The Great Contradiction

Soooo, life. I know, how very...wow...I can't even think of the word. Eloquent? No. Dang. I think the mission made me stupider. I have never felt so incapable of carrying on an intelligible conversation in my life. All of the wonderfully descriptive and poignant words I've a college career learning seem to have been erased in order to make room for a new language in my head. And now I'm only making it worse as I decided it was a good idea to go ahead and learn French while I was at it. Goodbye vocabulary.

Anyways, not the point. Already deviating. Pathetic. The point is, I decided I wanted to write about the great contradiction that comes from being a returned missionary. Weird. I never thought I'd be referring to myself as that. Ever. Oh well, it is what it is. So let's get on with it then. First, I loved being a missionary. It was the hardest, craziest, saddest, and happiest year and a half of my life. Only someone who's been there actually knows what I'm talking about. You can't describe it, just live it. Well, I have to tell you a secret about being a returned missionary. I was dreading the life even before I left for the mission. I'd heard so many awful stories about people who came home and just didn't know how to live real life again. I imagined that would be my fate. But when I got home...life was pretty much the same. I went back to the same crazy family, same house, same friends, same university classes, and the same dull library job. It's like the world hardly skipped a beat and that year and a half of my life just fell into some abstract oblivion. Sometimes I find myself thinking it really didn't happen. So now I'm stuck somewhere in between I guess. I feel so different than I was before, but no one really understands. Coming back to the "real world" was way too easy and now I feel like I'm going to wake up any day now on my paper thin wiry mattress in the sweaty tropics of the DR with bachata music ringing in my ears. How do you fit yourself back into the mold of an old life that you've outgrown?