Lilyyyyy...you got some 'splainin' to do...

I'm going to E.T. So, what does that mean? I'm going to early terminate my service in the Peace Corps. I've had a lot of people ask, ''Are you at peace with your decision?'' The answer is that although I am 100% positive that this is what I have to do, in no way does it sit well with me. So no. There's nothing peaceful about this. After a quick description (hand to God, it is the nutshell version) of why I'm choosing to come home early, I'll expand on exactly why it's so difficult.

Community members, particularly the community members that should be most interested in working with me given the position they have in town, simply aren't all that interested. I've exhausted my creativity in trying to capture their attention. When I can get a moment to propose, suggest and offer, it usually devolves into a discussion of why it's not possible and trash talking other community members. It started off as discouraging and has changed into being debilitating. And now they have begun to trash talk me, claiming that I'm never around and I'm not sociable.

The time that I do have the attention of the VIPs that I should be working with is when they want me to make it rain infrastructural development and grant money. And that's not the role that I imagined for myself nor one that I should be playing. I have no doubt that Peace Corps adequately prepared my site. But the expectations such as those previously mentioned are just the tip of the iceberg. I feel like I'm being pulled in a million directions and all of these paths end at the creation of some monster project. I have a work plan that fits well into the goals of my program and although I'm giving it 100%, that seems not to be enough for most people.

And while we're on the subject of expectations, the ones that I have mentioned are the clearly expressed expectations. There's also a whole host of tacit expectations that I don't know I haven't met until people-tell-people-to-tell-me that I haven't met them. Or until something goes wrong and I'm asked why I didn't make the photocopies or Didn't you look into that yet? or Why weren't you there? or...well...etc.

I would like to take a second to say that my position is defensible, but that I don't particularly feel beholden to go into the nitty gritty of it on my blog. It typed it out and it sounds whiny, however true it may be. So I deleted it.

Finally, and perhaps the most overwhelming of this whole thing...no one in my community is nice to each other. Whenever I meet with people to sit down and plan something, all I hear is ''So-and-so NEVER helps, she just sits back and waits until the last minute to claim credit.'' Or, ''He never participates.'' Or ''These people don't understand what it is to work hard to achieve something.'' (P.S. that last one is BULLSHIT because if you can live in rural Costa Rica you're working hard in some way or another.) Some of these statements have been directed at host family members of mine which is wearying. But regardless of who they're directed at, I try to play devil's advocate. I've tried personal appeals, ''When you talk about people like that, it makes me sad.'' I've also said, ''Well of course she don't want to help when you talk about her like that.'' I've pleaded to give people second chances, involve them anyway and see what happens! Nothing. And to put it simply, it just gets me down. In a community of 338 people who have nothing nice to say about each other (even in the middle of an activity specifically designed to extract just that) I can't keep being the only person with positive things to say.

Move on and work with other people, you say? Within the community, I've reached out to other organizations and individuals and while I haven't been completely rejected, there is a certain, ''Yeah...I guess...'' that isn't encouraging and of course no firm commitments to work together. Topping it all off, the local branch of the agency that is supposed to be my program's counterpart is not interested in building a working relationship with me. I've called more times than I can count and sat outside the office for days in a row waiting for the rep who works inside to come into work. Nada.

I also had a massive grasshopper land on my hand earlier and just a few second ago on my face. It certainly doesn't help.

Now I can move onto why it's difficult. My host mom, my goddaughter and my boyfriend. The other volunteers. The stigma of early terminating. Giving up totally without trying another site. Not having a clear direction to go in once I get back to the U.S. You, my blog readers. All those high schoolers I just talked to over break. The Peace Corps - all the time and resources they put into training and sustaining me. My dog. My own sense of duty. How angry I am at myself for not meeting my own high standards and expectations. The fear that I will become a total fuck-up. Fear about a lot of other things, too.

My friend today, the first one that I called to tell about my early termination said two things that were perfect. He said, ''Lily, it's not like it's World War II. The Nazis don't win if you go home. You don't have to get your leg blown off and then like, stay with your brothers in battle.'' He also said, ''Only a fool plays the bad hand they've been dealt. Sometimes the smart thing to do is to fold.''

Lily out.