1st Lt Prifogle’s Blog

I wake up. First things first - where am I? I’ve given up on figuring out what day it is. Tuesday could be Friday, Sundays might as well be Wednesdays. Every morning I wake up and ask myself, “where are you?”

I have always had weird dreams ever since I was a kid. One summer (I think it was the summer I worked second shift at a factory) I had breakfast with Dad every morning, oatmeal of course, and we would discuss our dreams from the night. It was our oral dream journal, which is a great way to remember your dreams when you wake up. The problem is I don’t want to remember my dreams anymore. Too late, my mind is trained and I don’t know how to train myself not to dream or at least not remember them in the morning.

Every morning I wake up from a weird dream that becomes lucid when I’m being chased, shot at, falling, or some other terrifying turn of events. My dream self stops time and looks at me with a sudden shift in the dream camera’s point of view, “Libby, this is just a dream. Wake up.” And I do. Sometimes out of breath, sometimes drenched in sweat. I wake up and realize I am not at home. I ask myself, “Fuck, where am I? Is this still a dream?” It takes a few seconds that last for hours to put together the pieces. “Oh that’s right, you drove to LA yesterday. You’re not at Rachael’s. That was a long drive. Remember?” A week ago I woke up surrounded by strangers in a hostel. Next week I will wake up on Jill’s couch. After that I will wake up from a horrible nightmarish dream in a strange bed and ask myself “where am I now?”

The fun part of the morning is the next question, “well Libs, what are you going to do today?” The possibilities are as far as I can drive. The horizon is my daily destination.

My friend Deb calls on her days off and asks, “Did you drive to Mexico yet?” I tell her not yet and we both laugh knowing we’re only half joking.

My dad calls and reminds me to wear my seatbelt, something he has always reminded me to do no matter where I’m at. “I love you, wear your seatbelt,” is how every voicemail ends. I suppose he’s worried after all the speeding tickets in my younger days. Well, all my speeding tickets anyways.

Truth is, I could drive to Mexico and of course I always wear my seatbelt.

In the last few weeks I have interviewed an amazing man, toured Alcatrez, hiked through a redwood forest, saw a friend I haven’t seen in years and walked along the cliffs and trespassed along the Sutro Bath ruins (we were also attacked by the ocean after drawing lines in the sand), and drove through half of California.

It’s scary at times - the uncertainty of where I’m going to end up by the end of the day.
It’s exciting at times - the possibility of where I could end up at the end of the day.

When I left Rachael’s house yesterday I started to panic asking, “Rachael, what am I going to do?” She equipped me with a tent and sleeping bag and shoved me out the door saying, “Libby this is what you’re doing. Stop worrying about it. Enjoy it.”

Rachael is right. This is what I’m doing. I’m waking up, figuring out where I’m at and then figuring out where I’m going. I suppose it’s what some people spend their whole life dreaming about -freedom from work, family, responsibilities, the future. The irony is how simple it is to give everything up. No, that’s not ironic that’s just the truth. The irony is that people dream about it without really ever wanting to go through with it. The possibility of a dream keeps us going through the daily grind. The sad truth is - this is all we’ve got. This life. This day. Nothing else. We just have to enjoy it. Some people have more. Some people have less. It’s up to each of us to enjoy what we have. So, why is there so much suffering in the world?

I’m listening to Pandora on my iPhone and a song came on titled “Sweet Somewhere Bound” by Jackie Greene and I really like it. I’m in LA today. I don’t know where I’m going and it doesn’t matter, because I’m finally learning to live in the moment. No day but today, right? So, I’m off - sweet somewhere bound

**Dad, don’t worry, I’m staying with good friends. I promise I’m safe. Try not to worry too much and when you do just remember I’m a Marine - I can take care of myself!**

***Here are the lyrics to the song “Sweet Somewhere Bound” by Jackie Greene. This song is now my theme song for this road trip to wherever I end up… ***

Well I’ve been thinking, yes I’ve been thinking
About some women that I know
Some believe me and some deceive me
And some I wish I’d never seen at all

Where will you go now? where will you go now?
Where will you wander, where will you roam?
Where will you go when the sun goes sinkin’,
And the morning brings a new day to be born?

I can’t tell you, no I can’t tell you
Which train I’m riding, which plane I’m on
But I can tell you, yes I can tell you
I’m standing right where I belong

When I die lord, when I die lord
Lay me somewhere soft and deep
Tell my babies not to cry no
For I ain’t gone, I’m just fast asleep

I know a man lord, I know a man lord,
He had no baby, to call his own
He had nothing, but he had everything
He had the world to call his home

Why is it I feel more comfortable in alone, in a hostel, in a city as foreign to me as wearing a uniform for the first time, than anywhere else?

It’s raining outside. The kind of rain that makes me think some sort of god is trying to wash away our sins - cold and dark and melancholy. Or maybe the angels are crying - there’s plenty for them to cry about. Or maybe it is the earth starting over - reveling in a refreshing, cold, spring shower?

Anyways, I’m in San Francisco a bit unexpected, but the change of scenery is a welcome to my worry filled mind.

Hostels in America are $25/dorm room. Clean, friendly and filled with foreign backpackers. It felt weird driving into the alley a block from Union Square in my little bug filled with my leftover belongings. I felt so out of place pulling clothes and electronics out of the trunk while European travelers stared as they smoked their sexy, stylish, skinny cigarettes.

Again I find peace in solitude. Maybe happiness is meant to be shared and peace is meant to be alone. I don’t know anymore. I just don’t know. But to the man in the coffee shop in Cuzco I would still answer - Yes, yes I am happy where I’m at right now.

I realized after my last few posts that I haven’t really updated where I am and what I’m doing these days. I got an email from a family friend asking what side of the equator I’m on? This made me laugh until I realized it’s kind of a legitimate question.

I’m currently in Santa Maria, California. I’m interviewing a man who retired for the second time after getting by an IED in Iraq as a government contractor a year ago. He just turned 70. His family asked me to record his life before the stories are forgotten. I think I am almost done with the interviewing portion of this project. After 70 years on this Earth he has some good stories. I want to make sure I get them down correctly.

I have been here a week and feel it’s time to get on the road again. I plan on heading to San Fran tomorrow. I want to see Craig Mullaney read at the Marine Memorial Hotel. Then I am going to stay in a hostel for a couple reasons. One, I really want to see what hostels in the states are like and who stays there. It’s $23 - $30 / night. Second, I need my space. I have been staying with people here and there and I really just want some time and space to myself for a change. Lastly, I miss the temporariness of a hostel. I miss the transitory nature of everyone there. I miss traveling around travelers. I miss being alone in a city where I don’t belong.

From there I might go see the Redwoods. Why not? I have also thought about heading up to Washington State to visit some friends. I have an appointment with TMO (Traffic Management Office) in San Diego in the middle of June. I am having the Marine Corps ship what I have left in storage to my parents. It’s only furniture, my piano, few boxes of uniforms and military memorabilia for them to store or use as they see fit. I have a few things in my car, but everything else was sold or donated before leaving San Diego. I carry with me my stories, my experiences, my strengths and my weaknesses. Really, what else can you own in this world?

I will probably follow my stuff. I haven’t been ‘home’ in a long time. I fear this homecoming. I’m not sure why other than I have no reason to stay, which consequently means I have no reason to leave. I feel defeated coming home now. I have nothing to show for myself. Things haven’t turned out like I expected them to, even though I didn’t have any expectations when I left. I’m scared. Going home will force me to face myself. Going home will force me to face the family that has moved on without me. I am just a guest now. Just a visitor to a place that used to be home. I don’t have a home anymore. It’s time. It’s time to deal with all of this.

So, where am I going? Who knows? My friend jokes that she is waiting to get a call that I started driving and ended up in either Canada or Mexico. Maybe. I have a little over a month to spend on this coast. I plan on driving through the Grand Canyon on my way back to Indiana. See what other random places I find to visit on my way. I have to be in Chicago in mid-July to meet up with a friend and travel to Argentina. I’m in a wedding in August. Those are the only real commitments I have. I want to drive out to the East Coast after the wedding. My plan is to drive wherever the road may lead.

I guess I shouldn’t be surprised when people ask what country am I in? Where am I staying? I shouldn’t get upset when my Mom asks what I’m eating - or if I’m eating. I keep waiting for someone to ask me what I’m doing. You know what I’m really doing. What the long-term plan is. I suppose everyone who knows me knows there is no need for a long-term plan. Plans don’t work out that’s why I don’t make them. Those who love me know if they ask too many questions they are likely to start a fire. I’ll get scared or bored or anxious and next thing they know I’ve sold my car and I’m moving to Africa to save the elephants and rhinos.

