Home. Domov.
It’s so weird to think that I’ve been home a week already (that my original ticket would’ve had me flying out of Dublin only yesterday). It’s been a whirlwind, but that’s not terribly surprising. The first thing I did when I got home was go find my family, my friends, my bosses, my mentor. I spent the first five days back setting up the rest of my summer — figuring out housing, research, work, travel plans, my love-life, my spiritual life, my gym membership. I went in search of photos, music, art and books to set the tone for a summer at home. It was stimulating. It was EXHAUSTING. Maybe I should’ve eased back into things.
Monday morning alone at my kitchen table with a good cup of coffee and a nice view of the sweet summer rain, I’ve finally found myself really thinking about my time abroad. First impression? Well, there were a lot of boys. Probably too many boys that I definitely spent too much time thinking about. And I’m kicking myself for spending too much time thinking about a not-worth-it boy again as soon as I got back. It’s a bad habit bordering on neurosis that I finally recognize and am determined to kick this summer.
I left Raleigh with a rather broken heart, intending to go find myself in Europe through a lot of weekends walking alone in the streets and reading books in tiny cafes, but what I found, instead, was a beautiful community of people that filled my time with museums and restaurants and bars and clubs and parks. With laughing over bottles of wine and drooling over dried fruit at Czech farmer’s markets and tasting Korean food for the first time and painting on graffiti walls and riding bikes in Barcelona and dancing in Berlin clubs so loud and dark I could barely stand. I have more beautiful moments to hold on to from the past three months than I can count. And so many of them I share with the beautiful people I met on my travels.
I recently sent these words to someone who was also traveling in Prague, and I think they stand true: “The lesson I’m taking from my time in Europe that gets me through all of this the best is that life is so much bigger than I ever imagined it to be. Is my hometown tiny? Yep. Is my bedroom suffocatingly small? Sure. But this is just a time and a place to rest and plan and build for how big (or small) I want my life to become. For the past months we just got a glimpse of how our lives really can be anything. They can be lanterns in parks and fields of yellow, quiet North Carolina streams and crazy Czech night clubs. So many beautiful options.”
Living in Europe for three months, on my own terms, by my own rules, let me see that I really can create my life to be whatever I want it to be. It allowed me to stray from the paths I’d been following. It forced me to invent new trails. I spent so many afternoons walking through European streets listening to Bon Iver croon “And I once I knew I was not magnificent,” but in doing so, I realized how strong I am, how glorious I can be. And how much there is to come.
Everyone asks if I miss Europe and hate being home, and I think something I said to the same friend answers that question: “While there are moments of intense panic in being home, that everyone and everything here is suddenly wrong (and maybe it is? how can i be sure?). I promise those moments are rivaled by times of intense calm. There’s a serenity here that I never found in Prague. And it’s helping me plan my next steps for the fall and next year.”
So I’m home, and it’s not quite as exciting as Europe, and it can be a bit lonely, but it’s my foundation. In the past three months, I tore down all of the second-rate buildings I’d constructed here by accident, or habit, or following a path. And now I’m reconstructing, actively building, maybe for the first time, because for the first time I feel that my eyes are really open, that I see myself and my surroundings so clearly. Do I have it all figured out? Of course not. Is my vision often blinded by left-over emotion and exhaustion and loneliness? Of course. But when I sleep enough and go for a good run and read something meaningful, I feel better than ever.
Thanks, Praha. You’re the best.
