I thought I was doing fine, and then I watched The Office episode in Season 7 when Michael leaves, and found tears leaking out of my eyes all over the place. And Gil looked at me bewildered, and I choked, “I had to say goodbye to an office too!” So I guess I’m not always doing fine.
I didn’t just inhabit Tanzania; it inhabited me. The humidity settled in my hair, frizzing it out, it dwelt in my skin; I never needed lotion. The tropical sun beat down on me most days of the year; I look at my wrists and neck now, places I didn’t regularly wear sunscreen, and I see that my skin has aged more than my 44 years deem appropriate. My legs and feet were accustomed to sandals and skirts almost every day, not jeans and socks like today. The words I spoke were different–not just when I used Swahili, but my English vocabulary too. My muscles were trained in different patterns; the rough ground I walked on, the way I drove, my routine in the grocery store.
I suppose it’s understandable, then, why I have felt disoriented for so long. My body was yanked out of Tanzania, but for a long while, Tanzania still dwelt in me. It’s not just my mind that has needed reorienting, but my body as well.
In Tanzania, I spent many hours at my tiny kitchen sink, washing dishes. I would stare out the screened window into our backyard watching the dogs and the crows and the occasional chicken. There wasn’t much of a view, mostly just the top of the underground water tank and a cement wall that surrounded the yard. But fuchsia bougainvillea grew on that wall, and several coconut trees towered behind it, their papery leaves rustling in the wind.
It was such a very, very familiar sight to me for many years. I looked out that window when Josiah was two years old, whining at my knee, and when he was twelve years old, making a peanut butter sandwich next to me. Last year, I can remember looking out that window and wondering what it would be like to not look out of it anymore. It was hard to imagine.
My life in Tanzania went on for so long that for a long time, I couldn’t visualize the end of it. Life beyond Tanzania seemed like a fuzzy black hole, out of focus.
Yet here I am, on the other side of the hole. My missionary life was present tense for such a long time that it feels incomprehensible to be writing about it in past tense. No, this can’t be right. That picture outside my kitchen window is so clear before my eyes that I feel I should just be able to go into the next room to see it again. It’s right there, not ten thousand miles away.
I stand here, disoriented, blinking in the light, wondering where exactly I am and how I got here.
But somehow the earth keeps turning and I do what I need to do, over and over. Muscle memory has kicked in, so I’m not hyperventilating in American grocery stores anymore, and I don’t panic every time I drive, wondering if I’m on the wrong side of the road. I go into autopilot when I take the kids to school. I have routine; I have sameness. My nervous system has slowed down enough that the fog has finally lifted. And with it the loss comes more sharply into focus: That’s not my life anymore. I’m not a missionary. I’m not living in Tanzania. I will never look out of that kitchen window again.
I find myself settling in, even hinting at liking this life, and the part of me that belonged to Tanzania resists. It feels like a betrayal. We are finally buying a house and that is thrilling, but the part of me that is excited is at war with the part of me that doesn’t want to belong here, doesn’t want to like it. I want to put down roots; no, I don’t; yes, I do.
It’s ironic how so much of adapting to this life mirrors what I experienced twenty years ago, in adapting to that life. There’s a lot of talking to myself, reminding me where I am and why I am here. There’s a lot of consciously turning from my old life and embracing the new one, while still allowing myself to grieve what is gone. I find hope in remembering that I did it before, so I can do it again.
Related:
Leaving Early Has Complicated All the Complicated Emotions of Re-Entry
Daryl Martin
Love this!!! Again thanks for your perspective.
Beverly Tucker
Hi Amy,
I so appreciate your writing. When we returned from the mission field nearly 3 years ago, I found very few resources for reentry. To complicate matters, we were damaged by some things that happened. I am working on setting up a blog to process these experiences.
amy.medina
I hope you do, Beverly. Blogging is a wonderful way to process.
Dina
I am so amazed how you miss Tanzania.. My birth place is so much appreciated . Your blog made me cry… We also miss your presence here come back my dear
amy.medina
Thank you, Dina. We are hoping to visit later this year!
Brian Rowe
Thank you for the truth of your feelings upon returning. It has been 7.5 years since our return from Uganda and there are still days it’s difficult to cope. All 7 of us had to go through some sort of counseling. We had nothing upon returning to America and have spent most of our return time wondering what to do (and still do most days). There was no re-entry program, counseling upon immediate return, or even people we could trust. In the first two years upon returning we lived with four family members because we had no house and no sustainable paying job. We were literally kicked out of two family member’s houses, one we had to leave to save the relationship, and another to flee the town we lived in because our daughter was horribly abused by her co-worker. As hard as Uganda was for us somedays it was much easier than being back in America.
Thank you again for sharing!
Brian
Kevin
I know the feeling. I lived in the Philippines for 11 years (2002-2013). God has richly blessed our lives since moving back to the USA. But you can’t live overseas for years without it affecting you.
Elaine Brown
Thanks for writing this. I lived in Ghana for over 10 years. I planned to die there. Came home for a six week visit and never got to go back. That was 5 years ago and at times I find myself still grieving
Siggi Berg
I sure know those feelings all too well!
I am back in my home country (Germany) for more than 3 years now, but still miss my missionary life. I returned after more than 20 years living in the US and Asia. I never wanted to go back to Germany, but somehow I ended up back here again.
Most of the time I can now see the blessing of living in Germany again, but then even small things can cause me being homesick. Just yesterday I saw amazingly overpriced papaya at the grocery store and felt such a longing to jump on a plan back to my home in Miami, Taiwan or Thailand!!! I don’t know if those feelings will ever go away and somehow it sometimes the time I have been away even feels like a dream…like another life and sometimes I still mourn for this life, but even though I sure wouldn’t want to miss any of it!
Ruth
This is so much of what I have felt this year, after unexpectedly leaving China after 15 years. We didn’t know we wouldn’t be back, and trying to settle in without any goodbyes on the other end is hard. Buying a house was equally exciting and surreal, when we still had a house, with all our things, that we couldn’t go back to. I can also imagine looking out my large kitchen window at the next apartment building, but it was such a familiar view. And every morning I craned my neck outside to see the mountains. Thank you for expressing this. Past tense is really hard to get used to.