I don’t see myself like this. I’m not as free as I’d like to be. Not as flighty as I pretend to be. I worry. I worry about what is next. What I’m going to do after this month. After next month. In a year. My current goal is to not have a permanent address for an entire year. That started in January. I’m in month 5 already. What happens after that? And after that? And after that?

Truth is as much as I love living on a whim I still look for some sort of meaning. Some sort of truth behind it all. Something to hold onto for the after the after the after. I know it is a futile search; like shining a terd, as Captain Carter used to say about field daying our rooms in Quantico. Yet, I still wonder, explore, dream, search. I still hold my breath and make a wish when I see a shooting star. I still believe I’m going to find it die trying. I worry that I won’t. I worry that I’ll grow old and spend my last bit of time telling my stories to some young, aspiring writer as she passes through. A drifter who will think “I’ll find it. I’ll find it for both of us. Whatever it is we’re looking for. I’ll be the one.”

Santa Maria, Ca
Just after posting the previous entry I decided to make some tea. I opened up my super antioxidant organic green tea and the little paper tab attached to the bag, like a little fortune, says:

I am beautiful
I am bountiful
I am blissful

Maybe the universe is reading my blog. Maybe that should be my daily mantra.

Santa Maria, Ca
I’m lonely. Or I think I’m lonely. Or maybe I’m homesick. Or just sick of not having a home. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I don’t know what I want. That’s bullshit. I know exactly what’s wrong with me and I know exactly what I want. Maybe I don’t know how to get it. Maybe I don’t know how to accept it when it’s within my grasp. Maybe I just don’t know how to ask for it when a bully is standing in front of me, taunting, “what’s the magic word?”

Truth is I’m a cauldron of confusion and uncontrollable emotions from 27 years of self-neglect and denial - boiling to death at my own hand. Why do I always have to jump in without testing the water when it appears to be safe? Why can’t I jump off the cliff when I have a parachute I just need to have faith will open?

I try to have faith, but I can’t. Instead I stand in the cold, wet breeze and wait for someone to save me. Wait for someone to sweep me off the edge with a parachute and two spares just in case. Wait for that someone to pick me up and glide through the air safe and serene with their arms wrapped around me. Protecting me. Believing in me. Letting me ride along with their faith.

I’m not really lonely on the edge. It’s nice only having to take care of myself. I wake up and I can do whatever I want. Go wherever I desire. Run if I want to run. Write if I want to write. Sleep all day if I want to sleep. I am only responsible for one person - me. What is not to love about this life and the endless possibilities? Nobody is holding me back. Wait that also means nobody is holding me up either.

I am Icarus. Exiled by myself, from myself. Won’t someone make me wings? I promise I won’t get lost in the air. I promise I won’t get too close to the sun.

What do I want? I want someone to sweep me off my feet and save me from myself. I want a reason to stay somewhere so I don’t have to face the reality of my decisions. I want someone to make my wings so if I get too close to the sun my death won’t be my own fault. But I am in love my temporary exile. I am in love with my newfound freedom from the world. I have made my wings, but like the parachute, I don’t have faith that they will soar.

I am caught between wanting to be anchored down by someone and loving my freedom. I am that balloon that got away from the party. I’m streaming into the atmosphere sure to deflate or combust or both. Nobody sees me. I’m just a little dot in the air now. Nobody can reach me. It’s all too late. Why didn’t someone just tie a better knot around me so I didn’t get loose as I floated along?

Why won’t someone please just save me? Why won’t someone help me put my wings on and hold me up so I can catch a stream of air and take flight?

Monica’s on Park - San Diego, Ca

People of Orphalese, the wind bids me leave you. Less hasty am I than the wind, yet I must go. We wanderers, ever seeking the lonelier way, begin no day where we have ended another day; and no sunrise finds us where sunset left us. Even while the earth sleeps we travel. We are the seeds of the tenacious plant, and it is in our ripeness and our fullness of heart that we are given to the wind and are scattered.
-Khalil Gibran

Chapters of my life are not marked by the passing of time, they are marked by the movement of it. No, that’s not right. Time doesn’t move, I move. Chapters of my life are marked by the movement of me. Yes, that’s it. My movement through space and time. The final scene is always me driving down an empty highway. Alone. Leaving someone or somewhere. I’ve gotten damn good at leaving. Too good. Anymore it seems that I only stand still long enough to catch my breath. It seems like I am leaving more often then I’m coming.

I’m addicted to leaving like people are addicted to alcohol, gambling, prescription drugs, cigarettes. All the vices that we somehow justify to ourselves. It’s ok to never settle. this is the life I choose. I like being on the road. I like leaving. The deceiving part of this addiction is that every time I leave I tell myself I’ll be back. I know this is a lie. The day I left Aberdeen I knew I would not be back, there is too much to see in the world to go back to where I’ve been. When I left Lima I knew that was it, but I didn’t say goodbye to my friends because I secretly hoped I would go back – will go back – someday, maybe. No, I won’t. I know this and yet I never say goodbye so I will believe I am coming back. I lie to myself to make it easier. I lie to myself so it won’t hurt to drive away.

I can’t remember when I became addicted to leaving. I guess that’s how it is with addictions. One day you wake up and realize that it’s more than just something you do. It’s something you can’t live without it.

I wasn’t raised moving around like this. I grew up in the same house for 18 years. We had secret floorboards that we lifted to hide our most private possessions, Tarzan trees where we lived during the long summer days, apple trees that were base when we played tag, the great hole to China, and the ‘piggy houses’ scattered along the woods behind our house. I remember wanting to leave as a kid. I remember wanting to know what it was like to live somewhere else. What it felt like to start over and be the ‘new kid’ at school. They were exotic and exciting to me when they walked into my class. Yet, as bad as I wanted to leave I now long for that old brick house, down the long lane by the barn where Marvin and his farmers used to work from early spring until the first frost of winter. That was “home” for 18 years and now it sits empty. Nobody moved in after we left. Nobody kept it up and now the foundation erodes and the weeds grow out of the cracks and corners like hairs sprouting out of an old man’s nose and ears. It sits empty, but not alone. It is haunted by the ghosts of my childhood as I wander homeless and alone.

When I left at 18 I thought, “this is still home, this will always be home.” I was wrong. That was never home again. I moved and never really moved back again. The year after I left, my parents built a new house on the family farm, the next county over. I lost my room in the move. From that point on I was demoted to a ‘guest’ in their house and my leftover childhood memorabilia was moved to the a corner in the new basement. My mom holds onto it waiting, hoping I will someday move it into my own home. That was 10 years ago and of all of the apartments, houses, hostels and homes I have lived in, none will ever be home to me. Maybe in another 10 years I will accept that it’s the idea of home that I long for not the physical place. Perhaps it will take another 10 years after that to realize I carry home in my heart and in the memories of summer nights spent singing with the cicadas and katydids through the giant screen windows in our living room.

I can’t seem to move far from the ocean nowadays. I take comfort in the endless sea the way I once took comfort in the endless rows of corn and soybeans that enveloped our house. Even now the ocean can’t comfort me in the fall when I get nostalgic for the day when harvest seems to begin and end all in one day. That day when the air is so dry you can bite it and it tastes like the apple crisp pie baking in every kitchen. The day when you leave for work or school and the fields are full of yellowed corn stalks, and then on the way home they are barren waiting for the first, white winter snow. I will miss that day every year no matter where I live. I will miss the magic of how the farmers did all that work in one day, when in reality I just missed them working long days the prior weeks. I will miss that defining mark in time. Nature’s surrender to winter. Life’s surrender to change.

I leave San Diego tomorrow. I have been here off and on for 3 years now. That’s a long time for me. I have come and gone from my neighborhood on Adams Ave twice already. Everyone expects this will be the same. I’ll be back soon and it will be like I never left. I’d like to think it will be the same, but I know in my heart it’s not. I’m leaving and I might visit, but it’s time to move on. It is the life I choose. The addiction I have to feed.

I haven’t said goodbye. Told some folks I’m heading out, but with the good intentions of coming home. Tomorrow I will ride the adrenaline of not knowing what’s next, the joy of starting over somewhere new, the daydreams of riding back home a hero from another adventure – even when I know I will never come back. I have mastered the art of quietly exiting the bar, the school, the wherever unnoticed. This way nobody is sad, nobody misses me right away, nobody is aware that life is always changing just as the earth rotates. They can just keep living life in this one happy moment. We can all live in denial that nothing ever lasts. The art of leaving is to go unnoticed so they keep expecting you to walk through the swing door of the pub any minute. Maybe on a slow, rainy afternoon, maybe on a busy karaoke Saturday night. I know I won’t. I will become a ghost haunting the Sod, like I haunt the Old House, my old campus, my office in Iraq, my old running trails. A ghost in the memories of those who were or are still there. A ghost of the life I used to live.

