Posted October 7th, 2003 by Michelle

Every night, right about now, I get so nauseous I have to lay down and think about not puking. Every night. Sometimes I feel like emotionally puking when things get rough but it has translated directly into my body.

I got my invitation letter from the Peace Corps today. I thought the date had been postponed, I thought I had made a decision, but then again, maybe I thought this letter would never come. I thought it would be my cervix that would keep me out, or some other calamity, but when I went out to check the mail there was a huge package waiting for me on the stoop. “Congratulations!” it screamed.

My placement officer called me some weeks ago to tell me that my essays were some of the best she’d ever read. That’s all she wanted to say. That they wanted me, they thought I’d be terrific in the Corps. She just wanted to touch base. I still thought my deadline had passed, that was what I was led to believe, since my health forms took so long to complete.

But no, here it is, right beside me, with the same leaving date that my recruiter gave me four months ago: December 7th.

I mean, at some point, you have to believe that everything happens for a reason. Originally I was supposed to leave in October, but my recruiting officer found a much more advanced and exciting job than the one that left in October… wow… I would have been leaving right now. But he slated me for the December job, and it is the very one now in front of me. I have had a thousand thoughts in the last few hours, and about as many decisions that immediately reversed, and then reversed again.

How strange, though, that the letter would arrive two days after my trip to Napa. Who has thrown down this unhappy gauntlet? I mean, how often is a woman given two options, one in the wine country of California and the other quite literally a few miles below the Sahara Desert? I mean, seriously? This is absurd. (Jordana, tonight: “You insist on living in a beautiful brownstone apartment by yourself when in New York, but you wouldn’t mind living in a hut with no electricity and no running water completely isolated in Africa? You’re a wonder.” It’s true. I can’t explain it.)

I fear to make a decision based on fear. Jordi and I were talking about the root of that fear, and it is not a fear of Africa, of lost conveniences, of heat, of exhaustion, of isolation, of pit toilets and bucket baths, of malaria, of AIDS. I don’t exactly fear any of that. What I fear is lost time. What will my life be when I get back in the spring of 2006? And why in god’s name am I asking such a stupid question as that? Why would I stall an adventure for fear of what I cannot know, namely my life on the other side? It doesn’t make sense. It would be a terrible way to live.

On the other hand, do I give up my novel? Do I give up what might be a great choice for me, a great change waiting for me in Napa Valley? Well, two things. If I were to go to Napa instead of Africa, there remains the possibility of the exact same thing happening in spring of 2006. I cannot know that I will be any happier, any more actualized, that my life will be very different than it is today. I hope it is, I intend to make it so, but there are simply no guarantees that one choice or the other will make my life better. It could go either way.

Of course I don’t want to disappoint anyone in Napa. A lot of legwork has been done by a lot of people, namely my Dad and stepmom, to open doors for me in the world of wine. Christ, I’ve done a ton of work as well. People there are really excited about me there. Not unlike the Peace Corps. And I am truly looking forward to starting work in California. But I find myself torn and I need to be sure I’m doing the right thing. Or at least I need to be sure I will be at peace with my decision.

I’m leaning hard in a particular direction, the direction, in fact that I’ve been working towards these last two weeks. I just checked out the statistics and the average age of Peace Corps volunteers in Niger is 22.5. I don’t know that I want to keep company with folks who have only been alive two-thirds of the time that I have. I know it’s not about them, it’s about me, but in the end, these things are important.

I’m going to sleep on it before I call the Corps office to decline their offer. Up until a week ago, the letter I got today would have been my most exciting news in years. I simply have to give it the weight and thought it deserves.