Girl With a Suitcase

There is something of which no Erasmus student / exchange ever talks about in his stories, that is the fact that he can be missing his home . I can not say why, but you only see them always posting beautiful pictures on facebook, when you hear them they tell you that it’s all sooooooo cool, when they come back home they do not tell others that they missed home at all. So it is not difficult right? If everyone leaves, and no one is hurted or at least feels alone, it means that it is easy !
But then there is the other ” voice “on the Erasmus / exchange, that is, the voice of the ones who organize these experiences (tutor, assistant, or at least as ” external “involved). All these people support the belief that an experience like that changes you because you learn to cope with the difficulties, to manage the loneliness, to cheer you up alone … so these changes and challenges seem to presuppose a fundamental difficulty, is not it? There are even people who study these things, I do not know whether they are psychologists, anthropologists or whatever, and have theorized a real graph of homesickness. I found one in the internet that is very similar to what we have seen here, during the first days of orientation:

 

http://web.viu.ca/studyabroad/departsmart/modules/whileaway.htm

The graph clearly shows how the pre-start period, is a period of ups and downs, confusion and indecision, following a period of up, at the start and then … one almost so down that it gets out of the diagram. And this study is not the result of an analysis that relates to, say, one in five students. they have proposed it to us as a mathematical certainty, something to which all must get through when dealing with this kind of experience.
So, Why there is nobody who tells it in the stories? Why when I look around me it seems to be the only one? I do not think it is generalizable, a lot do influence your character, much more the kind of company who you eventually meet in the new foreign country, perhaps even education or other things play a role … not everyone will have to deal with this chart. But someone, by force. And where is he? Why is he hiding?

We all hide, actually … even myself; some days I would just lock me in the room and cry, but then, when I go out, I smile, I ignore it, I say I’m fine … after a while I also begin to have fun, sure, but I still feel the emptiness that tells me that something is wrong, that this is not my place. I do not know whether to call it Homesickness or “homesickness”, because in reality it is not so much the house that is missing …,I wish my mom could give me a hug and a kiss from my boyfriend, and my friends and my home, yes.. but what hurts is that kind of feeling sick in my stomach, like when you’re nervous, like when you’re not relaxed . That feeling that makes you feel more like a rope pulled. And that’s why you feel like you’re out of place, because nothing of what you know and gives you security is there with you, because every stuid thing, even finding the toilet paper for the bathroom, when you’re in a new place becomes difficult.
I would just like to anybody to know, any student who is away from home and feels bad at times and feels ALONE …IF you’re reading this, I want to tell you that YOU ARE NOT ALONE . Because believe me, the foreign student in the room next to yours at this time is experiencing the same thing. The great problem of human beings is that we use the gift of speech for the wrong reasons, we use it to complain, to play, to laugh, to tease … never to ask for help.
In my case, I still feel like in pre-start period: continually oscillate between the high and the low, between the “yes, that’s great, everything is great here” and “what the hell am I doing here?”. A day on, and the other below ground. Having my boyfriend at home certainly does not help, maybe if I was alone I would have thrown myself into new knowledge, new things, new experiences … but at the moment he is one of the things that calms me, because it is the only one with whom I complain about it, and I can not think of being without the knowledge of his presence. I think I’m a very strange person … I’m under a magnitude inversely proportional: at the increase of people, my sympathy decreases. I do not know anymore how to relate with them. It ‘s always been that way, in fact in my life I have never been part of the large group, I always had my small group of friends according to the philosophy of ” few but good”. But here I wanted to be different. Here I just wanted to enjoy all the experiences in the easiest way possible. Instead, I seem to find walls in front of me: I try to make friends, to open up, to invite, and it seems that everyone has already their lives, tying a relationship seems impossible. It’s so sad to feel alone, so sad to not feel accepted. That’s why I wonder if mine is homesickness or whether it is just that I’m unable to afford it. Perhaps, as always, I force myself to do things I’m not ready for. Maybe my character or just the current circumstances do not allow me to enjoy this experience as I should. Or more probably I’m just saying this because it is the beginning, and I still do not know how things will evolve.
Lets just agree it is this: my heart is split in half, one side pounding in front of all the news and all the challenges I am facing, and is happy and fulfilled to have this dream come true. The other half struggles to find his place here, and hopes that this experience, however rich and formative, runs out quickly. I do not know how it will evolve, maybe in a month everything will be completely different. I can only try to live it as it comes. For better or for worse, I will have learned so much in the end. For now, though, I still hope that it is just “for better”.