Both

I found this written in a journal I never got attached to (they're like people, journals, some of them just don't fit). It isn't dated but I imagine it was written in Kansas City, when I was still trying to fathom how I'd ended up in Kansas after what felt like a small eternity in Morocco. I should have written more...

I couldn’t breathe some mornings. I woke up in various training locations (a shared room in Fes, a camp-like dormitory in Rabat, a family stay in Immouzer) feeling as though a pack of wild dogs sat on my chest, pressing my lungs with their weight and threatening various arteries with their jaws. Bee stings ran through my veins, tears made my nose run, and then I’d close my eyes for the split second I allowed, and decide to survive the day. The scariest moments are always in the beginning, when you don’t know where you’re headed, when the language is still gibberish, when the stares at your red hair are still new and disturbing. The beginning is full of companions, fellow Volunteers, and they cushion the daily assault of culture, toilets you “flush” with an expertly tossed bucket, stares, discomfort, and fever. They are your anchor and you, their halfdead dinghy.

I sometimes wonder if it happened. If I walked the souks of Marrakech and Essaouira and Youssoufia and Safi. If I bought those scarves from the crippled man in Fes or if I picked them up at the mall in town and wished my way to Morocco. If I fasted for Ramadan and broke fast with that soup and those honeyed cookies and those perfectly boiled eggs. I wonder if I loved it as much as my heart tells me I did. And can love really increase so much? Exponentially? Or is that only regret?

The feeling is different now, missing Morocco. When I wrote in that journal I could barely contain my loathing for my life, the way it had ended up. I hated Kansas City then, hated Megan for making me stay, hated my President for forcing me there after finding a home in that village. I was angry more than I was sad. The sadness came later and sank in only when I started law school and realized the freedom I sacrificed for this education. But I'm not so sad anymore, I don't think. My life feels like mine again, and not some accident or consequence of outside action I could not control. In all its mistakes and missteps and adventures and surprises, my life feels like something I built. So now missing Morocco feels like a part of my day, a part of my life. It no longer consumes every perspective, it's just there. Like a scar. Or a favorite sweatshirt. Both.