Just Trust It
Coming home from a foreign country is a weird thing, man. You’re picked up by an airplane some 6,000 miles away, and by the time you wake up from a Nyquil coma everyone speaks your language and you can once again get a pumpkin spice latte off the Starbucks menu. Walking through customs at the Miami airport was akin to peeing in swimming pools as a child – comfortable, warm, a feeling of joy quite literally spreading around me. There were Christmas carols playing and decorated trees spotting the lobby, and hearing the words to “God Bless America” played over the loud speakers moved me to tears.
Home is a beautiful thing.
But then you actually get home (not just to the American airport) and something stirs inside of you saying that you have changed with a capital C. Sometimes I think the hardest part of a trip is the adjustment when you get back. How is it possible to now be bored by Target? Why is my hometown Mexican restaurant suddenly causing indigestion? Have I been dropped off in a strangely similar yet subtly different version of the United States?
Unless I have actually entered the Twilight Zone, the answer is no. No, I have not been deposited by American Airlines in a foreign land. Everything appears to be the same but in a way I know it’s different, too.
Just think about something: everything that takes place outside of your comfort zone is allowing you to grow.
Yes, I’m quite sure that I’ve mentioned this in every single one of my posts but oh my God – It’s true! I always look at the beautiful things my post-grad friends have done in such a short amount of time: moved away from home, started businesses, applied to law school, etc. They inspire me just by getting up each day and deciding to do something out of the ordinary. Watching them makes me want to appreciate myself and say, “Hey, self. Good job! You’re really living!” All this living is starting to push me away from what I used to know but sometimes I don’t know if I like it or not.
I’ll tell you something: friendships I have had for many years have been the most obvious change. I can deal with my boredom of Target and Los Amigos Mexican restaurant in Maryville, but I do not like seeing a friendship drift apart. Maybe it’s just this season of our lives, but I can’t help but wonder if it’s because I’m a very different person from who I was four months ago. I get scared and find myself worrying if what I’m doing is right – right for me and right for my loved ones.
It’s hard spending so much time away from home when I can feel it tugging at the seams of some of my closest relationships.
However, every time I get scared I think that I just have to trust the process of post-grad life. We all need to keep stepping out of our comfort zones and experiencing all those things that we might not get to have in the future – a future where we end up having families or numerous cats that prohibit spur-of-the-moment world vacations. Just trust the process of leaving and coming home, even if you find home becoming a place other than your parents’ house. It’s part of growing up.
[Photo by Ally Willis. Editing by Juliette Kibodeaux.]
