Back to the Future
Forty hours ago, I was in another world. I was home, in my living room, watching ESPN. I was clean-shaven and ever so comfortable. It all made for a familiar scene, the kind that has played itself out in my life for more days than I can count. But there was also a sense that this could be my future, too.
Over the course of the last ten days, while I was back home enjoying the company of friends and the familiarity of Our Nation's Capital, I caught glimpses of a life I would very much like to live. Hanging with Matt and his roommates, there was a sense of what a great windfall it would be to live with others again, folks with whom I could share more than just living expenses. And all of this in razor-sharp contrast to my solitude here in Palestine, which is alternately the staid life of a monk and punishment meted out to a misbehaving inmate. There was talk often of regular trips to the gym with company softball or flag football games on the weekends - sorely missed pastimes all of them. Walking around Georgetown Visitation's campus, did I not feel at home? Or at least there was the sense that I could be a teacher - a real teacher - again. I rather liked the taste of this life that could be, would be, should be mine.
Not that the prospective costs were lost on me either. Grim realities were much in evidence, too - particularly the biting realization that the girl of my dreams is as distant as she ever was. The evidence remains, I think, to support the claim that I am too fatally flawed to make an attractive partner. That it continues to be overwhelming evidence is now somewhat less disturbing than the sense I have that it is still mounting. Even the prospect for a promising job and all the comforts of home do little to shake off this disappointment.
And now, here I am in a place that time forgot. Palestine is every bit as familiar to me as home - right down to delays crossing the border, gouging taxi cab fares, and word that two men were shot dead yesterday in Bethlehem. Nothing ever changes here; me least of all.