Ramble with me

I have a very clear memory of being 15, standing in the locker room after PE class, and discussing the future with my friends. We were talking about when and how we thought we would die. One girl said forty-three from a car accident, the next girl said thirty-one due to a faulty parachute, and I said seventeen. I didn't know how I would die, but I was convinced that I would not live to see what life beyond seventeen years was like. It meant graduating. It meant college and the eventual "real life" and career. And I was incapable of fathoming that, of seeing beyond the high school walls, and I took my inability to envision as a sign that this world would soon reject me and end what had been a rather favorable childhood. I truly believed it. Then 17 came and went and nothing too horrible happened and I started making more and more complicated decisions - going to college, moving to Eugene, moving back, graduating, choosing a job, signing up for the peace corps, and setting foot on the plane that brought me to where I now sit. I've been thinking about the seventeen year old me alot lately. We have both been confronted with the most difficult adjustments in my life so far, and not much to picture as an outcome of our actions. I am yet again faced with the inability to see myself on the other side of something. Now instead of highschool, it's peace corps. It's tomorrow, it's next month, it's mid service training and close of service and my eventual return home. I just can't picture it. Six months ago, when our country director was telling us what to be doing before our In Service Training, I had a hard time listening because I couldn't picture me in Romania, let alone alive, for IST. Not that I saw myself dead, I just couldn't see me being a part of it. Being here has made me appreciate the passage of time and how eventual it is. Six months have gone by while at site. My tutor's baby waves and smiles at me now. My friend's pregnant stomach is tripled in size. The sheets I bought are fading and the plants my landlord gave me seem to have new blooms every day. And IST is over. Things that I couldn't remotely picture just 6 months ago are going by without hesitation and even though I'm an adult, I'm pretty sure I'm going through another stage of growing up. As a kid, Christmas would never come. Now I can't slow it down and can't decide if I'm happy or sad that it's going by so fast. I remember waiting for the day when applying to the peace corps wouldn't sound like a good idea, and on that day I would retract my application. When I think about how delicate my decision to join was, I'm surprised I'm here and surprised that the future is simply fabricated out of the little ideas that we have and decide to put energy into. But I'm even more surprised that I can't picture doing anything else right now. I'm set for the next 1.5 years, but beyond that, who the heck knows. Currently, I can't picture myself beyond the ripe old age of 29.