Au Revoir

When I went abroad four impossibly short months ago I wanted it to last forever. I was sure the moment I got to Europe I would never want to leave. I got to Paris a week before my program started to travel with a friend and I am going to be staying for two extra weeks after my finals to travel with my family. I was incredibly lucky to be able to have a couple vacations combined with my time studying here. I’m so grateful to have had time to relax and take in Europe as a tourist as well as getting to experience what it’s like living here. However recently for the first time I’ve started to get homesick. 

I’ve missed my friends and family the whole time I’ve been here, but this is the first time my adventurous brain has really started to miss home and the stability that comes with that. I’m tired of packing, I’m ready to stay in one place for a while and have my support system in the same time zone as I am. And boy am I ready to be in a place where the default language is English. I got so much out of the language immersion aspect of being abroad and I wholeheartedly recommend it. It changed the whole way I thought and has given me a much better perspective on language in general, but I would be lying if I said the process wasn’t tiring sometimes. 

The thing is I think it’s okay to be ready to go home. Or back to something that more closely resembles home, I’m not sure if home is one place to me anymore, it’s some place in between the house I grew up in, my dorm room with my best friend, my grandparents cabin where I spent most summers and I guess Paris is a sort of second home to me now. I always thought homesickness meant missing a place but now I think, for me at least, it means missing the way you belong to a place. A certain version of me only exists when I’m home and now there's a part of me that will belong to Paris. Place influences so much, as a writer I’ve always known that setting was important, but I feel so much more able to imagine a life vastly different from mine now that I’ve lived somewhere outside of the state I grew up in. 

The country I’m going back to is not the same one I left, the people I’m going home to will have changed and grown just like I did, but I’m so lucky to have something to go home to. So the last time I take line six past the Eiffel Tower and when I buy my last pain-au-chocolate at the bakery down the street I’ll be sad but I’ll try to remember that I have so much to look forward to and that change makes me feel alive even if it hurts sometimes. I’ll find my way back to Paris someday and when I do I will be brand new all over again. Thanks for an amazing semester -Abbey