ECUADOR - My June/July 2003 Trip Journal -- by Donna R. Carter
Page Twenty-Six
~^~ Epilogue ~^~
At 3:00 in the morning on Thursday, the phone rang. It was the airline, calling to let us know that my bag had arrived, and we could pick it up at the airport before 6:00 a.m. (excuse me?) because after 6:00 a.m., nobody would be there.
I was completely disoriented - speaking in Spanish on the phone, and trying to figure out where I was. Knowing it was the airport calling, understanding it was my bag, and knowing I was in the U.S., but... where? (In my own room!) After semi clearing the fog, I made arrangements for Jeff to pick up my bag, before 10 a.m., at the Air France terminal. He was to call a guy as he pulled up to the curb, and the guy would run the suitcase out to the car from inside. That worked.
I got my suitcase and unpacked it that afternoon, sorting out what's for whom and everything.
The Feelings Behind it All... Returning "Home" from "Home"
I didn't want to come back. Would anybody get that impression from my trip journal? Only my sense of responsibility made me do it. {big sigh} I wanted my husband Jeff and daughter Melissa to come down there to be with me instead of me coming up here.
I haven't even been back a week, and I want to be here even less now than I did before I left.
I feel directionless here. I never lacked for things to do there. Even when I was without events to do, there was something to do. Places to go, people to see, people to get together with, things to do anyway ... everything was an adventure. Even if I lived there, it would be that way. I want to live there.
I spent hours one night, looking out under the full moon over the snowcaps, crying and crying ... asking God why I had to leave. Why wasn't I born Ecuadorian? Why couldn't I just stay there? Why was my heart so captivated by this country I couldn't live in? I couldn't breathe the air for long enough. I couldn't see the sights for long enough. I couldn't eat the food often enough. I couldn't smell the smells for long enough. I couldn't hear the sounds for long enough.
Sleeping was a necessity - waking was always a delight. Every instant was living: vibrant with clarity and purpose - even when there was "nothing to do" ...
I felt alive. I felt healthy. I felt happier than I have felt in a very, very long time. Life was good, and even if something bad happened, it couldn't take away the goodness of life. Boundless energy bursting out of me - enthusiasm, laughter, delight ... Joy.
Life, for four weeks, was mine.
While constant music was my sanity here, I didn't need it on all the time there - because LIFE was my music.
When I got back, I was waking up thinking about looking outside on the horizon to see if the snowcaps were out. I was still thinking about whether I needed to walk to the bank, or down to the mall ... of whom I should call, or whether I should do laundry and would it be dry enough to hang it out on the line ... I was thinking in Spanish and the English words wouldn't come... and I couldn't speak my mind because it was in the wrong language. Throwing a Spanish word in where an English word was missing wouldn't be understood. I would speak in Spanish without thinking, and suddenly realize nobody understood me. It was an abrupt, and painful realization.
Carrying on conversations in Spanish with English-speaking friends would be considered rude and unacceptable here, but there it was the norm, and speaking in English was considered rude when we were with people who spoke Spanish as a first language (even if they understood English perfectly well).
Trying to figure out how to incorporate the active lifestyle, the energy, the vibrancy, the sense of direction here is difficult. Nobody walks anywhere here: it's too hot or too cold. And everything is expensive! And where can you drive to that you can just park and walk in the wild without having to pay for it? There, you don't even have to drive to find a place to park - you just go for a walk in the wild.
And what's with the food here? Not only is it exorbitantly expensive (as is everything else) but it isn't even as good for you - and it doesn't taste as good either. All the additives and preservatives and all the genetic modification .... and everything here is so sterile, and so little variety!
Why is it that I can go down there, eat whatever I want and lose weight... but when I come back I have to go on a strict diet or I'll gain it all back? Perhaps the added exercise regimen will help me keep from gaining anything I've lost, but all of a sudden I'm smack back on my diet and going through carbohydrate withdrawal again.
It's hot and muggy and the days seem to drag. Air conditioning keeps an artificial cool... I can understand the heaters in the winter, but maybe a bit of humid heat in the summer isn't so bad. Fans work well... why not just go with fans for a while? I wasn't uncomfortable in the jungle and we didn't have air conditioning.
The pampering makes me lazy. I am trying to figure out how not to let it drag me down. Not to let it capture me in its clutches and make me conform. I'm trying to maintain my high, and I can't figure out how... and it depresses me... and I'm fighting that, too. I'm trying not to fall into a pit of depression because I had to leave home to come home.
Add the guilty feeling of wanting to stay there when my family is here... I love them, but I was home... and I was happy.
It's like I forgot what happiness was until I went back to Ecuador, and when I left... it's as though the life got sucked out of me on the way back here.
It's like trying to pull a blanket through a crack in a closed doorway. You might get the corner through, but the whole blanket you enjoyed at the other side of the door, will never all come through this side. Is it possible to just keep the door open? But regardless if the door is open or closed, I can't be on the side of the door I want to be on right now... Can the blanket give me what I had on the other side of the door? Maybe this analogy doesn't make any sense anyway.
I can't live in the trip. The trip is over. I'm back here. I don't live there. Once I did... I grew up there. I belong there. I don't belong here. But here I am. How can I be here in the most positive way possible without denying the depth of my feelings for wanting to be where my heart lies - at home in Ecuador.
I don't mean to harp on and gripe about the U.S. There are many advantages I enjoy being an American citizen... an American by blood. Advantages I wouldn't want to give up. I wouldn't really want to be an Ecuadorian. There are many disadvantages to being an Ecuadorian citizen that I wouldn't really want to live with. But... I would surely love to be an American citizen living in Ecuador ... permanently. My heart is in Ecuador. Now, more than ever, I know that is where it always will be.
I'm just as patriotic about the U.S. as the next guy (probably even more than many) - but I'm also patriotic about Ecuador. I fly both flags. I deck my car out with red, white and blue - and yellow, blue and red. American and Ecuadorian things... A bumper sticker that says "God Bless America - Land of the Free and Home of the Brave" and another one that says "Yo Ecuador" ... My loyalties are divided. If my two countries warred with each other, my citizenship lies in the U.S.... but my heart would be clenched in fear and distress. I would feel torn in two as though I were at war with myself.
I feel like my body is here... like a shell of myself is living here and existing. Walking through life here while my heart and my soul are set aside waiting to come back to life there again.
Who can feel this? Who understands this? I am an American. Even the Ecuadorian friends I have commented, "She's more Ecuadorian than we are - she loves our country more than we do!" and they marvelled at the depth of my feeling for my heart home - their country.
Here in the U.S., who understands this? I am an American. I went on a trip. "She'll get over it," they say... "She just had a really good trip and now it's time to come down." And I am displaced. I have no home. Here, with the Latin population, I have a camaraderie, but I am an American in my own country.
Here, the Americans don't even know I'm an outsider. At first glance - or even until after they know me, I'm just another American like anybody else (although I may have a few quirks that may make me appear a bit of an eccentric.)
There, I have Ecuadorian friends, but I will never appear Ecuadorian. I will never blend in to the point where it is not evident that I am a "gringa" ... a "foreigner"... and only to my friends or those who take the time to speak to me, will there be a knowledge of the depth of my incorporation of my heart-home into my soul.