Someone recently asked me what I’m running from and I didn’t know how to answer. I got upset and claimed I wasn’t running. Now, I realize I am. He is right and he is wrong. I am running, but not away. I’m running towards. Towards life. Towards adventure. Towards the unknown future. Towards the life of a vagabond.

Yet, I always want to stay, I never want to say goodbye, I don’t even like change, but I love last days.

You’re at a very special point in your life, a unique position - young and uncommitted. You should ___. You could ___. Why don’t you ___. If I were you I’d ___. I’m jealous I want to ___.

Everyone seems to know what I should be doing right now, what I can do right now, what I want to do right now. Everyone but me of course.

Everyone seems to think all my anxiety, stress, fear and pain is just a passing phase like a unexpected summer storm. A flash flood of emotions that will soon run through the storm drains sweeping away the dirt and trash on the streets and the negative thoughts from my psyche. Everyone sees the freedom to do anything and everything. Nobody sees the responsibility of making choices and living with the consequences of this freedom. Nobody sees that I have left myself with no escape plan, no evacuation route, no back up. Nobody stopped to ask if I can swim before they let me jump off the high dive.

I’m unsettled which makes it hard to think clear. I don’t have a home, so technically I am homeless. I have an amazing wealth of friends that have opened their homes to me and I will never be able to thank them in a way that shows how much their generosity means to me. I know that no matter how bad it gets there are people I can lean on for help. Of course this means swallowing my pride and for someone as independent and stubborn as I am I’m swallowing a brick.

I’m trying to do schoolwork. I’m supposed to be working on my writing career. This is the time to do it. I have the time, the resources and the passion. So why do I spend all day running errands that should take five minutes? Why can’t I scratch the most simple tasks off my ‘to do’ list instead of letting myself get distracted and then distracted again?

I sit at the the Sod visiting or drinking or trying to say goodbye to whoever is there, but stay after being convinced to watch one more inning. To have one more pint. To one more whatever … It is never just one more. I sit at Monica’s Coffee shop on the corner of Adam’s and Park on the back patio. I spread out my pile of books, journals, computer, iPod, whatever else. I line it all up, pick up my tea because it is ruining the perfect arrangement and now my hands are full. I sit at home and try to concentrate, but give up and sort through the small box of clothes I am living out of after getting rid of almost everything else looking for something that I know is not there.

Not a stranger to procrastination I try to think of clever questions to text. Something that will start a text argument or a series of flirty notes that lead to having coffee. Anything but facing what I want to do. What I’ve wanted to do since I can remember. Something I have avoided doing because I am afraid to fail. If I fail at what I want more than anything what would I do then? This thought shackles itself to my creative mind with a rusty ball and chain. This thought is the worst of my devils. The antithesis of my muse. Actually I think this devil sent my muse on vacation to collect some overtime. I obsess over the thought, “what if I fail?” I spin until it paralyzes me and come out of paralyzation only to spin some more.

What I wish I would realize is it’s not failing that I’m afraid of. That’s not the devil I have to defeat. That’s not what holds us back from following our dreams. If only I would see the devil defeating me is only asking, “what if you succeed?”

When I go home to visit my family (visits becoming few and far between) I always stay in my baby sister’s room. After I left for my second year of college my parents moved into a smaller house on the family farm. My antique bed from WW I was disassembled and reassmebeled a quarter of a mile down the gravel road to start round two of purple unicorns, fairies, and endless journal entries about crushes and broken hearts for my niece. Now, without my own room I always stay in my sister’s huge bed that was once the guest bed before Becca came along. Becca is not so much a baby anymore at 16 going on 25, but she will always be my Baby Becca and I will always see her as a little girl in her purple and pink footsie pj’s holding one of her 20 million kitties at the old house. When we crawl under the layers of cats, stuffed animals and pillows I yawn and complain about how tired I am, but when we snuggle up together inevitably we are attacked by a bad case of the giggles. She doesn’t have a clock in her room so what seems like hours, but who knows how long it really is, we revel in the secret life of being a girl.

It starts with the question - do you have a boyfriend?
She answers with a giggle yes or a giggle no.

Either way it ensues the topic of the hour - her innocent, little girl crush. She tells me about how perfect some boy is in her home room, or the cute trumpet player she marches by in the state fair show (all five of us are band geeks and proud). Her innocence and naivety is beautiful in that way that we loose sometime between leaving home pretending to be grown up and actually living on our own being a grown up. It doesn’t matter if it’s a school night or Christmas Eve our little tradition always carries on into the quiet hours of the night when only the tick-tock of the old clocks and the hush of the cat paws dance with the midwest winter wind. We try to stay hushed because our parents sleep in the room underneath us and Dad can hear the slightest movement when he sleeps. It’s “giggle giggle giggle” then “shhhh, don’t wake Dad.” Then, even louder, “giggle giggle giggle.” It’s the best part of being a sister and the bond that neither of our brother’s will ever understand.

What seems like milleniums ago, but was just a few years ago, I drove the three hours to my sister’s old farm house on school breaks. I followed her around the house giggling as she cleaned up her kids toys. I went on and on about some boy I met after practicing for my weekly piano lesson, “Megan all he wants to do is sing! How perfect is that?! And he’s going to do it!” A few weeks later the Blessed-Lady-of-Acceleration broke down again and I declared, “I will ride my bike to Michigan if that’s what it takes to see him!”

*Last I heard this boy was in law school. I never talked to him again after school let out for the summer.*

The best part about being a girl is staying up all night with your best girlfriend talking more about the idea of someone than that person. The moment before the first date, the first kiss and long before the disappointment of the last date and the last kiss, when the universe is aligned because two strangers met under not so unusual, but seemingly unbelievable circumstances. That moment when even the most cynical person can believe in love for a fleeting moment. Maybe it’s just girls, I don’t know, maybe boys get to go through this too, but I secretly hope not.

I can’t remember the last time I dug through Becca’s pajama drawer looking for my old t-shirts that got handed down to her for sleeping. I think the last time I went home was when our 6 year old niece caught Becca in her first kiss. Paige ran down the stairs with her blonde curls bouncing, “Becca kissed a boy! Mom, Becca kissed a boy!” We all tried to ignore Paige and go on with our grown-up tasks so not to embarrass Becca, but that night, like every other night, we crawled into bed and I demanded every detail. It was just a small peck, but enough to set a world of expectations that no man will ever be able to live up to. Why do we fall in love with the idea of someone and everything they might be before we even know the person?

I am homesick for the feeling of being a big sister. I hate hearing about her junior high broken heart and not being able to cheer her up. I want to be there to tell her what a loser he was and how wonderful she is no matter what the circumstances of the break up was. I miss Becca so much it hurts like falling off the monkey bars and having the wind knocked out of you. The other thing I miss is that feeling of having butterflies in my stomach when someone walks into the room. That moment when, trying not to stare, I hope to make eye contact with someone on the other side of the room. Holding my breath until a complete stranger notices me at a friend’s crowded barbecue. A crush. I can’t remember the last time I had a crush.

I met a man last night that I might never talk to again (especially if he reads this), but that doesn’t matter (but I really hope he does). In a world of disaster after disaster - gunmen, earthquakes, war, death, destruction - we talk about love and art, but I forgot what it is like to have a crush. To dance with the physical attraction and energy of a person and not know a thing about him. I thought the world had lost this magic. I thought it was gone forever, but it was just buried under cynicsm and pessimism. It was there all along. Maybe he’ll call. Maybe he won’t. That’s not what matters, that’s not what I miss. All I want to do is to curl up next to Becca on a chilly Indiana evening and listen to the wind howl in the empty cornfields enclosing the house and declaring “love” to the idea of a person that I simply have a crush on.

I am floating right now. Not really in a state above or below water. I have things I need to do, things I want to do and things I need and want to do but end up taking a nap when it’s time to do them. The question “What now?” runs through my mind like a hamster on a wheel. I try to ignore it, exhaust it, forget it, but it’s always there spinning away. To keep myself from spinning or becoming paralyzed I run. I run in the same area I have always run in San Diego, along the dirt roads of Mission Trails Park, up Mt Fortuna and down the other side. Some days there are hikers, dirt bikers, the city water people working on construction sites. Other days nobody. Some days I stand at the top and scream at the top of my lungs. Other days I close my eyes and revel in the sunlight on my face for a few moments before I continue. I have an iPod, but I only use it when I can hear the nearby freeway. When I get into the dips of the valley and the civilized world disappears I turn it off and listen to the world the way it should be.

