Before Oxford, I thought I knew what leaving would feel like.
I had written an entire essay about it, actually. I wrote about crossing an ocean, taking up space, talking to my late grandmother under the sunsets, and the fear of becoming someone who stayed in the same place simply because it was easier. I wrote about wanting to become a new version of myself—someone braver, more certain, and more willing to take up room in her own life. At twenty-one, I thought maybe that was what growing up was supposed to look like: you leave, you change, and somewhere along the way, you finally figure yourself out.
Then I actually left. And, of course, it was nothing like I imagined.
I got into the boarding line, and that’s when it hit me. I was standing there with my bags, surrounded by people who were all going somewhere, and suddenly I felt incredibly young. I wasn’t just going away for a few days. I was getting on a plane and crossing an ocean without my usual support system. If something went wrong, I couldn’t just go home. For the first time, leaving wasn’t something I could romanticize from my bedroom. I was actually doing it.
I almost cried, but I got on the plane anyways.
Oxford itself didn’t feel like a movie. There wasn’t some immediate moment where I looked around and thought, this is it. I’ve become someone new. I was mostly just there.
I walked everywhere. I learned which streets I liked. I figured out where to get food and how long it took to get places. I got used to hearing British accents around me and I slowly stopped noticing them. I could wake up in the morning and decide where I wanted to go without really needing a reason.
That was the part I didn’t know I was going to love so much-being able to just go.
The Radcliffe Camera was about a five-minute walk from college, and at night, I started going there with my journal. I’d sit on the steps across from it and just write.
Sometimes I wrote about something that had happened that day. Sometimes I wrote about people. Sometimes I wrote about things I didn’t really understand yet. There wasn’t always a point to it. I just liked being there, especially when I could sit for a while without having anywhere else to be.
I think the essay I wrote before leaving made me more aware of all this. I had spent months trying to put into words what I thought leaving would mean. So, once I was actually there, I kept noticing things I might have otherwise overlooked. I noticed when I felt free. I noticed when I felt lonely. I noticed which people made me feel comfortable and which ones didn’t. I noticed how often I was capable of more than I had given myself credit for.
I wasn’t necessarily becoming someone new, I was just finally paying attention to the person who was already there.
I also noticed cats.
Now, this sounds like a very small thing, but I swear I only saw them when I needed one.
I never told anyone when I was having a rough day either. I would just go for a walk by myself, and somehow, there would be a cat sitting on a wall or walking down a street staring at me like it had somewhere important to be.
I had missed my parents almost every day, but I missed Boogie even more.
She had been my one constant through so much of college, and being somewhere without her for almost two months was harder than I expected. I think that’s part of why those cats meant so much to me. On the days when I couldn’t call home, there would somehow be one sitting outside a shop or crossing my path on a walk.
They weren’t her. But they reminded me of what I was missing. I’d stop and watch them for a minute before continuing on my way.
Somehow, one of the best days of the entire trip happened in what we collectively decided was the most boring city ever.
There were four of us in Bristol. We got some drinks, went to a park, and somehow ended up sitting in a circle having one of the deepest conversations I’ve ever been part of. One person shared something personal, then another did, and suddenly we were talking about the parts of our lives that usually stay hidden.
I had barely known some of these girls.
That was probably what made it so strange. There was no history to protect. No version of ourselves we had spent years building in front of each other. We were just four girls sitting in a park, far from home, telling each other things we probably wouldn’t have said under normal circumstances.
I’ve never felt more connected to people in my entire life.
I still think about that day sometimes. Not because anything particularly exciting happened, but because it didn’t. We weren’t doing anything special. We were just sitting there, talking, and for a few hours, that was enough.
The rest of the trip was made up of moments like that. Small ones. The kind that probably wouldn’t make it into the scholarship essay I wrote before I left.
I got better at speaking up because I had to. I had to ask questions, figure out trains, make decisions, and occasionally pretend I knew exactly where I was going until I actually figured it out. I stopped overthinking every little decision because there was usually somewhere I needed or wanted to be.
And because I had already spent so much time writing about who I thought I would become, I think I started noticing my own potential in a way I hadn’t before.
Not because I suddenly had everything figured out. Just because I kept finding myself doing things I wasn’t sure I could do.
Regardless, I wasn’t thinking about any of this when I was at Lake Como.
I was sitting at the edge of the lake, looking at the mountains, and thinking about my grandmother.
I remember how quiet it was. I remember being somewhere that beautiful and not immediately thinking about what came next. I just sat there for a while and looked at the water.
I thought about how proud she would have been.
If she had been sitting next to me, I think I would have told her about the people I met. I would have told her about the places I went and the things I wrote down. I would have told her about the girls in Bristol and the streets of Oxford and all the little things I knew I would remember long after I forgot the details.
I would have told her that she was right about eventually finding my people, but that I had also started figuring out something else: who I wanted those people to be. Who deserved my attention. Who I wanted around me. What I wanted from the people I loved. And I think I would have told her that I was okay. Not all the time. Definitely not perfectly. But I was okay.
I had spent so much of the summer moving around, seeing new things, meeting people, getting lost, finding my way back, and occasionally sitting somewhere by myself with a journal or possibly a cat nearby.
Then I had to come home.
Coming home was stranger than leaving. The first three days felt completely unreal. Time didn’t exist. I kept looking at the clock and having no idea what time my brain thought it was. Even the way people talked sounded slightly wrong to me after getting used to British words. I expected everything to feel exactly the way I had left it. It didn’t.
When I finally got home, I put my bags down and ran straight to my room.
Boogie came out of her hiding spot almost immediately. She was hesitant at first, which honestly offended me a little. I smelled different. She sniffed me for a few seconds before apparently deciding I was still me. Then she started running around my legs and rubbing against my knee like she always does.
I sat on the floor with her for probably five minutes. She kept rubbing against me, and I just let her. I almost cried.
After spending the summer wanting to see everything, go everywhere, meet everyone, and figure out what was waiting for me on the other side of the ocean, I was sitting on my bedroom floor with my cat. And somehow, that felt like enough.
I wrote about leaving before I knew how to leave.
I think I understand it a little better now. I thought leaving meant becoming someone new. Maybe it was never supposed to.
Maybe sometimes you just have to go far enough away to notice the things you want to keep, the things you don’t, and the parts of yourself you hadn’t been giving enough room to hear.
I left home expecting to come back with a different life. Instead, I came back with a little more of my own.