Why Leaving Home is Harder than Staying
It was back in 2011, when I decided to study abroad and spend a year of my life in the United States. Since then, my life was quite normal as the majority of teenagers in my town: I went to school, played the guitar, did sports, family vacations, joined the scout group, and basically surrounded myself with a big group of friends.
When I came back from that remarkable experience, I realized that something inside me was missing. A thing. Living in another family, learning a new language, immersing myself in a completely different culture, building strong relationships and surviving from a high school shooting. That was tough and unusual for a normal sixteen year old teenager.
Months passed by, and normality came back, slowly killing me. Nothing changed while I was gone, but I tremendously did. Anyway, life went on, I finished high school and went to college, always with that thing inside me missing, dreaming of an unknown future once I would eventually graduate, and always looking for something more than a life full of books, exams, friends and parties.
I always felt excluded when my college mates enjoyed staying up all night to drink, for me it was just a waste of time. To be honest, I never liked alcohol at all, and it might sound boring, but as a sporty person, I’m fine with still water. I hated to waste nights watching TV series and pretend to have fun with it. Even worse, I hated spending time creeping at guys’ profiles on social media, commenting with other students about who was flirting with and when. These little annoying things made me realized that I was not the typical 21 years old college girl. Everything seemed extremely stupid. But I couldn’t say it out loud because I would have sounded weird. I had to be (at least sometimes) like them.
After graduation, I was finally done with the list of “duties”. I was free. Done with studies and ready to jump into adulthood. That thing, which never came but also never went away, still bothered me. Among my closest friends, I was the only one who decided to leave home and relocate to a different country. Without too many thoughts, I packed my biggest suitcases and left with my long-time boyfriend to live in Germany. “Why Germany?”, people would ask. “Because the United States were too far away, and I would have probably missed my family too much…and the economy is stronger than in any other country of Europe”. I came without speaking a word of German, aware of the risks and difficulties of finding a job, but still excited to find my way and finally live together with the love of my life. We are not married, but we have been together for almost eight years, so he truly is the love of my life, my daily happiness, probably the best partner in crime I could have asked for.
The truth is… I miss something. I often find myself wondering if this was the right choice, if I would ever find that thing inside me that always stops me from understanding myself fully. Am I thinking too much? Maybe that’s the reason behind my nostalgia for the past, for home, for those days when I would go to school, come back and play with my friends until dinner time, spending the weekend scouting and enjoying a big meal with my grandmother and the rest of my family.
Is this maybe the thing that is missing? The wonderful memories of my childhood and adolescence or maybe my mysterious and imminent future?
When people ask me how I can go through all these difficult challenges, I just assume that nothing easy is ever worthwhile. So I cannot stay. I must leave. Because it’s hard. Because I’m still figuring out that little thing that is missing.