I stated before that I don’t meditate, I don’t know how. That is a lie. I meditate every morning. I just never looked at it like that before. I looked up the definition of meditation out of curiosity today:

1. to engage in thought or contemplation; reflect.
2. to engage in transcendental meditation, devout religious contemplation, or quiescent spiritual introspection.

I had to take some time off after the last marathon to nurse an injury I had ignored for months prior to the race. During the San Francisco Nike Woman’s Marathon I dropped my iPod at mile 19. It was October and much colder than the warm San Diego fall. I did not have appropriate clothes for the weather and the cold wind made my muscles tighten up worse than usual. When I leaned over to pick up the iPod I tore my already inflamed hamstring. The pain went from my leg to my knee to my sciatic nerve over the next few weeks. I didn’t know when I would be able to run again, but after a marathon it usually takes a month or two to recover and realize running doesn’t equal pain and misery anyways. In December I tried to run and the pain was still there. I went to see a physical therapist. She told me I should try lower impact exercise. I laughed and said, “I’m a runner. That’s what I do.” She understood and we did some strength training and I took 3 more months off.

When you start to run after taking a break it’s like the first time again. The first time you realized that you love it and can run forever and ever and ever. Just running like Forrest Gump. After a break you remember what it is like to go to that place that is neither physical nor spiritual. That place where your mind is empty and your body is free. I can’t explain it, but if you have ever ran you probably know what I’m talking about. Training routines and personal goals get in the way of this tranquility. It’s been awhile since I ran just to run.

This morning I woke up at 6:30. It’s Sunday and last night instead of drinking at the Sod, I visited with old friends, read a little, went to bed before 12:30. I wanted to beat the mid morning sun and weekend crowds of hikers and bikers on my trails. If running is my meditation it only seems natural that I should do it alone on empty roads.

It was a cold and gloomy morning. Perfect running weather. I started off on the rocky trail not sure if it was going to be a good run day or not despite the weather. To change things up a bit I took my normal run route backwards. This allows me to run downhill first and I figured I could use some adrenaline to get me going.

I run for 45 minutes uphill just for the twelve, gravity-defying minutes downhill. Going down the air hits my face as I stretch my legs out and pound my feet into the ground to keep my footing. There is a split second when both my feet float above ground - flying. I’m free from the constraints and laws of physics. There are moments when I lose my footing, or gravity pulls my upper body forward faster than my lower body, like a toddler first learning to walk. Flying forward with no way to gage whether I can stop or make the upcoming turn before flying right off the side of the hill. At this moment I realize life is like a crystal vase - fragile and fated to break; if you don’t use it then you waste it’s beauty in keeping it safe. Running down, out of control, I picture what it must feel like to run right off the side of the hill. I wonder if I would really fly?

I ran down this morning. Free like a gazelle leaping through the grasslands. This freedom was restricted by knowing I would soon have to run up. The pain would be endured knowing that after reaching the top of Mt Fortuna I would be able to run back down. Like a yo-yo my feelings and body run up and down over the land. Today, I reached the top and stopped. I try to stop for at least a few seconds and enjoy the beauty of the world and the accomplishment of seeing the path I just ran everyday, but today I stopped longer. I saw a little patch of sunlight on the land where the sun was breaking away the clouds. I don’t know why but this brought tears to my eyes. It was beautiful and I knew when I ran downhill against the cold air my rosy cheeks would welcome that little patch of sunlight moving across the green valley. It reminded me of Machu Picchu and while Mission Trails is far from Machu Picchu, it’s beauty is the same - breathtaking.

I sat on a rock, longer than usual, and let the uncontrollable tears roll down my cheeks and onto my lips. I tasted the salt and laughed. Why am I crying? I asked myself. For freedom, beauty and life I answered - half mocking, half serious. I started laughing aloud. I decided I must have gone mad. Some hikers walked by and I kept quiet and watched the black crows dive through the air until they passed. I could watch birds dance along the invisible wind streams forever. When they were out of eyesight I stood up and held my hands up like the statue of Christ the Redeemer. I spun around in circles. Dancing and spinning and dancing and spinning. Round and round until I got dizzy and stopped.

It occurred to me that this new found freedom is from getting out of the Marine Corps. I’m free. I’m free. I’m free. It is more than that though. Spinning on the top of the mountain I thought of Hugo. The man in a wheel chair for 20+ years who was grateful he was alive, not bitter an accident left his lower limbs useless. I thought of the old couple in the jungle. They would probably think running for fun is absurd. Their life is about survival - they learn to run fast so they can outrun predators or catch a meal, not so they can earn a medal or beat a personal record. I thought of standing on top of Waynu Picchu, dizzy from the altitude and the tiny steps without any railing, standing on top of the world seeing something I have wanted to see for so long. I took a deep breath and as I let it out slow and steady I realized this is why I run. If there is one thing I would pray for it would be that god never takes this meditation and tranquility away from me.

I’m home now. Floating again. Trying to figure out what I’m going to do next. What my next bold move is going to be. I spend my days floating above and below water. I don’t have much body fat so if I’m not careful I go from floating to sinking before I know what’s happening. I have these things I need to do, but I don’t write them down on paper, I just let the hamster spin them around and around on its wheel. I get to them when I feel like getting to them, but always making the deadlines (I will probably file my taxes on April 14th). After all, they aren’t just going to go away on their own. In the meantime I am learning how to run again, learning how to meditate, learning how to appreciate life.

I wrote about spinning before. The obsessive thoughts that seem to drown you in a whirlpool of self-loathing with nothing you can do, but ride the storm to the end and hope you come out okay. Tonight I hit the opposite wall. I was paralyzed. It has been awhile since this happened to me. It is far less common for me than spinning. The last time was at the Sod when a friend said to me, “Don’t look at me in that tone of voice.” We were arguing about where everyone was going and who was crashing where since none of us could drive at that point. The bar was closing and there were people rushing out the door, finishing last drinks and trying to find their friends. Matt looked at me and said “Don’t look at me in that tone of voice,” and I was paralyzed. All I could do was stand there. The room spun around me partially because I was drunk and partially because I was paralyzed. The only other person I had ever heard use that phrase was Vince, a friend in high school who passed away a few years after we graduated. It had been a long time since I thought about Vince and I had never heard anyone else use that phrase. Paralyzed. All you can do is keep breathing.

I went running today to burn off the ridiculous amount of energy I have on any given day. Doesn’t matter how much I have slept or how much coffee I have had. I’m a self-diagnosed, untreated ADOS (Attention Deficient…Oh Shiny!) adult trying to self medicate with running. It doesn’t really work. I think running just gives me more energy. Normal people would run 5, 12, 18, 23, whatever miles and be exhausted. Me, I finish running and I’m exploding with energy. I’d run more, but running is starting to wear down my body. My hips and muscles start to ache so I go to yoga to stretch and strengthen them.

My favorite part of yoga is the end. The last 5-10 minutes before the bow and “Namaste.” Those last 10 minutes of complete peace and serenity because your body is too exhausted to think. Except I haven’t mastered meditation so I do think (sometimes I fall asleep and it’s an amazing power nap that feels like I’ve been resting for hours).

Well, today the yoga studio is packed too full. About half way through the class I realize I hate people. All of us. I don’t know why. I can’t clear my mind or stop it from thinking how ridiculous we are in our name brand yoga outfits with our BPA Free reusable water bottles in our 95° + yoga studio. We’ll go home and eat our range free organic shit for dinner and put things in the recycling and compost containers and think we had a good wholesome day. Tomorrow we’ll wake up and do it again. Tonight it all seems so artificial. I feel like I’ve got strings attached to my limbs making my body fold and bend from a man above the curtain. I don’t know which pose is making me so angsty, or maybe it is just the heat, but I can’t stop thinking about how disconnected to the world I have become. Yet I am here with these people that I am starting to hate, doing yoga, which is a less than enjoyable feat.

It is not a stereotypical yoga class; or at least not the stereotypes of yogi’s I have. It’s an interesting mix of young and old, men and women, some conservative looking, others covered in tattoos. It’s a nice variety, but still I don’t feel like I belong. How could I have anything in common with these people? As soon as my ‘free trial’ week of yoga is over I’m not going to be able to afford the ridiculous prices to do something that theoretically I could make myself do at home if I had any self discipline at all. Maybe this is the connection I’ve lost to the rest of the world - job, money, responsibility, and the freedom to do what I want because I have money. I gave all of that up. At least for now. Maybe forever.

After an hour of different exercises and stretches in the heated room I am drenched in sweat and ready for the relaxation part of the class. I have struggled keeping my mind blank and not being negative so I hope I can relax during the last exercise.

