I’ve officially been in Spain longer than the time I have left. A month and ten days feels both long and short at the same time, if that’s possible. Right now, it’s feeling extremely long. This was supposed to be an airy piece about my time here so far but right now, it feels heavy and blurry. My sweet sister was supposed to come visit, but there was an oversight on her passport expiration date, so she found out at the very last minute that she wouldn’t be able to board the plane. I was automatically crushed because I felt her heart break, how excited she was to come see Europe, how much time and money we had put into planning, all for nothing. Of course I was sad that I wouldn’t be able to show her around, making memories of a lifetime. But I didn’t realize how much I had been looking forward to this week as a way to break up my time here, as a way to rest in the presence of home.
I am naturally quite an independent person, and this experience hasn’t brought many surprises. I’ve managed pretty well, enjoyed my time spent alone and with new faces. However, the days are not always easy, filled with adventure and laughter and smooth sailing. There are days when I miss the bus or take the metro in the wrong direction, waste time aimlessly strolling when it’s hot outside and nothing is open (oh, the Spanish siesta), or honestly just feel discontent for no real reason. There are nights when I feel like my Spanish has gone back multiple steps, when I feel like I’ve hurt my host mom because I “just wasn’t hungry enough,” or when I wish I could just be with the people who truly understand me.
Halfway through, and the intensity of everything that’s happened is kind of starting to feel like a lot. Not that so much bad has happened, but just in general. Being a nine on the enneagram, it can be difficult to process non-simple emotions. It tends to just feel like an accumulation of senses lingering in my body but keeping my mind and heart in the dark, to have to try and figure it out with no proper indication of what’s going on. I’m left with anticipation for the moment it reaches the surface. As an example, the moment I reached my home in Valencia and dropped my bags, I burst into tears and didn’t stop for a few hours. I realized that for the past three months I had not allowed myself to slow down and really feel everything. I had been traveling so much and living nonstop that I waited until the last minute to feel my fears: fear of not succeeding in Spanish, not making friends, feeling too alone, and a lot more. To face all of that at once was overwhelming.
Now, I feel like I’m reaching closer and closer to the surface. I do miss everything that is happening back home, my family, my university, my friends. I do desire more comfort than I have right now. I do sometimes feel like I’m not getting enough out of this experience, even though I know that one isn’t true. I miss my sister so much and I still have yet to process what just happened, the fact that I just landed in Paris and I’m not meeting her here. I do feel unsettled at times.
None of this is to say that my experience has been anything short of exactly what I needed, amazingly intentional of God, and wonderful overall. I’ll just wait to talk about all of that in another post (spoiler: all of my fears turned out to be wrong, don’t worry). It’s important to acknowledge that things are hard. Even more to realize that just because things are hard doesn’t mean they aren’t worth doing. To quote Mulan, “a flower that blooms in adversity is the most rare and beautiful of them all.” I wouldn’t say that I am facing adversity here, but I did carry a lot of baggage before I took the plane out of the United States. From my journal a few months back:
“life can be so hard, and people are against you and you fail and sometimes don’t even get back up until a lot of time goes by, and you get misunderstood, and every bad thing. but wow, imagine a blooming flower from that: a garden, watered with tears. and then the sun shines on it, a really really big sun that changes everything. and then you get stronger, and you see that you are wiser because of it all. maybe a little more ragged, a little more raw. but with such a deep knowledge of a savior, of a friend who was there through everything. and at the end, he says how proud he is that you pulled yourself up at all. so yeah, i can be thankful for adversity. because in the thick of it you can’t name a good thing. but look at me now–i’ll never take a thing for granted again, because there was a time that i took everything that was given to me and i crumpled it up and threw it to the side. not this time.”
All my posts somehow come down to the goodness and faithfulness of God. That’s the only way I know I’m going to be okay. That’s the only way I’m even here. I’m continuously navigating and that is coming to be perfectly fine with me. And in the uneasy, when I don’t understand my own feelings and all I know to do is sit in it for a little while, he offers to sit with me.
More updates on my study abroad experience to come! I’d also love feedback on what kind of things might be interesting to write about when it comes to studying abroad. You can go to the Contact Me page to send an anonymous comment! My instagram DM’s are open as well.
Alex
