The Turn-Around

Today was a 1.5 hour dinner with volunteer coordinators from ten different service organizations that recruit recent graduates. I focused my attention on Working Boys' Center in Ecuador and the Peace Corps, the only two international programs present. As I left a conversation with Jeanette from Peace Corps which left me in panic-excitement attacks during the walk back to my apartment (no really, I couldn't stop screaming; ask Jess Vega), it struck me how I was all growed up. The transformation is annoyingly near completion.
In 5th grade and 8th grade (or 4th and 6th? does it matter anymore?) I took fieldtrips to summer camp and Washington D.C. On both occasions I had a terrible time because I missed my parents so much. I cried every night for almost two weeks at summer camp, the only kid to do so. Everyone wondered when I'd grow up, probably. I was the cutesie girl-next-door who still needed her mommy (and I LOVE MY MOMMY STILL; don't ever doubt it).
Now my first choice for post-grad is to not see my family or friends for two full years.
Okay, that's an exaggeration. There's skype, 48 days paid vacation however I choose to spend it, and emergency leave. But seriously, Heather? What happened? How did girl next door become the 6-month to 2-year studier-abroad, bored to tears by routine, so utterly disconnected from almost everyone?
Other examples. My high school revolved around music performance: choir, musicals, a cappella groups...I was named "most likely to star on Broadway." HA. The only singing I do now is every other three weeks at a Taize prayer service, and that's not about singing; it's about chanting and praying and blending in. I suppose this instance is a bad example because I utterly miss musical theatre; I don't think I grew out of it. It was one of the few activities that set me on fire inside. The bottom line, however, was that it wasn't the only activity that did so, and I heard music/theatre majors continue with their art because it's quite obviously their heart and soul. For me, it was an exciting hobby, not a way of life.

Better example of my turn-around: faith. Cantoring at Church, Confirmation class, praying to the old-man-with-a-beard God: these were all staples. I gawk at them now. My certainty has become questioning; my givens have been taken away. And though frustrated and isolated, I am so thankful for that. I am seeing outside the box. I am grown up.
The examples go on: socially, physically, romantically...I am older, wiser, sadder. The platitude I've pulled out of all this bothers me. Life goes on. NO REALLY. Here's all this going on in my head. Here's my cousin getting surgery tomorrow, my great Aunt dying, my friends' lives thin with hope, and the big wide world rife with calls to serve beckoning me. I can't press pause, or rewind, and go back to childhood. Life goes on.
Then why am I smiling right now? Jess Vega, my post-grad service buddy who never fails to churn my noggin and soul, put it this way today: "I think life gets harder. I don't know how we're supposed to deal with that. But it also gets better."
My brain can't tell me that's true. But my heart does.