6 Years

It's been exactly six years since I got off my mission. Six years since I stepped off the plane and had the sudden realization that I had absolutely no idea what I was supposed to do in life. The first 19 years were all aimed at going on the mission. The next two were highly structured. Getting off the mission I had this vague idea of school, work, women. I shocked my parents as we drove home when I said, "I guess my next mission is getting married." I have no idea what I meant by it or why I said it. It was just a way of pretending that my life had structure. I followed up on that statement by pretending I was mute around women for the next three months.

Adrienne gave me the new U2 and the new Depeche Mode that day. Before going home we stopped at the Mayan, which was some new thing in Jordan featuring cliff divers. Having lived in the Philippines for two years, it didn't seem like I had been gone two years. More like 30. People cliff diving in a restaurant? Didn't Jules Verne write a book about that?

I stared at my CD collection for a few days before daring to even touch it. I went to the mall and tried to buy nice looking shirts but they were all ill-fitting. Walking on BYU campus, I would check in the mirrored doors to make sure I wasn't slumping and I would greet random people in the quad by raising my eyebrows, the Filipino way of saying hello to a stranger but certainly not something one does in America. I was a mess. It took a long long time to finally detox. At least I knew I was a freak. I hibernated until I was normal. I think it took six months. I think other people think it took longer than that. It certainly didn't help that the first job I took after getting home was "Door Counter" in which I would peer leeringly through door windows to count the number of people in a given classroom over a number of hours. I have no way to end this post. These are the funny things I felt when I got home. It wasn't bad, it wasn't good, it was just all so new.