Like many college students, I love to travel and live outside of my state. I love getting to see new places, trying new foods and meeting new people. On the flip side of that though, I also consider myself a homebody, and leaving can be extremely challenging for me. I like to be comfortable, I don’t like leaving my friends and family, and I love my hometown. These two things constantly bring tension to my life and create challenges every step of the way.
Facetiming just isn’t the same as actually being with a person or place.
Travelling inherently means leaving home and with that comes leaving all of your personal belongings, friends, family, boyfriend or SO and pets. People say there’s facetime and that nothing changes that much when you are gone, but as any homebody knows, there’s nothing that can emulate the feeling of being home unless it’s the real thing.
With every leap I take, when the bad times come- I question why I put myself through this again and again.
I’ve left home a couple times in my life and not once has it been an easy decision or an easy path. Don’t get me wrong, I have loved living in another state or abroad and I am so grateful for all the opportunities I have had, but sometimes I don’t understand why I choose to leave a place I love so much with people who make me incredibly happy. Most of the time, I do just fine and enjoy my experience greatly, but with those bad days, comes the question that can be hard to get out of my head when I return home and explore my next travelling options.
Whenever I choose to spend a summer at home or forego an opportunity, I experience major FOMO.
While leaving home always comes with some heartbreak, it is something that I love and adore and cannot imagine my life without. At the same time, every time I return, I usually make my friends promise that next time, they’ll make me stay. This is a promise that they make that generally gets broken, but the times that it doesn’t and I seek an opportunity closer to home, while I am happy and enjoy all my in-state adventures, I wonder what I am missing out on and what could’ve been.
Was my transfer back to my home-state the right decision?
I, like one third of all college student’s transferred after my freshmen year of college. I am the first person to say that this was 100% the right decision for me, however, sometimes I wonder if I should’ve been braver and tried another school out of state before attending my home-state University. Luckily though, my main in-state University is incredible and I have had the time of my life. I was able to join a sorority, began writing for Her Campus and continue to date my boyfriend at a much more comfortable distance. Life is full of what-if’s though and every so often I catch myself day-dreaming of the possibilities that could’ve come if I had attended elsewhere.
At the end of the day, you will always be wondering what could’ve been, especially for someone who has the personality of being both a homebody and someone who likes the adventure of being and living away from home. It’s the constant balance of making the right decision for you and the length of your adventures at the right time.