Dak Shi Li Kayn

Sometime around a year and a half ago, I put a quote up on the wall of my kitchen. It’s unknown who said it, but it goes like this: “Anyone can give up, it’s the easiest thing in the world to do. But to hold it together when everyone would understand if you fell apart, that’s true strength.” In many ways, that quote has both defined my Peace Corps service as well as helped me survive my Peace Corps service.

As of today, I only have 22 days left of my Peace Corps service. Including today, I have been here for 795 days, and compared to that, a mere 22 days left is an astoundingly small period of time. In fact looking at those numbers tends to give me a small panic attack. At the beginning of service I hung up on my wall a calendar that included every month of my time here in Morocco, and as each month as passed, I have marked a large blue X across the month. Well now here I am with just March and April of 2015 left un-Xed out, and I’m not sure how I feel about that.

Whether we want to or not, the end of such defining life events such as this tends to make you reflect back on your experience and also think forward to what it means for the future. I readily admit I’m not great with change. I’m all about change, but only on my own terms. My problem comes when change happens to me without my permission or say in the matter. That’s when I start to panic a little. Or sometimes, a lot.

Three and a half years ago, when I first started my Peace Corps application, I did it for a lot of reasons. I actually remember quite clearly the autumn day I first started my application. I was sitting in Viking Union at one of those tables that’s too tall to touch the ground when you sit, probably avoiding studying for a midterm or putting off some paper that I would end up writing at 2am the night before it was due (then later getting an awesome grade on, much to all my friends chagrin). I was burnt out. I was 20 years old and was one quarter away from graduating from Western. The idea of dropping out, loading up Toby, my trusty green Subaru, and driving across the country without a plan had crossed my mind quite seriously. I had studied abroad that summer and wasn’t adjusting back to the US well. I was angry at life, I was confused about what I wanted to be doing, my living situation wasn’t going swimmingly, and I felt like I was teetering on some invisible edge. Almost daily someone was reminding me that I was set to graduate in a quarter and a half (because I obviously wasn’t aware and panicking enough on my own) and the question “What’s your plan after you graduate?” was liable to make me punch you in the throat.

So I started my Peace Corps application. If I’m being completely honest here, it was mostly to shut everyone up who insisted on pushing me to have a plan for the rest of my existence after I graduated. I had talked about joining Peace Corps for a long time, and it was what everyone seemed to expect me to do next and no one seemed to understand why I hadn’t started the application yet. At the time though, I just wasn’t sure what I wanted to be doing. I hadn’t started my application because I was a little lost. Well, I was a lot lost. I knew I wanted to do Peace Corps eventually, but I was also incredibly aware that I was only 20 years old, and needed to do some soul searching. But for now, the Peace Corps application at least gave me an answer to the unceasing questions about my post-graduation plans.

So yes, my initial decision to apply for Peace Corps started mostly as a way to make people leave me alone. But it evolved. It wasn’t until over a year later that I finally left for Morocco, and in those 15 months or so, a lot happened. A lot I’m not willing to go into here because it probably doesn’t need to be on the internet. It became incredibly clear by part way through that next summer that I needed Peace Corps. I needed a chance to get away, start fresh, and figure out who I wanted to be and who I needed to be. I needed a change in scenery, I needed to be inspired, I needed people who didn’t know me and didn’t have preconceived notions of me. I had made a lot of really stupid choices the last few months that had burnt a lot of friendship bridges and nearly lost myself the opportunity of Peace Corps, and it was enough to make me realize how much I not only needed Peace Corps, but how much I wanted Peace Corps.

And that has continued to be what Peace Corps means to me. People join for many reasons, and I’m willing to bet nobody joins for one single reason, myself included. You join to make a difference. You join to see the world. You join to meet new people, learn a new language, challenge yourself. You join to kill some time between undergrad and grad school. You join to put it on an application later for the Foreign Service. You join because you need to learn something about yourself. Whatever anybody’s reasons are, we all have them, and we all have multiple of them. But for myself, Peace Corps was more of a personal journey than it was anything else.

Sitting here typing this today, I’m thinking back on the past 27 months of service I’ve had. In many ways, I don’t think my work has always been the most necessary or fulfilling. I don’t think I did anything outrageously needed or profound. With a few very notable exceptions, I didn’t make extensive connections of dozens of people I’ll forever stay in touch with and immediately come back to visit. But, in the words of my favorite Moroccan Arabic phrase (so important that I even had it tattooed onto my arm), Dak shi li kayn, it is what it is. Peace Corps was a personal journey for me much more than a professional one. And I’m alright with that.

When your two years of service start to come to a close, you have the option of extending your service for a third year if you want. A fellow volunteer in the group a year behind mine asked me about 6 months ago if I was considering extending, and, completely involuntarily, I laughed in her face. “I’ve almost quit and gone home early far too many times for extending to be a viable option for me” I told her. And it’s true. I have considered ET-ing (Early Termination – we love acronyms here…) on numerous occasions, at one point in time even going through the interview process for a job back in Seattle that was worth dropping out for (I didn’t get the job, obviously, since I’m still in Morocco). And each time I’ve considered the possibility, I’ve sat at my kitchen table and pondered that quote on my wall.

“Anyone can give up, it’s the easiest thing in the world to do. But to hold it together when everyone else would understand if you fell apart, that’s true strength.”

It’s true. If I had decided it was time for me to end my service and return to the States, nobody in my vast Peace Corps family would have questioned it. They would have my back, trust I did what I needed to do, and wish me well on my journey. We say it a lot: 27 months is a really long time to be unhappy. If you don’t want to be here, you won’t do your best work anyways and you should make the decision that’s best for you. Everyone would have understood if I fell apart. Although let’s be real here, it’s not really an if I fell apart thing. I’ve fallen apart plenty of times during my service here. I’ve cried more in the last 27 months than I have in a very long time. I’ve sat in my friend’s apartments when I just couldn’t sit in my own anymore. I’ve carried full conversations with my cat when I just needed someone to talk to. I’ve asked myself why the hell I took on this crazy ride more times than I can count. But here I am, 795 days later, and I did it. In a few days I’ll not only put a big blue X over March 2015, I’ll completely take the calendar off the wall and walk away.

I’ve spent a long time reflecting over my service the last few days, weeks, and months. To be honest, I’m really not sure what I’ve come up with out of all that reflection. I’m incredibly proud of the fact that I’ve made it this far, because I really didn’t think I’d make it at a few points on this journey. I know that I’m walking away from this experience a better person that I came in. I know I’ve grown up a lot while I’ve been here. I know I have more confidence in my ability to be a functional adult than I did going in (although make no mistake, I still can’t adult to save my life). But I also know that the future holds a lot of question marks for me. And that terrifies me. I have no idea what I’m doing once I go home. I really don’t even know what I want to be doing in the future. Facing unknowns doesn’t always lead to good things for me. But sometimes, they also do. I could have given up, it would have been easy, and nobody would have questioned me for it. But I held it together anyways, and I can’t stop tomorrow from coming, so I might as well stand tall, trust myself, trust the family that surrounds me, both blood and chosen, and make the most of it. Dak shi li kayn.

The music of this post, as well as the most true Peace Corps anthem I've found thus far.