Meditating has always been a challenge for me. I can’t not think about anything – that’s impossible for me. If I rest my first mind my second mind usually spins in all directions. I try to focus on “Om,” but when I hum the sacred syllable it tickles my lips and I get the giggles like when someone farted in grade school. Sometimes I close my eyes and let my body rest in this weird dream state that it knows is only going to last a few minutes. Other times when my mind is really active I do this weird exercise – I visualize my funeral. Who would be there, what they would say, how I died, all the details about an event I won’t attend, well not really. I suppose it’s morbid, but it keeps me living in the present and keeps things in perspective. It’s not that I fear my death. This exercise actually helps me embrace the idea of dying. It frees me from the fear of the ultimate unknown and question if I have lived my life to the fullest. Meditating about death lets me evaluate how I have lived and appreciate the time I still have.

Today I let my mind practice this exercise because I can’t concentrate on cleansing my mind and focusing on nothing. Thinking about my memorial leads me to thinking about my purpose in life (or rather lack thereof), which leads me to thinking about a conversation we had at chow one night in Iraq about a year ago.

I was reading “Man’s Search for Meaning” by Victor Frankyl (amazing book if you haven’t read it). I was discussing Frankyl’s assessment that meaning in life comes from 3 things. 1. To love someone. 2. To serve someone or a cause. 3. Through suffering (he used the example of a terminal illness and his experiences in concentration camps). I was having a hard time adjusting to the deployment and said that I was going to find meaning in my life through my suffering there. One man, who is no longer a friend, mocked me and my suffering.

My mind jogs back over to yoga and I can hear the instructor say “Namaste”.

Back to the conversation in Iraq, “Libby, this isn’t suffering, this is paradise compared to how the Marines outside the wire live.”

“You can’t compare my suffering to another man’s suffering, because you do not know the depths of our sorrows or the range of our joys. Besides I didn’t join the Marine Corps to sit in an office on an air base and fight with other officers over petty shit and watch grown men act like they are in high school, but I don’t really have a choice do I?”

In yoga, I hear other students rolling up their mats and the distinct sound of the plastic sticking to itself as they roll.

My mind flashes an image that I found on my computer the other day. It’s a picture of the boyfriend who I had to leave behind when I boarded the plane to go to The Sandbox. The picture is actually a series of pictures from a night at the Sod. We are laughing and making faces and just a happy go lucky couple of kids. I tried to love him. I tried and it didn’t work out. Nobody’s fault, just didn’t work out. But I tried and now I don’t believe in love.

In the steamy yoga studio people are starting to talk in hushed whispers as if we were in a library.

Back to Iraq with the argument of this man who thinks because he has lived longer than me he knows more than me, which isn’t true. Age does not always equal experience or wisdom. I don’t argue, because it is pointless. He is one of those people set in their ways and I do not want to discuss it with him anymore. I contemplated over chow like I contemplate in the studio now, is there meaning? In love? In service? In suffering? In death? Is there meaning? When I die nobody will discuss how I suffered to connect to belonging to society?

I open my eyes when I feel someone walk by and a drop of their sweat hits my forehead. I look around and there are students everywhere, half naked with their sweaty yoga mats and Nalgene bottles. I try to move. I try to get up. My brain fires out neurons telling my legs to bend, my torso to rise and my arms to roll up my sticky yoga mat, but my body does not respond. It is on strike. I close my eyes for concentration. It doesn’t help. My rational brain fights my emotional brain to get up. It is a civil war inside my body. I quit fighting and let my second mind take over hoping it will exhaust itself so the rational first mind can make my body function again.

My mind goes back to the picture. The happy, young girl enjoying one of her last nights with her friends and boyfriend before going off to war. It seemed so poetic at the time – young, happy, in love and ready to go to war. It’s what we are trained to believe will give us purpose – service. My mind focuses on her. Who was she? Where did she go? The girl who seemed to be able to love, understand and connect to the people around her. The girl that left for war thinking and maybe even hoping she might not come back. She came back from 6 months of suffering to the world she left behind. She came back only to realize the suffering was just beginning. She came back and left again only the second time she didn’t come back.

I try to move my body. Paralyzed. I keep breathing.

I think about the girl that I used to be and the person I am now. What is the difference? So little and so much. I am back and ready to leave again. Addicted to the feeling of going somewhere new and far away to live in a world where I’m so out of place that I feel like I belong there. That girl used to believe in the world. She believed things could get better. Believed that people wanted things to get better. Now, I believe in myself. This girl who believed in love, and believed it was what she wanted. Now, I think of the old couple in the jungle village that loved each other because that is all they know. I don’t want that. Or do I? Or did I? I don’t know anymore. The girl didn’t like to be alone, but after all the days I spent alone I eventually stopped being lonely and became at peace with myself and my deep sense of self-awareness. That girl never felt this sense of serenity.

I feel salty tears mix with the beads of sweat running down my face. What am I doing? What am I doing? What am I doing? My rational mind asks still fighting to move. My second mind answers living living. Living. Living. I struggle to control my breathing and fear I might start seizing at any moment.

Then I remember I have to get toilet paper from the store across the street before I go home. I was there earlier and forgot. I forgot the day before too. The first mind won. My limbs recognize the signals from my brain and move back to life. I pick up my mat and towel and make my way through the crowd coming in for the next class. I avert my eyes because I do not want to have to explain my odd behavior, not even through eye contact. I go to the “locker room” that is set up with cute cubicles and community lotions, hair dryers, curling irons and more. I slide past the women stripping down to take a shower and grab my things. Still I do not make eye contact with anyone. I do not want to speak to them. Do not want to go through the expected, unnecessary small talk. I won’t likely see them again after the free trial so what does it matter?

I think of the picture of the ex-boyfriend and the suffering I had to endure because I loved someone. There was no meaning in either act. I think about Iraq and the bull shit war I was fighting. That did not give me meaning. I think about the toilet paper I will probably forget to get again as I walk through the maze of strangers. There is no meaning in detachment either. Maybe there is no meaning to the suffering, the love or absence of, the service. Maybe it’s all just acts of bravery and the only meaning is survival by any means – love, detachment, war, peace. I leave the studio and the cold air bites my skin making me feel alive and present again.

At the gym in Al Asad there was a kid who worked there. He was from Nepal or India or Sri Lanka or somewhere in that part of the world. He mopped the floor every morning when Achilles and I were doing lunges and squats. It made the exercises more treacherous than they needed to be, but he was just doing his job. He seemed happy getting paid far less than anyone in America would work for doing his job, but far more than anyone in his country makes. Every three or four days he wore a red shirt that said in big white letters:

SAME SAME
BUT DIFFERENT

I never understood what it meant, but I loved it when he wore this shirt because it gave me something to ponder while we were at the gym. Also the repetition was a way to mark the days gone by in a place where everyday is Groundhog’s Day. I don’t know what made me think of his shirt the other day but I finally understood it. It’s my life. I’m the same. San Diego is the same. My friends are the same. My family back in Indiana is the same. But it’s all different. Everything seems to have completely changed and I can’t figure out why?

Same same but different.

My brother and sister-in-law bought a house and found out they are expecting. My friends here have new friends and boyfriends they hang out with. Some people have moved away completely. I don’t have a permanent address, just borrowing a room for a few weeks. I can’t even unpack, not that I would want to start that process. I have my car, which is dirty and filled with loose papers, running shoes, a pair of boots, high heels, empty cd cases. That hasn’t changed at all. The Ould Sod still has karaoke on Thursdays/Saturdays and live music on Fridays; the same bar tenders work the same shifts. I went in late on Saturday night and only recognized one or two people. Jill was out of town and apparently everyone else had plans.

Same same but different.

I don’t feel like I live here. More like I’m just visiting, but I don’t know when I’m going to leave. I really have no idea what is next. If any opportunities come up I have no reason to pass on them. Yet, I do live here. This is my life. I’m not visiting. I live right here, right now. Then again maybe I am just visiting. If I had stayed in the Marines I would be rotating to another duty station this summer. San Diego was never permanent. Everything has always been temporary.

Same same but different.

I’m broke again. I feel like I’m where I was 5 years ago. Broke, homeless, full of ideas but not the time or energy to follow through with all of them. The difference is now I have a car, and consequently a car payment, a little less debt, a little more money in savings and 5 years of life that has changed me completely and not at all.

Same same but different.

