As the years go on by, I can't help but question what I'm doing with my life. That's not to say I'm unhappy, I have a bachelor's degree, a loving boyfriend, a stable income, and a wonderful group of friends - but somehow, I'm always wanting more. I know, I'll get an internship in a different country. Ah! I should? But wait, I’d be alone. Nah, I’d meet people, networking, they say, but I’d sure as hell come home unemployed.
We often think about leaving our hometown and never looking back, as if it were *that* easy. It really isn't, I struggle to get my passport at ease in the UK...and, I'm a UK Citizen. Unless I'm Tom Holland, I don't think the US will welcome me anytime soon. Homecoming? I think not.
The fees, the visas; the savings, the debt, the job uncertainty, why is it so hard to get up and leave? Why can't I go with my partner? Of course, I can, but he wants to have his own experience, I want mine. Sure, It's a few weeks, months - people always do this. Right? We just HAVE to do it before we settle and get married. Ugh, I'll miss my boyfriend while I'm gone, I'll miss him when he goes. There are SO many strings attached, but why?
I want to have my own experiences, but I will miss my people so much, and I hope they'd miss me. But it's not forever, it's *healthy* to spend time apart, they say. Sure, but it's not exactly easy.
I've always despised my hometown, whether that's childhood trauma (I swear we all had some kind), so the ticking time bomb in my mind has rung in my years for what feels like decades. Though suddenly, my desperation to leave, and to experience a new city is apparently a 'gap yah' where I'll 'find myself' and come back with patterned balloon trousers, and a septum piercing...?
It's all exciting wanting to start fresh, experience a new country for a while, but then what? You just come home. Not to say I would, my boyfriend and I have always discussed living abroad, permanently - but, come on, you can't just throw a pin at a board and go to...Tonga? You need that lived experience, but when the hell do I get that?
Saving, saving, saving - I'll have spent most of my life saving to travel, only to leave the country a handful of times. But be grateful, oh dear friend, cause If this were the 1800s, you sure as hell would be stuck at home with your annual leave being a trip to your local pharmacy for Opium. Even then, as a woman, you'd need to be very wealthy to even consider travelling. What's changed? Ha ha ha...oh.
Okay, stop with the pessimism. It's doable, and the reason I think like this is that, well, I've been trained to think this way. From day one it's been school, university, grad job; career, marriage, family, retirement, blank screen, (404 Error).
You don't seriously have time to do everything you want, and that's life. You work for what you get, and that's rewarding, sure. Though, I wouldn't mind something handed to me with a silver spoon every once in a while? *Hey, Kris Jenner...?*
I'll read a book, and escape, one minute I fantasise about leaving my hometown and moving to New York, working for the New York Times, with a black coffee in hand from my local barista. The next, my heart is pounding at the thought of leaving my old life behind, *visa declined*, *ouch, crippling debt*, *job uncertainty*...the list goes on.
Do it while you're young, they say. Sure, before my ovaries disappear. Live in a new city for a few months, save, get that dream job, move to a new country with my spouse - oh, and that's all while I'm in my 20's. The pressure is ON.
Can I change the route of the course, hack the computer codes, trick the system? Well, I'll never know if I don't try.
This post is gold. The homecoming part had me cracking up on the tube. Totaalllyy see where you’re coming from, I’ve heard so many people say that your 20s are when you have the lowest living costs, the least responsibilities and the most freedom and that we should take advantage of that to “be free” and travel the world. I will say that FOMO has stopped me from doing study abroads and such whenever I had the chance because I always thought my friends and the people I leave behind would become infinitely closer and I’d have to play catch up when I’m back, but that wasn’t the case at all. My friends that left and came back didn’t miss a thing, nothing had changed when they came back and no one had moved mad in terms of their jobs or paths in lives so if you’re worried about that, you shouldn’t be!