I think most of us have seen TikToks of the view from a plane with sappy music and the caption “Leaving home to go home 🙁.” That isn’t my exact story, mainly because I knew how long I was gone for, I knew exactly when I was gonna come back, and understood the privilege I held to have the experience to study abroad. Some people in my close circle said I was crazy for leaving for a whole year (10 months, but I came back for 3 weeks during Christmas) to study in Madrid, when I hadn’t even been to Europe before. To my friends and my father I say: I completely agree, it was crazy. However, I knew even before I started that this wasn’t an experience I would regret. After coming back I understand the phrase “Once in a lifetime”, because studying abroad is an experience that encases so many things that nobody in their right mind would do it more than once.
When I was abroad, having the time of my life, I consciously knew that everybody’s life would carry on, but was comforted in the fact that it was 2024-25; and WhatsApp, Instagram, and Facetime would keep me afloat and not let me stray far from the people I loved. Now looking back it was partly true: I spoke to them every day, I was kept up to date, and knew time would fly by and I would be home with them soon enough and so I should make the most of the present in Madrid (and did I ever). However, during those three weeks of Christmas break I noticed the first ever slight changes. My little cousin was taller; my best friend was much more serious in her relationship than I thought; even my mom looked slightly different, though I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. I felt a little out of place in my own life, which was petrifying. Christmas, Three Kings Day, and New Years flew by and it was January 8, 2025. I was crying my eyes out on the way to the airport but I didn’t understand why. I loved my life in Spain, but it was temporary, and I feared coming back in June “too different of a person”; I feared coming back to my life not knowing how to fit in with my people and my environment.
Fast forward to June 15, 2025, my mom and I had just ended the best vacations of our lives, my life was packed up into 5 suitcases (two more than I went to Madrid with), I said goodbye to my friends, my neighborhood breakfast place, and my building’s doorman. Ten months that I would never relive, but that I couldn’t be more grateful for. My heart was even fuller than my suitcases and I started crying, not because I was coming back home, but because I wondered if I would ever get to live something so amazing ever again. At the same time I was very excited, I would get to see my family again, get to go to my favorite beaches and hang out with my favorite people. I was still worried about not being able to get back into the flow of things immediately, because it wasn’t just me who had changed in the past 10 months, everybody did too.
Three months later, I am still getting adjusted to all the changes I find in the places that I could’ve drawn from memory a year ago. I find less familiar faces on the train, meet new people in every class, even the menu of some of my favorite restaurants have changed. However, more than anything, I am grateful for the things that have stayed the same. My room looked exactly the same as when I left it in December, a mess. My mom and brother still have the same habits that used to annoy me, but now I find comfort in them; my dad still makes the same joke; and my grandpa still smiles the same every time I go visit.
I’ve come to the realization that it’s okay to not be the same person I was when I left; I think it would be actually scary if I was. I used to think change was this big dramatic thing, like you’d wake up one day and suddenly be a stranger to yourself. But it’s not like that. It’s slow. It’s subtle. It’s in the way I crave “gambas al ajillo” or REAL paella, or how I say “vale” without realizing. I’ve also caught myself romanticizing my time abroad more than I probably should. Like, I’ll be in traffic and suddenly miss waiting for the bus or the metro. Or I’ll be scrolling through my camera roll and feel an ache in my chest when I see a blurry photo of myself and my friends eating kebabs at 6 a.m. after the club. It’s not that I’m unhappy now, it’s just that I lived something so beautiful, so full, that regular life feels a little quieter in comparison.
I’ve also learned that finding my footing isn’t linear. Some days I feel totally in sync with everything like I never left. Other days I feel like I’m watching my life from the outside, trying to remember how to be the old me. But maybe the goal isn’t to be the old me. Maybe it’s to be the version of me that holds both worlds, the one who struggled then thrived through Madrid, and the one who finds peace in her messy room back home. Change is weird, it’s uncomfortable and sometimes sad, but it’s also kind of magical. Change means you lived, it means you grew, and if you’re lucky, it means you get to come back to a place that still loves you, even if you’re not exactly the same.