Tough (Self) Love

Well hello there!

It's been a while since I've posted, and for that I am sorry. Sometimes life gets in the way, and sometimes it's plain old laziness. This time, I've been feeling sad and lonely, so I've been spending my days ignoring the things I should be doing (work & homework) and the things I want to be doing but just can't seem to get myself to do (hanging out with friends, exploring the city, & working out), and feeling sorry for myself instead. Pathetic? Yes. My reality? Yup, I let it happen.

How I've been feeling lately.

I woke up this morning feeling like I've spent the last month in a haze, completely wasting 1/5 of my time abroad. I know what I want to be doing, I just can't seem to actually get myself to do those things. Crazy? Maybe a bit.

Anyway, one of the items on my long to-do list for the day was to write an article for my college's Honors and Scholars newsletter about study abroad. I hadn't been feeling particularly inspired lately, so I kept putting the task off. I'm jetting off to Ireland and Scotland this weekend (YAY!!!), and I figured this item was one I could probably knock out in less than an hour. I soon found that once I started writing, the feelings just flowed out. The article basically turned into both a letter to future study abroaders, but also to myself. It seems I have found a little tough love to serve up to myself, and I am hoping theses feelings stick around and help me dig myself out of the little (big?) slump I am in right now.

Although I am probably not in any way supposed to post this until it's been published in the newsletter, I'm going to anyway. I feel that if I make this public, maybe I'll remember that I have so many important friends and family members back home rooting for me to be having the best time of my life. Maybe it'll help me get out of my own way, and start enjoying this time abroad again with the enthusiasm that I had my first two months here. Five is an odd number, so maybe we can make it even and pretend this third and middle month never really happened.

I put up an "inspiration wall" of meaningful (to me) quotes next to my bed. It's original purpose was to get me out of bed at 6:15 everyday to get my workouts done, but I find many of its quotes applicable to my life in general. Lately I have been focused on the words of Laird Hamilton, who advises, "Make sure your worst enemy doesn't live between your own two ears." This quote is one that I truly need to take to heart (or head) and try to live by every day. Now, that's my goal.

My article

You move abroad. Maybe it’s for a whole year, maybe just a semester. Maybe you’re looking for an adventure, or you’re bored with the monotony of everyday living. Maybe you’re a little lost and looking to find yourself, or maybe you are just ready to move on to the next chapter of your life, and your circumstances are holding you back right now. Maybe you are ready to take life head on, yearning to be challenged every day. Maybe you’re running away – from problems, too many burnt bridges, a broken heart – or maybe you’re just feeling particularly restless. Whatever the reason you decide to move away from the life you know, the people, the country – your home – you do it. You’ve been thinking about it for months, maybe even years, and finally the decision is made. It’s done.

So, now you’re abroad. You’re in a new country with new people, new customs, new systems, and maybe a new language. You are so excited and you take everything in with the appreciation that only a traveler can have – the incredible architecture that locals walk by every day without a second glance, the beautiful sky that stretches out above this amazing new place (is that really the same sky you see at home?), the convenience and sensibility of public transportation, how different something as simple as a street sign can be, or how differently people are dressed from what you normally see at home. Everything is new, it’s so appealing, and you cannot wait to be part of this alternate universe just an eight hour flight from home.

But, through all of this excitement, this stimulation that has you dreaming about all of the new people you will meet, the foods you’ll try, the places you’ll see and the things you’ll do, you’re a little scared. Sure, there’s a girl living in the city who you knew in high school, but you weren’t exactly friends. You have your “program buddy,” but let’s be honest, she’s getting paid to be nice to you. There are probably thousands of other study abroad students, but you’re not taking classes, so how could you possibly meet them? What are you going to do all alone? How are you going to communicate with anyone here? English is your only language, and sure, it’s pretty widespread, but the country you chose, the place you’re in for the next five months, it was under Communist rule just twenty years ago. Can you realistically expect to get by with just English? And you’re still so excited, so happy to be here, but the fear has crept in around the edges, and you have to consciously keep your mind from touching it every single day.

After living in Prague for almost three months, that fear, that panic that I am alone in a city of one and a quarter million people, away from everything I have lived with and known for the past twenty years, it’s still around. Sure it’s mostly subsided, but every once in a while it comes back and takes over, and I’m forced to face the reality that I’m still a little scared, that I still get nervous when I go somewhere new, that sometimes I get lonely and long for my friends and family back home, or just the simple act of being able to communicate with the lady at the grocery store checkout, that I’m never really comfortable eating at a restaurant by myself and that I’d rather go to a museum or exhibit with a friend than alone. Sometimes I just want to stay in my room all day watching American TV shows (and sometimes I do), but everyday I’m faced with a choice: I can either let the fear take over, give up and waste another day not exploring the city, not meeting new people and making friends, not seeing the incredible things this city and country have to offer, feeling sorry for myself, lonely, and just wishing I could be back at home, in my comfortable apartment, hanging out with my friends, and reveling in the routine of the life of a typical college student, or I could get over the fear and push back.

Study abroad is a challenge every single day. It’s a rollercoaster, and while the hills are high and the views from up there are incredible, the lows run deep and sometimes you wonder why you ever put yourself in this position in the first place. The key lies in not only recognition, because that’s the easy part, but action. It is so easy to blame your inaction on the fact that you’re scared and to realize that if you simply pull yourself up out of bed and do something, anything, you’ll be okay and start making your way back out of that low, but to actually do it, to get up when all you want to do is feel sorry for yourself, longing for home, that’s the challenge. 

Maybe you moved abroad to try something new, to discover another part of the world, or to discover yourself, but maybe you’re running away. Maybe it’s both, and although it’s hard, and although every single day is exciting yet filled with challenges, you know without a single ounce of doubt that you don’t want to do what you’ve always done, that you don’t want to let the fear creep in and paralyze you, that you don’t want to waste one more second feeling sad or lonely or scared, and that in two months when you head home, you don’t want to feel like you’re running away again. So don’t. Don’t let the comfort of routine dictate how much you get out of this experience or how much you enjoy it. Revel in your differences from the locals, appreciate the fact that you will do something wrong nine out of ten times, but that eventually you’ll get it right, absorb the differences, and enjoy the realization that all of those new things you are seeing and experiencing are changing you down to your tiniest little fiber, and be thankful that you get to have your eyes pulled open and realize that just because it’s not familiar, doesn’t mean it’s wrong.

Everyone will tell you what an incredible, life-changing experience studying abroad is, but they’ll rarely tell you about the shadows. But what makes light shine brighter than the presence of darkness?