Getting Off the Plane

I'm coming up on a year since I got back from Ukraine.

At first, honestly, it was pretty hard to be back. I was kind of angry at the world for the first little while, and I felt like I didn't really understand people and no one really understood me either. I wasn't prepared for the loneliness that follows a mission. I wasn't prepared for everyone else's apathy. They really just didn't understand... likely still don't. I wasn't prepared for the American "How are you?", which is really just another greeting to be reciprocated and then forgotten. As I stepped off of the plane in Sacramento, I wondered if it had all been just a dream. Two years in Ukraine. Two wonderful, magical years in Ukraine. But no, I still had all the memories and-- yes-- I could still speak Russian. It must not have been a dream after all. But there's something about that first step off of the airplane that sends you reeling back, and you're flooded in a sea of memories and emotions, and it certainly feels a lot like a dream. And you wonder why, if it was so amazing, you ever had to come back. And you bear the concourses of people asking you how it was and wanting to hear only a "Great" -- nothing more. And you've been moving at a hundred miles a minute for the last two years, and now you have nothing to do because everyone's at work and all your friends are at school, and you're looking for a job at the end of June when you know that likely no one will hire you for the month and a half that you have remaining before you, yourself, head up to school.

And then someone does, and you wonder why, because you can see that he has all the help that he could ever need at the warehouse, and then you realize that he gave it to you purely as an act of kindness just because he knew you needed something to keep you busy and to help you through the long days. And you feel the anger start to go away. And your friend gets back from Moscow, and that helps a lot, but then you're off to school and you meet lots of new people, and the loneliness goes away. And you start into classes and you find a job and your free time goes away, but then you realize that there are a lot of great things to do and great people around you, so your sleep goes away and your free time comes back. And then you get through the first semester, and your nostalgia goes away, because it's Christmas, and you're surrounded by people, and the fire's warm, and you only sometimes think about the people without heating in their homes, somewhere in a dreamland far away. And you only half think that it would have been better to just take all the gifts and sell them and send the money to the poor who were everywhere in Ukraine and who, no doubt, huddled out public sight. And then winter comes, and you remember all the cold days that you spent outside, and your fingers ache just thinking about it, and your toes are always cold. And you get through winter classes, and somehow you did well, and you're excited for spring.

And you're finishing up your other classes, and you're not married, by the way, and you don't even have a special someone or anything like that either, and you thought that maybe you would have by now, but you've met a lot of really cool people, and you at last feel, after a year, like you finally belong somewhere, and you finally feel like you're fully home. And you finally get off the plane, and you start your life again. And it's a good life. And you're just grateful... and happy again...