You don’t notice the changes in someone when you are with them everyday. You don’t notice the tiny wrinkles in their forehead. the extra pounds they gain or lose, little things that seem like a part of life. Then someone goes away and comes back. Then the changes come out all at once. A new hairstyle, new apartment, new friends, new habits, new diets, new training routines. You go away and all these things that would have otherwise gone unnoticed and accepted as normal are now standing in the middle of the room like a big pink elephant. You can’t ignore it. You can’t accept it. You can’t talk about it because to everyone else it is normal. So you have to figure out a way to decorate around pink until eventually the elephant has just always been there.

Same same but different.

Of course there are the changes in the one that left. I have changed. I don’t notice it because I’m with myself everyday. I lost weight even though I didn’t need or mean to, my hair is lighter from the sun, my skin a little tanner, but I’m still Libby. Of course there are all the internal changes. I let go of the disappointment and anger that built up over the last four years. I learned how to live as a civilian again. I learned how to communicate without words or with words I didn’t understand. I saw parts of the world that I dreamt about and I saw things I never imagined even existed. All these things changed within me without me noticing. I’m already accustomed to my pink elephant.

Same same but different.

So, I live in a strange state of limbo. I’m not the person I was when I left. My friends aren’t the people they were when I left. My life isn’t the same as when I left. But it is all the same. Just like his shirt - nothing makes sense but somehow all seems appropriate.

Same same but different.

In high school I took dance lessons, well continued dance lessons as I have been dancing ever since I could stand.  My siblings and I took lessons from Nancy Rhines, or Dancy Nancy, as my mom used to say to differentiate between our dance teacher and our neighbor Nancy (who wasn’t really a neighbor at all living across the highway and a mile away from our house). In high school Dancy Nancy used to cheer us on during lessons in her chipper voice, “don’t forget to breathe,” as we sautéd across the studio. “Keep breathing,” as we pirouetted in time to the music. My older sister and I used to mock Nancy at home. We thought it was a ridiculous thing to forget to breathe, but as the dances became more difficult we understood. As we concentrate on the steps you tend to hold your breath.

I think of Nancy from time to time when I am running, in yoga, or working on something that takes so much of my concentration that I somehow forget to do the normally involuntary action. I heard her voice the day I boarded the plane to fly back to California.

‘Keep breathing Libs.’ I tell myself as I walk past the flight attendants. ‘Remember to breathe.’ I repeat as I find my seat amongst strangers again. I sit down and open my journal and write my mantra that has gotten me through similar situations. Saying it doesn’t help - I have to write it over and over again distracting my mind. Eventually it whispering it as I write calms my breathing back to normal.

THE TRICK IS TO KEEP BREATHING THE TRICK IS TO KEEP BREATHING THE TRICK IS TO KEEP BREATHING THE TRICK IS TO KEEP BREATHING THE TRICK IS TO KEEP BREATHING THE TRICK IS TO KEEP BREATHING THE TRICK IS TO KEEP BREATHING THE TRICK IS TO KEEP BREATHING THE TRICK IS TO KEEP BREATHING THE TRICK IS TO KEEP BREATHING THE TRICK IS TO KEEP BREATHING

It is the title of a book by a Scottish woman. I read it in my Contemporary Scottish Literature class years ago. All I remember is that it was written from the perspective of a woman who was having an affair with a married man and when he died nobody acknowledged her grief just the wife’s. I think the married couple was separated, but it was still a scandalous affair in a small Scottish town. I couldn’t tell you if the book was good or not or who wrote it just that it had the perfect title.

I don’t know why I’m having a panic attack on the plane, but I am. I can feel my lungs expand and shrink in my chest rapidly with each shortened breath. My body temperature rises and sweat starts to roll down my forehead, but I’m cold and want the comfort of a blanket. I pull the soft blanket Jill and Rachael gave me for xmas. I tuck it around my bare legs. It was close to 100 F in Lima when I left. I also turn the vent above my seat. The voices around me are singing sentences in Spanish and I am used to not understanding what is being said around me. I have my journal open and I’m scribbling down “the trick is to keep breathing” over and over again when the emergency instructions override the other voices. First in Spanish and then in English. Does anyone even pay attention to the instructions? I calm my breathing down enough to ask myself - what is wrong? It was one of those moments when the world is spinning out of control and everyone around me is frozen in time.

What is wrong? I have no idea what I’m going home to. I have no idea what I’m going to do next. I have no idea where I’m going to be in 5 months and people want me to make a plan for 5 years. I don’t even know if the earth or the human race is going to be around in 5 years or maybe that is just wishful thinking.

I could start looking for a job. I could probably get a good job with my education and experience in the Marines, but why? That isn’t what I want - to be stuck in an apartment lease, an annual salary, 2 weeks paid vacation, sick days, health care plans, etc. etc. I had a great job with meaning and easy promotions all the way to Major. I hated it. Why would I go back to that lifestyle? So what now? I have school to work on. Somedays I’m not so sure it’s worth it to have my masters in creative writing, but it keeps me writing and when the Post 9/11 GI Bill kicks in I’ll be getting paid to go to school. So I keep pushing through not to promote a career, but because I love to write and want to get better. I also stay in school like many of the people I know still in school getting nursing degrees, or PhD’s or whatever else - so we don’t have to face the fact that we’re grown ups now. We avoid the life of work, dinner, sleep. Work dinner, sleep. work, dinner, marriage, sleep. Work, dinner, kid, sleep. Some of us are afraid of growing old and the responsibilities that entails, some of us want these things and are taking our time to get there.

So I have school and my writing to focus on, except I can’t focus. I have time to run and go to yoga, but that only keeps my concentration for an hour or so. I have all this stuff in storage to rummage through and try to sell or donate to charity. The longer I go without the less I feel the need to hold on to it all. I am halfway planning a trip back to Indiana, but it will be hard to get the motivation to do it. Why leave a perfect paradise to visit the cornfields? I want to go to the Grand Canyon and hike or white river raft. Maybe I’ll hide out there for a couple weeks.

Everyone is asking “then what?” and I don’t know. I want to go to India in the fall. I have a wedding I’m in this August. I want to drive out to NYC to visit some friends and the city. Then what? What is it with our planning obsessed society? Have we really become that spontaneophobic? Do I have to have a plan? Maybe if I did I wouldn’t have panic attacks in airplanes. I learned in the jungle that if you take away the cars, computers, excess shit that we have in the “western” or “developed” or whatever you want to call us, all you have to do is survive. It’s as simple as that and they are happy. We don’t need our big salaries and fancy houses we can’t pay for, we have everything we need and yet we have these things and we manage to want more along with our antidepressants and 5 o’clock cocktails. Then again in the jungle they don’t have the means to art, music, theater. Maybe it’s a fair trade.

So, now what? I’m going to get rid of the things I don’t need and live out of my car for awhile. That’s my plan. I’ll travel to friends I haven’t seen in awhile and see all of the US I haven’t seen yet. I can live without a job for awhile. Money only gets you so far in life and stuff only ties you down. I think as long as I keep breathing I think I’ll be okay.

This is it.  I’m coming to the end of this trip quite rapidly.  It’s weird to think that so much has happened in such a short amount of time.  Just 3 months ago I was getting up to go into work for another Thursday and now I’m getting up in a foreign country facing a new life with all new challenges.

I have gone through so many emotions on this trip it´s crazy to think about how little time it has taken me to experience so much life.  I think it is the fact that for the last four years I had to conceal my emotions, my opinions, my fears, my triumphs.  I don’t have to hide it anymore.  I am free to be who I am again.  Since I left I came to terms with serving in a war.  I danced with ecstasy on the top of a mountain after the realization that anything is possible.  I was so lonely I cried.  I was so happy I cried.  I watched bottle nose dolphins playing in the surf and river dolphins playing in the Amazon.  I overcame my fear of the ocean and swam in the crashing waves.  I learned to forgive myself and not regret past decisions, but accept that there is no right or wrong decision - just the decision and the consequences.  I witnessed people with nothing demonstrate a love that goes far beyond material things and modern conveniences of our world.  I sat in a crowded bar of tourists and realized I was completely at peace with myself.  I spent speechless days in peace because I no longer feared the silence of my own thoughts.  I thought I was going to die crossing a bridge on the trek to Machu Picchu and was not fearful or sad because I was going to die, but content that I lived a good life and would die pursuing my dreams.  I fell in love with the world.  I dreamed of all the places to I want to go and things I’d like to do.  So many that now I only hope I have the energy to see and do them all in this lifetime.

I think the most important part of this journey is the fact that I have come to peace with two people - myself and god.  I have come to terms with the challenges in my life that at one point or another seemed unnecessary and cruel.  Now, I realize they were necessary and hard for a reason.  They have made me who I am and will help me face more challenges and greater obstacles down the road.  The path I choose to take is not an easy one and this is just the beginning.

