From Melatonin to Maelstrom

Sunset over LondonI fell asleep soon after the plane to took off. When I woke up, we were only 20 minutes away from landing at London-Heathrow. I tried to stay business like, making sure I had the landing card, but I couldn't ignore the fact that my stomach was doing flips. For the first time since I was about 5, I was nervous about getting off of an airplane. After I finally got off the plane, we headed to baggage claim, always my least favorite part of any travel experience. The fear of lost luggage has been with me ever since I can remember. It was a long walk from where we left the plane to where we picked up, in my eyes, 4 months of my life stuffed into bags.

On that long walk, my heart rate picked up. A maelstrom of thoughts went through my mind, ranging from "will my bags show up" to "what will my room look like" to "holy crap I'm in London and I"m here for 4 months." As I watched the bags go by, none of them being mine of course, it dawned on me that it was the first time I had to deal with baggage claim on my own. Usually when I travel, my sister and I are responsible for getting all of our luggage off the conveyor belt and onto carts. But I was alone now, trying to watch my hand luggage while hawkishly making sure my checked bags didn't pass me by. The comfort of knowing my family was right there behind me was gone; they were an ocean away from me, living their lives as they had always done so. I was the one whose life was about to turn upside down.

But that's why I decided to study abroad. I wanted to turn my world upside down; I wanted the challenge that it presented. I suppose I wanted to both lose and find myself, an idea that Pico Iyer opens his essay with. "We travel, initially, to lose ourselves; and we travel, next, to find ourselves." To find yourself, you have to lose yourself. And though written out, it seems like a paradox; I found it, oddly enough, to be true. In the time I spent from disembarking off the plane to the baggage claim, I managed to lose the comfort and security of my family and find faith in myself and what I was capable of. And that was only the beginning of what I now see as a process of losing and finding myself. I have no idea what this process will bring me throughout my time here, but I can only hope it gives me a way to tell family and friends at home why I really came to King's Cross, London in the first place. That's a question I could never answer in complete truth because I never knew the answer. Here's to hoping that will change.