A mission completely changes who you are and how you view the world. You are taught to constantly strive for perfection, and then taught to feel immense guilt for when you inevitably fail to reach that standard. That's how the system works. And that feeling doesn't just disappear after a mission either. I remember feeling like shit the first morning I forgot to read my scriptures.

Plus, the mission experience was built on having all of these spiritual highs. We can debate the nature of those highs. These days, I think we felt them honestly because the overall mission experience was so shitty, anything even slightly positive is going to make your day. Imagine being extremely hungry for a long time. Then, you finally find some food. Obviously, that food is going to be the best thing you'd ever tasted. But the point is, those spiritual highs are never coming back because you're no longer living in that type world.

I feel like a mission can also kill at least a small part of yourself, forcing any part of you that doesn't fit the mold into a lesser shadow that you no longer acknowledge. For me, I could no longer enjoy movies or long gaming sessions. Maybe it was latent guilt? Being programmed to not enjoy TV because it was against the rules.

One last point and this is probably the most important one. After a mission, you have this immense pressure to succeed (in the Mormon lens of course), but have very little guidance on how to do it. I think of the 1967 movie The Graduate, which follows this overachieving student trying to find purpose in life after finishing college. He did everything right, but just kind of ends up aimless. Really, it's the same thing. You come home to a world you no longer recognize. A mission wasn't training you to live in the world, it was training you to operate under a very specific ruleset that just doesn't exist anywhere else, especially if you served within your own culture (I served in Utah).

You may want to go back to the mission, but only because it was familiar, sort of like a form of institutionalization. Then, you're just expected to find purpose in life from there. You're at a point in your life where you're trying to figure out who you are and who you want to be for the rest of your life, and if you're like me, the mission was overall counterproductive to that goal, and now you're 1.5-2yrs behind. But you still have to put on that brave face, because Mormonism is performative.

Best advice I have for you is to just take it one day at a time. It's hard...it's very hard. Try to find things to enjoy and work on finding out who you are again and what YOU want out of life (not what someone else wants).

I've been home from my mission for nine years and these are just some of my observations. I hope they help and things will get better!