I am getting ready to return in the next few days.  I wake up every morning and enjoy it as one of the last.  It is different than when I woke up the beginning of January.  Back then everything was new and exciting.  I had weeks ahead of me to do so much.  Now, I wake up and know it is almost the end.  I wake up and enjoy the morning air of freedom.  I am free to do whatever I want.  Many people in this world will never know that feeling.  I am comfortable where I am and will be sad to have to say goodbye soon.  The past few days have been infected with a case of insomnia.  Each night I listen to the sounds of night - the honking cabs, the drunk backpackers trying to get back to the hostel, the locals arguing over whatever.  I listen with my eyes closed trying to force myself back to sleep and eventually give in and remove the eye mask and watch the shadows and lights outside the window.  I let my mind trail off and think about all the things I have put off facing for the last 2 months.  All the things I left behind unattended.  All of the worries - what am I going to do next?  Am I going to be able to push through this semester of school?  Should I even continue school?  Am I going to stay in San Diego?  Am I going to travel across the states?  How long can I last without a job?  Can I even find a job?  Can I find a job that has meaning to me?  What do I want to do?

Eventually my mind exhausts itself and I wake up when the morning light floods the room.  I carry on through the day enjoying it more than the last because each one is closer to the end.  Soon this will all be memories.  I will be able to close my eyes at any time and remember what the streets look like, hear the sound of the children in the park across the street, the feeling of joy walking along the busy neighborhood.  This is it.  I know that nothing lasts forever and this is what makes us enjoy it, knowing it is going to end.

During a ‘Women of Al Asad’ meeting in Iraq a female Colonel (at the time Colonel select) whom I admire so much, said something I will never forget.  One of the young Marines was talking about having a boyfriend and being in Iraq and different duty stations.  How do you keep the spark alive when you never see each other, etc.  The Colonel said something I might have said, but given her seniority in life and the Corps, her words carried more weight than my whimsical attitude might have.  “Marine, I have been at least 5 different women in my life.  Each woman wanting and needing something different than the last.  You are young, enjoy being single and when you stop changing you´ll know what you want.  Trust me.”  The Sergeant made a comment about certain needs and the Colonel laughed saying “We all have needs to fill…” and the whole room bust out laughing.

I think of that conversation often.  I think of the different “chapters” of my life I have opened and closed.  Yet, even though I get away from myself, I always seem to come back to me.

I have a theory.  I call it the “Perpetual Age Theory.”  I have discussed this with a variety of people and I think it originated with my lost twin, Regina, in Chicago.  It goes like this - we reach a certain age and never outgrow it.  Sure we grow wrinkles and gray hairs, we move around the world, get married, have babies … but some part of us never outgrows that age.  Me - I am and will always be a 13 year old girl.  Socially awkward, with long limbs that seem unproportional, stubborn and determined, but most importantly believing anything is possible.  My friend Deb is 103 - way wiser and more mature than your average 30 yr old.  So, while I go through these different phases, being a different women with different wants from time to time I go back to the 13 yr old kid that I will always be.
Today, I took my laundry to the place down the street that does laundry.  I walked around a bit, feeling better than I have in almost a week, but not good by any means.  I went and tried on a fancy dress I had been looking at since before I left Peru.  I finally tried it on and broke the zipper.  I eventually got it off, fixed it on the hanger to look normal and give me time to flee the crime scene.  I had a late lunch at a café reading an essay about interrogation tactics by Mark Bowden (they are just cruel).  The last few days I have walked around aimlessly.  The streets and the people keep reminding me of a past world I used to live in - New York City.  It was in between college and before even thinking about joining the Marine Corps.  I went to a graduate program at NYU for publishing and then pretended to get a job after calling Mom the day of my return flight to say “Mom, my flight is today, but I’m not on it.”  I spent months walking around the city.  I walked from Brooklyn to Manhattan, if I gathered enough change I would take the trains out to their last stop in Queens and ride them back.  I wrote in my journal.  If you read them now the entries would be similar.  A young, educated woman of privilege trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my life vs. what I should do with my life and starting out with $30k+ of school loans.  Back then I wanted to do nothing but write.  I didn’t have a penny to my name, but I managed.  When I was lonely, I was comforted by the crowds of people in Times Square.  When I was melancholy I enjoyed solitude in Battery City Park.  I loved it.  One of my favorite and hardest times in life.

We all live such busy lives and rarely do we have the time I did then and I do now to really be able to think and write and enjoy simplicity.  The last few days I have watched travelers check in and out of the hostel all anxious to keep moving I have and silently laughed.  I said before - life is movement.  It is, but sometimes we need to move while standing still.  Just like we need to be 5 different people to realize that we always knew what we wanted.  We just didn’t know how to get it.  We have to grow in age to come back to the same spot where we stopped.  I live my life in my own head most of the time.  Quiet and shy, just observing the world.  At 13 I was still playing fairy games in our backyard and woods by myself.  I remember writing bad stories and worse poems because I wanted to be a writer (as well as a ballerina, a Marine Biologist and a mermaid).  Really nothing has changed.  So, I move all around the world knowing someday I will end up where I started - but also knowing the journey is as important as the end.

Obama’s campaign slogan was all about change and hope.  Don’t get me wrong, I hope he can change a lot of things in America that have gone wrong or been ignored in the past. There is no doubt that America, as well of the rest of the world is in dire need of a lot of hope and even more change.  The question I think every American and citizen of the world for that matter, should ask themselves is – What have I done to promote the change I wish to see in the world?  Well, what have you done?

Conversation overheard in the common area of the hostel between an American girl (in her early 20’s) and a Peruvian tour agent at the hostel tour agency (also in her early 20’s) :

American Girl:  I would love to go to Bolivia, but it would cost me $100 just for a visa!
Tour Agent:  Good!  Oh I’m sorry {voice trails off}
American Girl:  No, say what you want about America, I don’t care.
Tour Agent:  It takes us years to get a visa to America and just because you are American you can go wherever you want, I think it’s smart that Bolivia charges Americans to get in.

The subject changed shortly thereafter, and I was too annoyed to continue eavesdropping.  

While hiking to Machu Picchu we kept running into another group of trekkers.  They were in their 50’s and we were all in our 20’s and 30’s so we never really made an effort to befriend the other group.  They had all their high speed, name brand gear and we had our cheap packs and crazy guide.  Joanna did make conversation with one of the two women in the group one night when we had camps in the same backyard.  I should rephrase that, the woman asked where Joanna was from and being courteous Jonna asked in return.  The woman replied, “I’m American, but I am not proud.”  Joanna was offended by this statement and she’s Irish.  I am glad I was at the hot springs at the time because I would have probably had more than a few words to say to this woman.  

What I want to say to her now is this.  No, actually you are not ashamed of being American like you seem to want other backpackers to believe.  Is it cool to not be proud of where you are from?  Who you are?  What I think you meant to say is that you are American, but perhaps not proud of what the past or current administration has decided to do.  You are not proud of the American population for voting to put such leaders in power.  But how can you be “not proud” of being American?  If you were truly ashamed of being American you would lie.  You would be from Canada or somewhere in Europe, wherever, but you wouldn’t say with a flair of pride that, “I am American, but I am not proud.”  Furthermore, if you are not proud of your country then what are you doing to make it better?  Travelling around saying things like this?  I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but you are the problem.  People with your attitude who don’t step up and change the things you like to bitch about are exactly what is wrong with the “privelaged” world that backpackers from America and Europe are..

Back to the girl at the hostel.  For 2 days straight I sat on the couch, too sick and exhausted to get up and do anything but watch zombie movies and horror flicks.  I had to listen to this chick go on and on about how wonderful San Diego is (which it is).  I have a very short temper when I’m sick and if I had the energy to shut her up I would have walked over and said, “If it is so great, then why the hell are you here and not there?”  Don’t wory I held back and stuck to Camp Couch.  Right before the conversation about visas to get to Bolivia she was bragging about her boyfriend who is a Corporal in the Marine Corps. . . blah blah blah (and we wonder why people hate N.Americans?! We need to learn how to shut up).  So, while he’s off at war or preparing for war she is sitting in a hostel in Peru saying, “Say whatever you want about America I don’t care.”  

