A melancholic goodbye to our trip and an optimistic look to the future

I don’t love making grand statements about my own development as a human being. In my experience change is something that happens gradually, only to be noticed post months, or even years, of development and learning. Throwing all that out the window though, London flipped a certain switch in me that I didn’t know existed. The other night, our last night in London, I walked back to the hotel after the musical we saw and took many detours to simply get one last bit of the city into my bones. Taking out my AirPods, I listened to the noisiness and simply let my internal monologue fill my head instead. I thought about how much I missed my girlfriend, the things I wanted to cook when I got home, and how I should probably make more of an effort to talk to my brother. After all that though, I found myself entertaining a broader, more melancholic train of thought, I have to go home…  Home isn’t a bad thing by any means, in fact, I’m excited to resume my life, but I feel like this trip gave me a taste of the kind of life I want to evolve my current one into, one that I don’t have yet.

When I was deciding what to do after high school I chose the University of Arkansas. I wanted to join the Theatre department there and, in full transparency, because I didn’t think I could afford to go out of state. Making this decision, I fully committed and exclusively applied to that university, the one in my hometown. My twin brother went the opposite route and worked his ass off to get into an art school in New York City. As my first semester started I loved my classes, peers, and professors but I couldn’t help but feel like, to a certain extent, my life was happening elsewhere. Not that it was bad, and in no way am I bad-mouthing or regretting joining this school because I’ve grown so much being here.  I’d just lived in Fayetteville my whole life and, to be honest, staying there wasn’t exactly what the younger me’s idealistic view of the future had in mind. As I watched my brother and other peers who left home thrive in their new environments, I went to the bookstores I knew like the back of my hand, the same movie theater I saw movies in when I was five, and simply kept going just like I had when I was in high school. It felt a bit like everyone else was flying off to new horizons and I was floating in space, stagnant. 

In my time on this trip, I explored London as much as possible, tried foods I couldn’t get anywhere in Fayetteville, took a trip to Amsterdam, saw a film that I never dreamed I’d get to see in theaters, experienced more live theater than I’d ever seen, and had a million firsts. While it may sound hyperbolic, me leaving this trip is not the same person who flew here last month. The importance of studying abroad to me was originally just to have a fun vacation, see some theater, and then come back. Instead, I found that I really needed these types of new experiences. I needed to go and explore a bit so that I could get a taste of what could await me on the other side of undergraduate. A reignited thirst for the unknown that I’d all but become content with the lack of in my life. While yes I learned an immense amount about theater that I’m incredibly grateful for, more importantly, I learned a lot about myself. For that, I will always cherish my Summer abroad and I wouldn’t change it for the world.