August 4: Writing Prompt #216-Back to the Future

Anachronism (noun): an error in chronology; a person or thing that’s chronologically out of place. Write a story in which a person or thing is out of place, or recount a time when you felt out of place.

The last few years on Kwajalein, I felt out of place. And even today, when thinking about what it would be like to go back, there’s an uncomfortableness, which makes me sad.  I remember when my parents got divorced, and my mom started looking around for a new church because the church we had grown up going to as a family didn’t really know what to do with my mom, a divorced mother of 3.  At this time, there were no “groups” that had been formed for such a “phenomenon” in the church. She did discover other churches of the same denomination as ours that had a larger population and had groups for divorced men and women, etc…but in the end, she found the most comfort in a non-denominational church with an extremely diverse congregation. I felt a similar disconnectedness after my divorce on Kwajalein. I no longer had a group, a place, a niche.  And I never really got it back, not fully, not like before. There were new friends made, a new marriage, my job, and all the children’s events, clubs, etc…to keep me busy, but I always felt a distance from the rest of the population, always a catch in my spirit.  Maybe it was just me being paranoid or extra sensitive, but I could never shake it.  Life had changed so drastically…I had changed so drastically. I don’t know if the islands would ever be the same for me.  I loved my time there more than I could ever explain, but there’s also such a heaviness that weighs on my heart when I think about it because I lost a lot of my innocence there, my naiveté, if you will. I grew up there by walking through the fire.  I think that’s one of the reasons why I enjoyed working with the Marshallese and visiting Ebeye while there because it took away the heaviness; it gave me a greater purpose, a joy that often escaped me during those early years after my marriage ended.  I never felt out of place there, only within my own tight knit American community, unfortunately.  Kwajalein will always have a hold on me as it does most everyone who has ever resided there, but for everything, every place even, there is a season, and that season of my life is over, at least for awhile.  And that’s okay, I’m perfectly comfortable where I am right now, more comfortable than I’ve been anywhere in a long time.  J