Cataclysmic

Cataclysmic:

1. : Flood, Deluge

Before I even opened my email inbox, I just knew. It was a seismic shift of emotions somewhere deep in my soul. My friend Allison and I were sitting in a dimly lit conference room in Charleston, West Virginia. Our principal wanted us to attend a conference to bring back a fountain of entrepreneurial-based-education knowledge to share with our co-workers…so we went. (She’s the kind of woman who you respect enough to basically ask no questions – she’s in it for the success of every student and doesn’t mind being direct about making it happen. T-shirts with her face on it are pending). 

Ironically, about 3 hours prior to my inbox search, Allison asked me that scary question that all my friends had been asking for several months: “If you get in, are you going?”

I responded “yes” without hesitation in the car, but now, glancing at a message I was almost afraid to receive, the flood gates opened wide, and I stared blurry-eyed at my fate. 

My heart was flooding.

The only way to release the pressure was to send a screenshot to my mom and sisters and dad. Then I had to tell my best friends. And then I continued to stare at my inbox. And then my eyes blurred again.

My heart was flooding; joy, anxiety, dismay, dread, excitement. But now…how do I actually tell people that I’m leaving in August. Destination? Nicaragua for 27 months with the Peace Corps.

My heart is flooding.

Cataclysmic:

2.  : Catastrophe

My heart was burning. 

Or at least, that’s what it felt like as I sent the “I accept” message back to the Peace Corps recruiters. 

To say I felt conflicted and unsure about this decision – despite years of feeling a desire to join unlike anything I can describe adequately in words – would be an immense understatement.

My heart was burning as faces flashed into my mind’s eye: my “girls,” my students, my Peru Kids, my co-workers, my mentors, my friends, my family. I couldn’t help but feel like I was a disappointment. I couldn’t help but feel the swift sting of guilt and a false sense of duty that I had grappled with since the beginning of my second year. Am I letting them down? Am I just another “in and out” kind of teacher? Am I making a mistake?

Am I making a mistake?

My heart is burning.

Cataclysmic:

3.  : a momentous and violent event marked by overwhelming upheaval and demolition; broadly : an event that brings great change

My heart is underprepared.

When I got accepted into Teach for America, they wanted me to teach Spanish. That was ironic, because I don’t speak Spanish. This fact is even more ironic now, three years later, because now I’ll be REQUIRED to speak Spanish. So. I’m practicing and praying a lot. Tengo mucho trabajo que hacer.

I have a lot of work to do.

My heart is underprepared.

Among the intimidating list of tasks necessary for medical clearance, I am also trying to sort out my feelings while I’m still living in a place that has become my home. I don’t say that lightly, either. I know for a fact that someone will have to sedate me as I leave Inez. The few people who know I’m leaving keep reminding me that I can always return, and unlike leaving Princeton for college, I find myself saying “I hope so. Give me a couple years.”

I am trying to remember, in these conflicted moments, that God has a lot to still show me. I’m young, and if I had one complaint about my experience with TFA here in Inez, it’s that it just happened a couple years too early for me to be ready to settle in for the long haul – tiny house and all.

But you know what? Life has taught me, especially in the last 5 years, that there are plans already set in motion, with lessons already prepared. I will learn a lot in Nicaragua. I will be lonely. I will be frustrated. I will be a disappointment. I will be bad at Spanish for awhile.

But I will also be patient. I will remind myself that at one point in Inez, I thought I would hate teaching. I will be open-minded like I always tell my students to be. I will be nostalgic. I will be enthusiastic. I will be joyful, even if I’m not happy. I will remember the “me” in Kentucky, and I will always be unimaginably aware of the impact that these people and this place have had on me – all the way down to my core.

Last night, the CCSC partnered with the Martin County Music Departments to put on a “community Christmas Gala,” and I looked out at the audience with nothing but a profound sense of gratitude and love. I not only recognized faces, but I knew names of families. I knew stories of families. I love these families and this place. If you had told me two and a half years ago I would look out on an audience with such familiarity and love, I don’t know that I would have believed you.

Tonight, after my friend Sam and I left the annual Soccer Christmas party, I felt that all-too-common flood of emotions. One dad told me at the party that his daughter came home absolutely devastated on Thursday after I took “my girls” to dinner to give them their gifts and to officially tell them I won’t be coming back for their Senior year. There were tears, naturally, but I’ve never felt as supported or loved than I did in that moment. Their belief and support, interestingly, seems to mean a lot more than others’ opinions of my decision.

I feel guilty for causing some sadness, but I also feel grateful to love, and be loved, by them. Even though one of them cried a lot, I know she’s strong enough to take that sadness and turn it into something wonderful. She’s stronger than I could ever hope to be, and it is in that realization that I know I’m making the right decision. She believes in me, so I certainly have no reason to NOT believe in me…you know?

I feel sadness and joy, and it’s something I’m trying to get used to.

I didn’t say much on the car ride home tonight, instead deciding to listen to the music, to listen to my friend singing, and to look outside the window on this dark December night.

Blurred Christmas lights and fond feelings of recognition – “he lives there”, “she lives there”, “oh, I think that’s the road where that happened”, “the old high school”, “I love that family”, “I’m sad that store closed”, street lights, “how am I going to be able to leave?”

My heart is flooding.

My heart is burning.

My heart is underprepared.

When I leave in May (to move home to work and save money), I won’t actually be saying goodbye. As cliché as it sounds, you can’t leave people and places that mean so much, and have shaped you so completely, into the bold person you’re hoping to still become.

[If you’re reading this and you are finding out (just now) that I accepted the Peace Corps Position, just know that this was honestly way less messy and teary-eyed than a face-to-face confession would have been. I hope, friends, that you will encourage and support me in this upcoming change, as I imagine it will be an incredible challenge that I can’t hope to overcome without you].

My heart is lucky and filled to the brim – beyond anything I could have ever imagined.

Love and Christmas wishes.

Halie