This article is written in three parts. The first part I wrote while still abroad, the second part soon after I got home, and the third part after I adjusted back to life at Kenyon. I hope this structure will help show the many conflicting emotions about my experience in London, and how those change with distance.
A note on the pictures: I made a very deliberate decision not to include pictures of me smiling and traipsing around tourist hotspots. Seeing other people posting those images – and picking out my own to post – was difficult for me. I felt jealous of others’ fantastic trips and dishonest for pretending that I was having a fantastic trip. Instead, I chose to include pictures of roses from Regent’s Park in London. This park quickly became a refuge for me. It was a place where I could hide from the chaos and the crowds and where I could pretend I was somewhere else. I went back to this park on my very last day in London and the roses were finally blooming. The yellow one is called “Keep Smiling.”
Part One: Four Months Abroad
I don’t think going abroad was the right choice for me.
I cried every night for at least a week before I left. I was afraid of being so far away. I was afraid of not making friends. I was afraid that I wouldn’t be able to handle it. Every instinct I had was begging for me not to go, was telling me to stay at Kenyon where I would have a support system. I should have listened. I didn’t.
The first few days abroad were a rush of small talk and orientation sessions. I had trouble sleeping, but jet lag was normal. I quickly fell into a large group of acquaintances. I saw Big Ben my first night. Everything seemed to be getting off to a great start. But, just as everyone else got settled in, I started going downhill.
A week after arriving in London, I still didn’t have a consistent sleep schedule and felt lucky when I got more than an hour or two of rest a night. That group of acquaintances quickly started to bond and become much closer. I gradually excluded myself – making excuses every night when I saw their plans.
I didn’t bond with my flatmates either. Simply put, they loved to party and I didn’t appreciate loud music and drunken screams at all hours of the night. I was afraid if I asked them to quiet down they’d hate me. I was afraid to pass them in the hall, in case they asked me to go out with them and I had to concoct yet another excuse.
It quickly got to the point where I wouldn’t leave my closet-sized room for days at a time. I’d nibble on cold leftovers just so I could avoid the kitchen and potential socializing. I had my own bathroom, so I could theoretically stay cooped up in there from my class on Friday afternoon to my class on Tuesday morning. Well, I say theoretically.
I wasn’t sleeping. I wasn’t eating well. I wasn’t leaving my room. I cried multiple times every single day. I certainly wasn’t making any friends. And on top of all that I felt an enormous sense of guilt – I was supposed to be having this amazing abroad experience, but I was spending all my time in bed. My first two months in London were the hardest two months of my life. Looking back on it, I really should have just gone home after the first two weeks – would have saved me a lot of misery. I was on the verge of coming home more than once, even emailing several people at Kenyon asking how I could make that happen. In the end, though, my guilt won. My parents had spent all that money getting me to London, dammit I’d stick out the semester if it killed me.
Things did get better, once I was given medication to help me sleep and I started seeing a counselor on a weekly basis. I got out of bed more, showered more often, ate semi-consistent meals. I was still lonely and unhappy, but things were better. I started going sightseeing and adventuring, and – based on my Instagram feed – had the incredible abroad experience I was promised.
I still don’t think it was worth it, though.
I’d probably regret either decision I made – coming to London or staying at Kenyon. The grass is always greener, right? But I genuinely don’t think the amazing sights I saw during the second half of my time here were worth the hell I went through in the first half. That nagging, guilty voice of mine is telling me that I’m just whining and not appreciating the privilege I had of coming here in the first place. I’m working really hard to shut that voice up.
Yes, I am incredibly lucky to have the opportunity to spend a semester of college abroad. I appreciate that, I really do. But that appreciation does not invalidate the misery of struggling with mental illness an entire continent away from friends and family and a familiar support system.
I guess I’m trying to say I wish I hadn’t pushed myself too hard. I wish I’d listened to my instincts and just stayed home. I wish someone would have told me that I didn’t need to push myself that hard, and that backing out was a valid option. I would have missed some amazing sights, that’s for sure. But I also would have saved myself so much pain.
Part 2: One Month Back Home
Here are some quotes from the program evaluation I filled out for Kenyon:
Just generally, I’d recommend that you talk to students to see if they’re really prepared to go abroad. There’s such a sugar coating over the whole discussion — “oh there are rough patches but hahaha it’s great.” I want to hear the voice of someone who didn’t go abroad and are glad, or who went abroad and regrets it. Going abroad is really hard and really scary, and I just wasn’t emotionally prepared to go. I wish someone had told me that maybe it wouldn’t be worth it.
I feel like anything I wrote here, for an OCS publication, would be sugar coated and dishonest. Study abroad was an extraordinarily difficult experience for me. I’ve been back in the States for over a month and I am still processing it and trying to decide whether or not the cool sights were worth the extraordinary misery I experienced, particularly in the first few months. Be honest with students. Tell them it’s difficult. Tell them it’s not for everyone. Tell them it’s ok not to go abroad, and that they shouldn’t feel the need to push themselves beyond their limits. I know I would have regretted not going abroad, but that’s just because everything I’d been told was about how it was such a wonderful, life-changing experience. I needed someone to be honest with me, and tell me that it’s ok to not be able to handle the extreme pressures of being alone in a foreign country.
Part 3: Four Months Back Home
I’m back at Kenyon. I was here most of the summer, but campus was empty so that doesn’t really count. Now it’s full of people and homework and busy schedules, so it finally feels like I’m back.
People kept asking me about abroad, in that casual way you ask someone how their summer was. Expecting the answer to be “amazing!” and maybe another sentence of elaboration. I spent weeks trying to craft my answer to that question, before settling on “I saw a lot of cool things.” I’d add “It was a lot” if asked for more details.
I didn’t want to lie. I didn’t want to say that I had this amazing, transformative experience abroad. I didn’t want to act like it was the best five months of my life. But I also didn’t want to tell the truth, and I knew they didn’t want to hear the truth. So I came up with my flippant answer, and that was enough for most passing conversations.
Somehow, four months after leaving London, I still haven’t finished processing what happened there. I still haven’t figured out how to acknowledge the utter misery that filled so many of my days, while also recognizing that I really did see so many cool things. I did see Big Ben and the Queen and the Harry Potter studio and the Rosetta Stone and the Eiffel Tower and the Scottish highlands and castle after castle and so much else.
How do you look back on an experience that had such high highs, but also lows so low you thought you could never climb out?
I appreciate the opportunity I was given, the chance to see and do all those incredible things. I know how lucky I am. But that luck translates into so much guilt for not loving my abroad experience.
Sometimes, if people push slightly past my glib answers, they’ll ask “But aren’t you still glad you went?” They’re expecting the answer to be “Of course I am!” Of course, that’s not my answer. My answer is that I genuinely don’t know. I’m glad I saw the things I saw, but I went through hell to get there.
I still haven’t figured out which way that tips the scales.
Image Credit: Writer’s Own