Goodbye Cambodia

Hello new blog format…. and it’s a mystery on how that happened.

I’ll start by answering the question that I have gotten the most, and will most likely continue to hear. “Why did you join Peace Corps?” I joined Peace Corps because I didn’t want to waste my life. I wanted to find a way to use my passions and who I was created to be, in the best way possible. To not let my hands go idle and my mind go numb. To feel to the greatest capacity, to love those in my life the best way I could and constantly be looking for ways to change to make tomorrow better than today. After six months of trying to meet these goals, live the life I desire, I come to a point of exhaustion. Where the exact opposite of what I want for my life, I find myself doing. Now, I am retreating to the things that make my hands idle and my mind numb because the reality of my life is so far from what I want, distant from whom I am, and retreating to a place of deprivation. Through life struggles, perseverance is created which develops our faith in life, humanity, or God. Through all of this my belief that we are all created uniquely to offer different strengths has been heightened. I am not the right candidate for this position, but by no means does that mean this isn’t the right job for someone. I would have never learned that until I joined Peace Corps. This hasn’t been an easy process from the start, but has definitely been something that has shaped my life. The lessons I’ve learned through this process have continually pointed me to the fact that I cannot survive alone. I cannot go through life without a community that encourages me and holds my hand when the tears come. Nor has this experience come to a close because of my community at home, because they are the main reason I stayed so long.

It’s hard to watch you dreams slip through your fingers. To watch something that you have wanted for so long turn out to be something so wrong for whom you are. Nothing about this choice was a waste. Not even wanting it for so long, because as most of you know, this dream is what got me honors in High School and a B.A. from UCSD. Nor can I say spending half a year on a 2-inch mat, peeing on my feet every day and watching cockroaches sputter across my floor was a waste. This experience has changed my life, my appreciation for humanity, and encouraged me to find something that I was created to do. Gandhi once said “our finger prints don’t fade from the lives we touch.” I don’t know if I touched any lives here through my work, or lack of real work here, but in the end we will never know who’s lives we really touch. But the important thing is trying to remember to be a person that you would want to shape your life. For me, in this experience, I’m not that person. I’m not a person who I would want to shape anyone’s life. So my decision to go back to California may not be the one you would make, but for me, living here, trying to always change and become a better citizen of this world, I know this is no longer where I should be. I can’t say that my choice to move home, is right either, but the peace I have now to move on to a new adventure, reassures me that this is the right decision.

So I end with this note with a quote, that I hope shapes your life as much mine:
“Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive; and go do that. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.” –John Eldridge