What happens after living on a ship for four months? What happens after seeing 13 countries in a row? What about after you leave your friends-turned-family and the people you saw every. single. day. ?
Coming back signifies a sort of regression- ‘back’ in to the way that things have always been or ‘back’ in to an overly-demanding class schedule or ‘back’ to anything else on might find upon returning from the world.
Some days are great, and some I feel like I’m drowning (no pun intended) in this never-ending sea of mediocrity and repetition. Which, in my humble opinion, is the worst mix that there is after you’ve traveled around the world and back. It’s been hard, readjusting to the life that oh-so-patiently waited on me to return. The transition of having 6, but really about 200, super-close friends and returning to two of those and a lot of acquaintances has been the hardest part.
What is one supposed to do, after finding her ‘people’ and then leaving them?
There was a reason I left in the first place. I wanted more, to do more, to be more, to learn more, to have more-experiences, friends, time, all of it. I was so desperately seeking a ‘something else’ that it almost felt like running away, even while I was doing it. And then it didn’t, it felt like I was home-out in the world, on the ship, it all felt like I was truly in my element. It’s like that is what so much of my life had led up to and then, just as swiftly as it began, it ended.
The idea of studying abroad again is wonderful, but even that potential to be ‘stuck’ in one country and place again makes me anxious. So, being legitimately stuck in a college town in Alabama that is so deeply lacking in proximity to the ocean, my friends, and any of the things I love to do, has been hard.
They tell you what to expect at home, but there is no one way to truly prepare for the headfirst plunge backward into the world we knew before this all.
I don’t mean to sound spoiled or ignore my privilege to have these things to think about. I don’t mean to invalidate the experience any other person may be having here, at this school at this point in time. But it is not my own; I feel like more of a ‘foreigner’ here than I ever did traveling the world. I know the exact reason, and it all boils down to people. The people I was surrounded by were like-minded and they knew how small the world can be if we so choose to allow it. That is something that most everyone I know here does not quite understand.
Telling stories or talking about something that happened in a certain country, makes me feel like I’m ‘name-dropping’ more often that not. So, I simply don’t tell the story, because if I do, I can feel how self-centered I appear.
I know that it seems ungrateful to, instead of looking back with only positivity and appreciation, so desperately miss each place and each person I met along the way.
I cannot stop feeling this urge to just leave. To go home, to a job that is flexible and where I can surely earn a ton of money in a little time, and then to leave. To just go somewhere, anywhere, and then to keep going. After knowing that feeling of truly seeing the world, I don’t want to stop. I don’t want a reason to feel trapped in one place or one country, even.
As selfish as it sounds, I want more. Because I know what more feels like. I want to not need to rely on a scholarship that holds me to this school or to resent my choice to be here. But I do. Because sometimes we have to make decisions that are better for us in the long run.
Being here allowed me to see the world and how could I resent it when its aid has given me so many opportunities? Surely it is worth a few 15-week increments to have the chance to go, literally, around the world and take semesters off and do all the things I want to do.
Everything can be looked at from multiple perspectives. Some things can be looked at from more than one perspective at a given time. That is where I’m at, walking an odd line between resentment and gratitude that makes me feel ungrateful at that same time that I am feeling so lost yet so full of joy.
It’s funny, to feel lost here, instead of out in the world. I never once felt too small, too alone, too insignificant there, but all of those things are constants here.
As odd as it’s been being back, it is these moments as I sit alone in a room that, for the first time in my life away from home, I am not sharing with a roommate that I feel the emptiest. It’s these nights that, instead of running around the ship until 7 am or falling asleep piled in someone’s bed after a movie night or dance party that I realize how much I miss it.
I have not been on my own in a long time. I forgot what it was like to really be alone, without the option of walking a couple feet and being able to knock on any given door and surely know the person behind it.
Even the nights where I sat alone on the back of deck 7, writing or thinking about my new life, I didn’t feel for the slightest moment like I was alone. If anything, the sound of the ocean around us made me realize how entirely I was a part of the people I shared my life with on that ship. It made me aware of the fact that I was in the middle of this amazing thing, and I fit. I had such a real place in the midst of it all, and I miss that all the time.
It’s becoming less tangible every day and some days it feels as if I was never really there at all. It was too perfect, and for that I am thankful. I got to live a life that came straight out of my wildest dreams, and I cannot imagine anything more fundamentally life-changing.
I think that’s it-I changed and so did my life. I came back different than I had been when I left, and the world I returned to remained. As my experiences multiplied and my views expanded and became different, home did not. And that is why it does not feel like home any more, because I don’t fit the way that I used to.
So what is there now?
I think it is so important to keep chasing that feeling, to not allow myself to forget the way it felt to dance outside a restaurant in India while waiting for our car or to have conversations about how much our worlds were changing as we rode on a bus through a country in political turmoil or to simply be able to count on dinner at 5:30 in Lido.
We can spend so much time reflecting on and longing for the things we have experienced, and I’ll admit that I have done so much of that these last 52 days. Consequently, our time back home has become almost half the duration of our 107-day voyage. Time seems to go by differently here, now that I know what day of the week it is again. It is so important, though, to keep searching for the things that bring real joy to our lives no matter what they may be. The moment I stop wanting those feelings back will be the moment I have lost sight of myself entirely, and I don’t foresee that ever happening.
So, again, I want to take time to reflect on my experiences and allow myself to feel the absolute gratitude I have for every second and every person that came into my life. I changed a lot along the way and I cannot wait for the next opportunity to grow even closer to the person I want to become.
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