9/11 supposedly united us.  I will leave my thoughts about who was really behind 9/11 to myself and save it for another post, but the media and the government did a really good job bringing us together against a common enemy: evil (however we are supposed to define “evil” as an enemy of an established government).  I have questions about the whole attack, but even if it was staged or was really an attack from foreign terrorists it united us.  It became trendy to show your patriotism on your car, in your front lawn.  Men and women volunteered to go fight this enemy (I must confess, part of the allure of joining the Marine Corps was the war we were and still involved in and my chance to be a part of it).  We started wearing American flags on our clothes, yellow ribbons on our purses, we were America and we were NOT going to back down to this “evil” force.  What I have noticed on this trip is that our patriotism is only skin deep.  I would like to say it is the youthful backpackers, but the woman at Macchu Picchu disproved that.  We are proud of our troops, and supportive of our country while we are safe at home.  Where it is cool to be patriotic and believe in the cause.  As soon as we get away from home we denounce this pride.  We become ashamed of who we are because other people disagree with it, with us, or maybe we disagree with it too.  Perhaps they are jealous that we are able to travel freely from country to country, just because we were born somewhere else.  Perhaps they are really interested in political and current affairs – if so start a conversation about it rather than openly put down your country.

The Irish girls I met on my way to Machu Picchu worked within tourism – one at a pub, the other at a tourist company of some sorts (I honestly don’t remember).  Nickola hated Americans because she had to encounter tourists like the two I have described above.  Joanna was very interested in politics and we had a great open dialogue throughout the trek.  Neither of them treated me poorly because I was American.  They were respectful of my time in service and wanted to know about my experiences in Iraq.  I never denounced my pride in who I am.  I am American.  I am a woman.  I am a Marine.  I am a writer.  These are some of the many characteristics that define who I am.  Are there things I have done that I am not proud of?  Of course, but they are a part of who I am and I have learned to forgive myself and accept them as part of my past.  I think we need to do the same for our country.  We have elected poor leaders and good leaders.  These leaders have made decisions that have cost thousands of lives and they have made decisions that have saved thousands of lives.  This is all part of the history of the world.  It is how it is.  I challenge Americans to learn to forgive ourselves for the mistakes we have made.  We have to take responsibility as individuals and as a country as a whole in these matters.  We have to forgive ourselves and carry ourselves with pride and dignity because it is who we are.  We have to forgive ourselves in order to move on and fix the things we have done wrong.

I also challenge Americans who denounce their country to strangers, who protest the war on Veteran’s day, who brag about their boyfriend in the Marines and then bow down to whatever people want to say about America rather than starting a dialogue where two people can learn and maybe come up with a better solution.  I challenge the Americans who own a restaurant in the heart of the country and have voted in every election, sent their sons and daughters to war, flown a flag everyday of thier lives and are truly patriotic as well.  I challenge all of us to unite under a real cause – change.

I have slowly realized how much I have truly changed over the last 4 years.  I didn’t want to admit that the Marine Corps changed me, but it has.  Yes, they brainwash us to believe that killing is natural so that when the time comes we can execute a mission. They brainwash us to believe in war and violence as an answer to the world’s problems.  Yet, they also train us to believe in something bigger than ourselves.  Something greater than our cars, houses, jobs, happy hours.  Something larger than our families and our own lives.  Never leave a Marine behind.  Once a Marine, Always a Marine.  All the slogans that to us are not just slogans, they are words we live and die by.  I realize that the Marine Corps isn’t for everyone – it wasn’t for me.  However, the Marine Corps taught me a lesson that is missing in our school systems and our family value campaigns.  To believe in and/or live for a cause or country to the point that you would give your life for it.  I do not mean the war, or other political campaigns.  I mean my fellow Marines.  You hear the stories about Marines jumping on grenades to save their buddies.  That is honor.  These young men and women throughout history who gave their life for others, for a mission, for whatever are the heroes of this world.  I challenge you to find a cause and fight for it to the point you would put your life on the line for it.  You don’t have to believe in it 100%.  There are plenty of things in the Marine Corps that I disagree with, but I was still part of that organization and if the time came I was ready for that sacrifice.  It doesn’t have to be war or violence.  You could save the earth.  Work to resolve the problem of AIDS in Africa, female castration, public school systems, autistic research.  It doesn’t have to be on the evening news, but find something that gives you a purpose, that creates change, and promotes hope in those who need it. 

Maybe if you did this you would have true pride in who you are and where you are from and not this poser patriotism that I see so many Americans  demonstrate daily as I travel.  As a nation we have put a lot of faith in Obama and his administration.  I have a lot of faith as well.  But, he is only 1 man.  Instead of putting all of the responsibilities of making the changes for this country and the world we need to step up and do something ourselves. Afterall there seems to be plenty of men and women who are willing to strap bombs on their chests and fly planes into the ground for their cause.  So what have you done to create hope and change for the future?

Thank you.

Funny, flying into the airport today was all too familiar.  Even going through customs felt like second nature.  I shared a cab with a guy from Sweden.   He was much more argumentative with the price than I usually am, but then again I just get ripped off and take it as part of being a white girl traveling who doesn´t speak Spanish.  My fault really.  He won and we payed about what I normally pay when I don´t argue, haha.

I´m back at the same hostel that was my starting point and will soon enough be my ending point in Peru.  I come and go so often that a couple of the young kids who work here ask, “where were you this time?” whenever I come in.  I suppose most people take South America by force.  Starting somewhere and continually moving on to another country and another and another departing somewhere far from where they started.  I don´t like that.  I stuck to “P” countries by accident this time (Poland or Pakistan should be next), but I like staying somewhere and really getting to know it.  So, the Flying Dog Hostel in Miraflores has been my little home in Lima.  I get new roommates and other backpackers in the TV lounge each time I check in, but I feel comfortable here.

I hesitated when the Swedish guy asked me where I was from in the cab today.  I couldn´t remember what to say (this is quite normal for me seeing as I have been known to forget my name, age, address, etc at one time or another).  I finally said, “California,” but it came out shocking and I´m sure he probably thinks I´m crazy.

I feel like I´ve been gone from the states so long that Lima feels like home.  Weird.  I remember going through this same feeling when I lived in Scotland, and in Iraq the one time my boss showed any concern for my well being was when I referred to my office as “home.”

It´s that moment when you realize home is where you are, not where you are from anymore that makes you feel comforted and alienated at the same time.  It´s like driving by the abandoned farm house where I grew up.  That´s home, but it´s not.  That life is over now.  If you have never experienced what I´m saying - on vacation or after moving to college or wherever - you probably won´t get what I´m saying, but if you have then you know - it´s the weirdest feeling in the world.  It´s that feeling of living in limbo.  Of being a vagabond.  You are home wherever you go.  It´s sad and beautiful, but then again California isn´t really where I´m from either; it´s just where I´ve lived the past 2  years.

I just want to add that I have a horrible head cold and just want to stick my head in the sand and call it a day.  So if the below blog seems harsh just blame my cold and the rain for my short temper today!

Now, I am only 27 years old.  Just 27 years on this lovely earth, but I think I have experienced far more than most 27 year olds which gives me the right to blog this post.  Freaks.  I do not mean like the bearded woman and the world´s strongest man from the vintage circus ads.  I also do not mean the men and women covered in 90% tattoos or piercings they can hang 10 lb weights from.  Some of these people are actually more down to earth and what I would define as normal than the men and women on Wall Street with their 3 piece suits.  So what do I mean by Freaks?  I mean those people who say and do absurd things and think that it is perfectly normal and acceptable behavior.  In some ways we can blame their parents and kindergarten teachers for not teaching them basic acceptable social behaviors.  In some ways we can blame the government for giving them freedom of speech.  Perhaps our civil liberties should only be given to those who can pass a basic test (much like I think the right to bear children should only be allowed to those who can pass a test).  If you are going to raise the Freak Flag that is fine, but please do not run through the streets naked using it as a cape for the rest of the world to have to witness.    

I played volleyball growing up and still enjoy a game at the beach or at the Lemon Grove youth gym on Thursday nights (if I´m actually in San Diego).  Any possible career playing volleyball for college or anything other than fun was destroyed my senior year of high school after our first home game.  Cara helped me dye my hair purple the night before the game.  No particular reason other than purple is my favorite color and that’s what we did back then.  I was benched the entire game and watched as the new Super Attendant of the school system´s daughter played my position as a freshman.  Maybe she had potential, but she did not have the skills or the experience I did, so I can safely assume she was played because my coach was also a teacher.  We lost.  I remember us losing more than winning even though I´m pretty sure we won a lot more games than we lost.  The punishments for losing were brutal.  After getting our asses chewed out after the game I was called up to the front of the locker room. 

“Either the color comes out of the hair or you are off the team, but I will not have FREAKS on my team!”  my coach screamed in front of everyone.  Without saying a word to anyone I packed up my things and walked out too proud to shed tears in that locker room.  Cara was at the game with Vince and by the time we got to her car I was sobbing.  Vince just stared because he had never seen me cry and didn´t know it was possible.  We went to the safety of Subway where some of our friends were working.