10 Sep How To Say Goodbye (well for now anyway)

August 10, the day that held the door open to an absurd amount of emotions. I was placing my feet into a long held dream of mine, to study in another country. Firstly I was so terrified of seeing what my dream truly had in-store for me and secondly I was super excited to see for my self first hand that dreams really do come true – with one catch, you have to work your butt off for it! However it was not as simple as just waving goodbye to everyone and laughing all the way through the international gates. Melbourne airport was were I discovered how much the connections that I have made with my family, friends and my boyfriend really are embedded into my blood stream. I can honestly say that I have never in my life felt so much pain and sadness within those moments, I felt as if my life was being ripped away from me. All whilst feeling super guilty about these feelings because I was supposed to get on that plane and feel the happiest I had ever felt, when in reality I was miserable. I cried the whole fourteen hours next to two strange men.

It has now been ten days since I left home and I still have so many mixed emotions. Whilst everyday I am falling more and more in love with this city of San Francisco I cant help but wish that everyone was here with me to share this experience. Before you start to think “oh how ungrateful” or “this girl is such a sook, she is in a different country starting her life, gets the freedom of not having to work for six months and she is sitting behind her computer screen complaining about how much she misses her life back at home”, trust me I think this everyday as well. But if you’re lucky to have such incredible connections to the people who do (or used to) surround you everyday, I think you may begin to understand where I am coming from, and if you don’t I truly hope that you can make these connections very very soon because it is amazing.

So my advice to anyone that is feeling homesick that actually ever reads this is remember what drove to be brave enough to take this journey all by yourself. For whatever the reason was it had to be strong enough to motivate you to do all the draining paper work and endless hours of research and even mustering up the strength to take those extra shifts with your job. You owe it to yourself to just give this daunting experience a real shot. Let yourself experience everything that this world throws at you, meet some new people with funny accents and discover how strong you are! Remind yourself to breathe and practice waking up every morning and say to yourself “I’ve got this”.