Everyone who knows me knows that I studied abroad last spring in London, and everyone who's talked to me since I came back has heard me tell them that it was the best time of my life.
I almost hate to say that, because it's one of the biggest college cliches: girl goes abroad and posts a photo of herself with arms stretched out in a foreign city and a lengthy caption about how she underwent an intense, yet refreshing, spiritual reincarnation and found herself ™ among the streets of Barcelona, London, Syndey, Beijing, or wherever the hell she happened to go.
I didn't want to be a cliche, so I didn't post any rambling stories on Instagram or "stereotypical" study abroad pictures. I didn't leave the UK feeling like I "found myself" or learned the infinite majestic inner workings of the world. In fact, I left even more confused about myself and my path in life, but I did discover parts of myself and I did learn some things, and London was the best time of my life.
It's become important for me to to try and articulate why I loved London and miss it so much. Because cliche or not, studying abroad had a big impact on me, and I'm tired of people (like myself!) writing off a whole semester's experience and personal growth, just because I "went abroad."
So I'll try to explain it here.
When I was little, I had three life goals. I still have the same ones. They are:
1. Study abroad.
2. Publish a book.
3. Live in a house with its own library.
I've had these same goals since I can remember (the third one tacked on a bit later, when I realized that most people don't have corners of their bedrooms dedicated solely to overflowing boxes of books and paperbacks double-parked on shelves). There's a lot I want to do before I die, but these three have been with me the longest, and because of that, they have a special place in heart.
For me, then, studying abroad was more than a chance to take a break from college and immerse myself in a new culture - it was the first life goal I could cross off. Just getting on that plane (after the first one was cancelled due to fog :/) meant I was already achieving one of my life goals at age 22. And that felt pretty good, because if I could cross off the first goal on my list, surely, surely, I'll be able to cross off the others in a few years.
When I got to London, I'll admit, I expected my life to change. I expected that revelation, that everyone talked about, that soul-finding, even if I regarded it dubiously. But of course that didn't happen to me. I didn't have a revelation - it wasn't all glorious and beautiful from the moment I got there.
The first week, I walked an hour and a half alone in the cold from my flat in Shoreditch all the way to Hyde Park, and by the time I got there, practically frozen, having spent an extra ten minutes trying to figure out how to cross several lanes of traffic (I finally discovered the tunnel that went under the road), I was so cold that I only spent 15 minutes there before taking the subway back home.
At first, my only friend was a guy I met in my program who had similar music taste to me, someone who was nice but didn't, for instance, have the makings of a deep friend or even travel buddy. I had a big ole stretch of social anxiety for no reason, and once rode the tube in the midst of a panic attack. I got mad at tourists in Oxford Circus who almost got run over by the red double-decker buses and looked around with their mouths open, blocking my path down the street.
But I was happy, really, truly happy. I was out there fulfilling my life dreams. I saw my favorite painting in the flesh in the National Gallery. I browsed bookstores five stories tall and interviewed a stranger. I started wearing outfits I'd always wanted to, but didn't back home because I thought they were too bold for Pittsburgh and that people would judge me. I dyed my hair bright red and stopped caring if people looked at me. I learned the tube map and traveled to Paris, Prague, Edinburgh, and other cities. I made friends, deep, soul friends that I still keep in touch with, and will hopefully see again.
I felt, basically, like the truest version of myself in London. It felt like I was shedding, scraping off the parts of myself that were superfluous, inauthentic, leaving just my true-self center behind. Maybe that's getting too metaphorical so I'll say this: London was the freedom to be myself.
But I still didn't feel like I changed, per se. I still didn't have that revelation. When I mentioned this to one of my friends who studied in Singapore, she said that she didn't feel that either when she was abroad, but did feel that it changed her, the same way choosing her major or going to college changed her.
I hadn't thought about it that way, and I still think about her words a lot. Change often isn't a great unveiling that wipes the sidewalk out from under you, but a gradual shifting, the way the continents were once al lc. I probably would have eventually made gained more self-assurance, but who knows when it would have happened, or where.
London is special to me because it's the place that kickstarted all these thoughts and feelings and shiftings. I miss it so much because I miss the version of myself I was when I was there.
And I miss the physicality of it, too, with a real ache in my chest, when I walk down the streets in my mind: coming out of the Old Street tube station to the roar of traffic and businessmen, hipsters, and homeless right beside me, striding past the jewelry shop and kebab stand and pizza parlor and The Craft Beer Co. where a man once gave me a high five, the Sainsbury's Local where I got groceries when I didn't want to walk too far, the bookstore across the road where I bought a journal, the City Best Kebab and City Best Wine, where I once stood at 2 am laughing with friends under a wheeling night sky, the blue door of my flat, the place I called home for the best five months of my life, the key warm in my hand like a second heart.