Blog 2
Back in high school, the summer after sophomore year, I got the opportunity to travel to France and Italy in a school trip. It was a great trip and opportunity. One moment that stick out to me happened towards the beginning of the trip. We had just boarded our bus and were leaving the Paris airport. As we were sitting in traffic my jetlagged mind began to wander from thought to thought. Then suddenly, a wave of panic rushed over me. I was literally an ocean’s length away from home. If something were to happen to me, my family would be nowhere near me. Now, I had been away from home before and have traveled without my family. I have never had an issue being away from home and am typically comfortable traveling alone. But all of my other travels were on mainland United States. Something about being on another continent made the whole situation feel very different. It was the realization that no one could actually reach me and I could not get to them was a lot at the time. So, my mind was racing from thought to thought in about a minute or two and then it just calmed down. My thoughts returned to a more normal train of thought for me, I was here because I wanted to be and there wasn’t much changing that at this point. This process was maybe a couple minutes, as we were making our way through the Paris traffic. This thought process is so out of character to me, I almost shocked myself that it happened. I typically roll with the punches, go with the flow, and pretty much any other cliché that can describe that mind set. Though at the time, I did not give this much thought and just went on with my day. It was the only time the whole trip that I felt this strange sense of being stuck or trapped. But as I think back on this event I feel that this is more about feeling trapped or stuck. Not that I missed the proximity of home or the distance from them but the fact I was kind of trapped where I was. There was no conceivable way for me to leave to go to a more comfortable place if I needed to. Usually, in most situations, there is some way to get out if needed not that I ever use that option but it’s typically there. I’ve never experienced a sense of fear like this after this short moment in Paris. It was somewhat an eye opener that maybe I wasn’t as comfortable in the situations that I thought I was. Since then as I’ve gotten older, I feel I have gotten more comfortable in situations I cannot control. Still this moment returns to me every now and then before I go out somewhere. It’s almost more of a reminder of what I felt then and what acting on feelings like that could do. If I were to be a panic or homesick the entire trip, I would have missed out on some great memories.
