Even though I won’t touch down in warm and sunny Barcelona, Spain, until January, I’m already feeling FOMO, the fear of missing out, in State College. Turning 21 just a couple of days ago does nothing to help.
After years of being suppressed by my biding time in the Lions Den or dingy fraternities, I finally get a taste of freedom with my friends, but I only get four weeks of this sweet fix. With a week off for Thanksgiving and winter break right around the corner, I feel like the days are getting shorter and shorter, and I’m losing my time here.
With each day passing by, I find myself reluctantly rejecting birthday party invitations and spring break trips. My mouth finds itself betraying my heart with each passing refusal. I know being in Europe for a whole semester is incomparable, and God knows once I’m there I’m not going to want to leave, but right now it’s the last thing on my mind.
I’ve had an intense feeling of FOMO ever since I was little. I’m talking about feeling sad if I miss a simple grocery trip with my roommates or wanting to die when I can’t go to lunch with some friends because I have class, so mix that feeling with being an eight-hour flight and thousands of miles away, and it’s not a pretty picture.
I’m already grieving for the time the rest of my roommates and friends turn 21 and get a whole semester at the bars without me. I’m already missing out on my clubs with the friends I finally got close to this semester, who will graduate in the spring.
Yes, I’ll be clubbing in Barcelona and traveling to my dream places like Paris and Dublin, but right now my heart is with the late-night Dairy Queen runs and lazy movie nights with my roommates, something I’ll have to go months without. I’ve always known it’s not the place, but the people you have fun with, and that notion could not be any truer right now.
I always heard about people applying to go abroad, then them actually being abroad, but no one ever prepared me for the hurricane of feelings I’m having right now. No one would tell me I would already be feeling the effects of leaving, two months before I even go.
There are endless worries in my mind. Will this affect my relationships with friends who stay? Will they become inseparable while I grow further away? Should I even be going?
But then I’ll remember what waits ahead for me: taking classes in one of the best cities in the world. Sitting in a cafe with the locals. Going on spontaneous weekend trips to Portugal or Italy. Seeing my friends in Dublin, Paris and the Czech Republic.
I can’t wait to go abroad. I’m ready to reinvent myself in a place where no one knows me, all over again. I’m ready to go — I’ll just might always have a feeling in my gut that I’m missing out on so much in State College while I’m gone.