I don’t think growing up is scary | Blog

A year ago today, I was convinced I was setting my life on fire. I was about to embark for a semester abroad in Spain, and I was leaving behind all my friends, my apartment, my sister and — at the time — a potential romantic prospect.

Instead of the typical rest and holiday cheer I looked forward to during my winter break, I was frantically packing up my apartment in Berkeley and attempting to shuffle my belongings into a bag that had to weigh less than 50 pounds.

All throughout the break, I hectically checked emails, financial aid, class schedules and living situations. I was uploading documents to various portals and making sure I had scanned copies of my passport and visa at the ready.

What I remember now looking back was feeling like I could never take a full breath. Maybe it was the holiday’s cold congestion that had me stepping out of a Christmas Eve service to blow my nose, but I chalk it up to the anxiety of leaving everything behind.

There was a lot I was afraid of: my so-called agoraphobia making a comeback, losing touch with my friends, missing something important with my family, potentially hating Spain and having to come to the conclusion that I wasn’t the kind of person who was capable of what studying abroad would require of me.

When I got to Spain, I won’t lie — there were a few mishaps. I had bouts of homesickness and loneliness and wrote a blog post that apparently was so concerning I got called in by the University of California study abroad program to have a mental health check-in.

However, to no one’s surprise, I ended up loving it. I loved Spain — the public transportation, the narrow streets with their plazas and cobblestones, the orange-yolked eggs and the feeling I got waking up every morning knowing I was in a different country.

I met so many interesting and exciting people: people who loved traveling or who wanted to, people who wanted entirely different things out of life or had entirely different backgrounds from me. Sometimes in Berkeley, it’s easy to get caught up in the Berkeley mindset. Most of the people I interact with on a daily basis are students or people generally associated with the university. Going to Spain meant that I was meeting people who were removed from Berkeley, the Bay Area, the state of California and the United States. 

When it came time to return, I had a new fear: that this time I wouldn’t be able to fit back into my previous life — that somehow I had either shed or gained new layers and created a totally different version of myself.

Once again, these fears were unfounded. Yes, there was some stretching and growing involved, but life in general requires those things. Now, when I think about the past year of my life, it’s with a sense of awe. How amazing it is I got to do all of the traveling, eating and dancing that I did. How sweet it is that I’ve been able to stay in touch with some of my friends from that time. And — not to toot my own horn — how brave I was to be so scared and still do all those things anyway.

To loop back around to the bigger picture, I graduate in a few months. This next period of growth and change does seem quite frightening. But I keep reminding myself that as I’ve gotten older, I’ve only liked myself and my life more, and I won’t know how much better my life will be as I continue to live it.