.
After over a decade abroad, I’m packing up to move “home.” Sure, I’ve been going once or twice a year, give or take a pandemic, since I left in 2012. This particular move is more serious. Long story short – I’ve been out of the country so long that my teaching credential needs some legal updating, which can only be done in California.
My grandparents are getting older, I want to be more than a FaceTime Auntie (maintaining favorite relative status is a fulltime job, folks), and whoa, but the last two years here in Guatemala have been hard. I would not mind some Bay Area privileges for a minute (walking trails, Michelin cuisine options, pristine nature, low pollution, general sense of law and order and regulation). So while this is a bit scary and I’m bracing for culture shock, there are benefits.
Today, for example, I removed the monthly reminder to “pay rent” from my phone. Because I will be moving in with my paaareeeeents!!! Just what everyone wants at 42 years old! Just what all empty-nesters want in their sixties! There is no deadline in sight, because I have to buy a car and get some frighteningly expensive dental work done and culturally readjust and pay back the debt from living in abject poverty for two years serving in Guatemala and not lose my mind and I’m sure it will be fine.
It will be fine. First – because my parentals are great hosts. Every summer I come home like a celebrity and get to be interesting and charming and new for a while. Someone to set up patio furniture for. This lasts for a few weeks and then I am someone to blame for eating all the feta and misplacing the garlic press. Second – because I can give people a break. After years of living alone, I’m good at hiding away for days at a time, reading my Kindle all day and then sneaking out to the kitchen at night for graham crackers and IPAs like a quirky raccoon, answering my mom’s texts of “are you alive?” with “totally but can you give me a dog for a bit?” Normal. Healthy. Third – I have family around to bother, old friends to meet for a coffee, and I enjoy wandering through a Safeway for hours, offering unwanted commentary on how spoiled Americans are. I’ll make it.
Expectedly, I do already feel itchy to leave – what’s next, what adventure is coming. I’m not even back and it will be about three years of logistics before I can ponder leaving, but I wonder and postulate and am already dialoguing possible arguments with my mom about _________.
This is anxiety – worrying about how I will feel before I can ever feel what I will feel. It’s a waste of time – but try and tell my brain that. I’m pre-upset. I’m pre-suffocating and pre-suffering. And it’s dumb.
Because I am so lucky to have a happy, safe, inviting place to land without a time limit. I have done staying on couches and working two jobs and paying cash because you’re not on the lease. I’ve lived without health or car insurance.
I am blessed to not have to go back to that and that my family is actually happy to have me back – if only to stop paying attention to international news and have a reliable dog-sitter (just kidding, I’m sure it’s more than that. I am capital F fun and great at unloading dishwashers).
They say that some years you glow, and some years you grow. These last two years in Guatemala have been . . . politely, growing years. There were many times I did not think I would make it, therefore to do so is an accomplishment. It has been unexpectedly difficult, for a variety of unpublishable reasons, but I get to be proud I made it. For my students, my three whole friends, and sometimes out of pure spite, I made it.
All of it by the grace of God and the skin of my teeth and every other metaphor, because WOW there were too many days when a flight up and out of here seemed like an easy and necessary click of a button. But I never clicked. I cried and ate a lot of shredded cheese out of the bag, cross-legged in front of the open fridge. I said bad words. Called in sick and wallowed a few times, pondering paths not taken. But didn’t click.
I found strength I didn’t know I had, fortified by encouragement from my mom, aunts, sisters, friends. I’m grateful. Because to look back and realize you stuck it out, proving whomever was against you to be wrong, is a greater gift than the small, petty moments of being right I was chasing along the way.
I’m still right about things, though. :)
This is the second time I’m wrapping up a life chapter in Guatemala – the first being the long beginning of a life-altering back-packing trip in 2008. I was 24 and felt full of potential – would I be a comedian, an actor, a singer, translator, work for an NGO, influence governments, travel forever, write stories, play with kids, or would I . . . ?
Would I get married and have kids and bring them back to the places that influenced me so much? Would I stay in one of these Central American countries I was frolicking through, marry some hot, multi-lingual dread-locked man I met who was slinging bracelets and henna tattoos and we could open a hostel-cafe that sold great bread?
Today’s Rachel is adjacent to many of the things I imagined then. But she’s still like, just a (cool) girl.
A girl figuring it out, a girl who is the first generation of her kind that truly gets to decide to be single and childless and pursue her dreams. I don’t need a father or a husband to cosign what i design for my life.
It can all be all my idea! All my mistakes and lessons and blessings.
So, I just gotta figure out my way.
Through the many doors I could have walked, or been forced through, I have walked through this one, I got to walk here, I ended up here.
I look at my life, and in all of the mess – easy, no? It never is.
However . . . amaze, amaze, amaze.
i did this. i did this. I did this.
Sunglasses Always Fit 
tell me what you think bout this!