Chile Reflection

I used to write reflections for each country I visited when I was traveling with Semester at Sea. This is something I wrote just a day or two after getting back to the states, but I never got around to posting it. It didn’t feel right, talking about my time in Chile as such a broad and generalized thing. I realized recently that I was used to reflecting on experiences that had lasted a week, not a few months, and that I inherently needed more time to reflect.

My Time in Chile (As a Whole)

I was scared out of my mind to live in Chile. Possibly more scared than I have ever been. Living in a different country, different hemisphere, different culture, it was out of my comfort level. At 26 countries under my belt I was still scared out of my mind. The unknown terrified me. I almost willed myself to stay in Columbus, Ohio and live in a life that was no longer built for me and no longer suited me.

I almost allowed myself to miss out on one of my most life-changing experiences. And for what? For the fear of an unknown place, unknown friends, unknown moments?

A few of the best moments of my entire life happened in Chile, and that (that alone) is how I categorize milestones in my life. Not by place or a check off the bucket list but by moments. The ones that tear you apart and build you anew. The ones that make you feel like you’re the only person in the world who could have possibly ever felt this much contentment, this much pure joy and yearning for life itself. The ones that push you beyond all bounds you previously thought possible, making you question all you held dear, all you considered precious amidst your entire existence. 

Day by Day in Chile

I had days where I felt like maybe, just maybe, I was becoming fluent in Spanish. I had days where I felt like I knew nothing, not even enough to realize the homework assignment in its full capacity.

I had moments that pushed me and ones that made me feel truly broken to my core. And that is life. The only one I consider worth living. The times where you can feel so whole, so full of life yet so empty and unsure. The moments where you feel complete and total love and friendship but where you also feel alone in this universe, in the best way. Those moments of reflection, those of confusion and those of acceptance. For your situation, for your opportunity, for your life. 

The people that make these moments worth having. Friends camping together in the mountains of southern Chile or a boy taking you on his motorcycle through the mountains surrounding your home. Your temporary home. The home that feels more like a home than where you grew up. A city that means more than all the years, the culmination of your childhood, ever could. 

This was not the plan.

There were supposed to be, meant to be, countless more moments of unmistakable, irrevocable life to be lived, experiences to be had, memories to be cherished in that city that had so quickly become home and so much more.

This was not the plan.

To be torn out of a country that opened its arms to you so graciously and willingly. Before you had received your permanent chilean ID card, before you had explored all the possibilities of this experience, before all the moments had the chance to happen. 

This was not the plan.

America feels more foreign to me than living abroad. Less fitting. Less right.

But in the middle of it all, the confusion and loneliness and questioning why, there are the moments. They stay longer than any period of sadness, or happiness, could. 

Leaving a place is sad because you know that, eventually, you will not be as sad about being away from it. I realized as we said our goodbyes that I was so much more afraid of feeling that impending contentment about the situation than I was of yearning for it. I was scared of the moment that I would stop being sad. More than anything.

Not Ours to Keep

Most things in life have a way of being dulled down, pushed to the side in order to give us room for new things. We can’t keep every memory because not everything is ours to keep. So some fade away, and some stay close to us. The sadness that we feel at the end of something, of a tradition, a trip, school, a friendship, a program, that sadness lessens over time. It makes way for new sadness about new things that are fading away as quickly as they came because that, that is the human condition. Our happiness in the middle of something, the elation of learning new things, the joy of being with friends or hearing a pretty song or feeling the air hang around you in the middle of nature, those feelings fade too. 

The truth is that none of these things are ours to keep. Not a song or a semester or a friendship or a tradition. They belong to others, too. Those others have their own experiences, their own moments within these bigger shared ones and the minute they’re over you just know that you can’t get them back.

To Be Alone in a Place

Chile gave me my independence. My true independence, not the ‘off to college’ or even ‘traveling the world’ kinds, but true and singular independence. For the first time I was navigating a city on my own and making friends, but ones that weren’t with me 24/7, and using my second language more frequently than my first. It allowed me the moments of solitude within a sea of mountains and it allowed me the exploration of nature with people who knew her much more personally than I. 

Santiago gave me my independence. I took the metro alone and went to clubs alone and sometimes left them alone and I made decisions about how to navigate a city. It was more than being alone in Alabama or even for periods of time in other spaces. I was really more independent than I’ve ever been, relying on my new people but only a little when it came down to it. I was there for me and I did things for myself so often. I miss that. Coming back to less independence than I’ve had since I was a small child, it’s hard. It’s so hard.

Growing Pains

That fire is still there, though. It is what urges me to find new things that feel similar to these, now older, ones. It isn’t to search for those same exact feelings because those don’t exist anymore. I’ve felt them, I’ve been in those spaces with those people and trying to recreate that isn’t possible.

The truth is, we all change more than we know and that change happens before any of us have time to process it. I could go back to the same exact place with the same exact people but we would all be remarkably different. We would each know something new and we would have each been through something different than the last time we were all together. Sometimes that feels like a scary thing, the idea that you can never go back to ‘the way things were’, but it shouldn’t be. Growth is the price of life and change is the price of searching for new growth, whether intentional or not.  

I’ll be back to the places that catalyzed my personal growth, but in that space between those times I will have grown without even realizing I did.