As I lay on my bed looking around my room, I\u2019m just now realizing what a disastrous mess it is. Two suitcases lying out, surrounded by clothes, bottles, bags, and socks are what engulf my pink, striped carpet. However, it\u2019s not the mess in my room that\u2019s overwhelming me. It\u2019s the fact that I\u2019m completely alone.<\/p>\n
Okay, I\u2019m not completely alone. My brother is in the room next door, typing away on his computer. My mother and father are downstairs, washing dishes and talking quietly. And I know my best friend is only a phone call away (saying goodbye to her was rough). But despite having them so close, I feel them already far away. And that scares me.<\/p>\n
Going abroad is inherently a lonely experience. No matter how many friends we make or people we\u2019re surrounded by on the streets, we start the journey and end the journey by ourselves. I\u2019m not saying this as a bad thing, but just a dose of reality.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve always found the hardest part of going abroad to be leaving the people I love. It\u2019s easy to distract ourselves by meeting other people and forming new friendships. But they don\u2019t know us to our core. They haven\u2019t been with us through thick and thin, knowing who we are without having to explain ourselves to them. Not that these friendships aren\u2019t special too, because they are! Just\u2026 different.<\/p>\n
But aren\u2019t we going abroad to be alone in a sense? We\u2019re stripping away all sense of our comfort zone, knowingly entering an unknown world where people say different things and act in different ways than we\u2019re used to. We are at our most vulnerable; a place where getting lost is easy, actually extremely likely.<\/p>\n
And there\u2019s something exciting about that feeling! Maybe it\u2019s because it\u2019s a metaphor for life in a way. We enter this world alone and leave it that way too. And the more we are in that vulnerable state, the more we can discover who we really are to understand ourselves on a whole new level. Being vulnerable definitely draws out our true selves. And at this age, isn\u2019t that something we all want, in fact crave?<\/p>\n
I am 5 days away from starting the adventure of a life time and I\u2019m so excited to meet new people and learn about a new culture! But ultimately I\u2019m excited to learn about myself, gaining a new sense of independence. By the end of the trip, I hope to no longer be afraid of being alone, but rather embrace it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
As I lay on my bed looking around my room, I\u2019m just now realizing what a disastrous mess it is. Two suitcases lying out, surrounded by clothes, bottles, bags, and socks are what engulf my pink, striped carpet. However, it\u2019s not the mess in my room that\u2019s overwhelming me. It\u2019s the fact that I\u2019m completely…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":234,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10517","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-capa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10517","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/234"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10517"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10517\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14151,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10517\/revisions\/14151"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10517"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10517"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10517"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}