"Aren't you so excited to leave? I can imagine it must be so incredible!"
Those are the words that come almost verbatim out of the mouths of almost anyone I describe leaving for Portugal to, at least anyone who isn't in my immediate circle of close friends. When I go on to express that I have mixed feelings about it, and that I'm still trying to just get through the bureaucratic process of graduating before it will sink in, I'm met with ambivalence or surprise that I'm notpositively shitting myself more excited about it. The truth, as I have learned it, is that not to have mixed feelings about something is not to have analyzed it and thought out the full context of whatever that something is. The other truth, as I have learned it, is that red tape and bureaucracy are things that will never end in adult life, not after college is "over", and especially not when you're moving to another country that has enough of its own problems to be welcoming in more potential economic liabilities.
I wrote about this before, but the point of this post is that I can be forgiven for a downtime in my pursuits of interests while I'm in the middle of a sobering reality check that involves all aspects of life, from finances to relationships. At the same time that I've reconciled my relationship to my own country with my desire to get out in the world, I've become aware that, despite my youthful years, time is not as abundant as it seems to be; instead of thinking about figuring out what I'm doing with myself, it must simply be done. The amount of things that need to go right and align themselves for what I intend to do in Portugal is staggering, and yet, it's not a degree of magnitude worse than what I had previously gone through to spend a significantly shorter period of time there. Anything I have to do after I've actually arrived in the country seems the easy part.
The world of undergraduate studies is a cozy bubble, which I find coddles the friendships and contacts you build and makes it easy to live in a world of the temporary—a space in time where you know things will, for the most part, not last, but where the day of reckoning is far enough away that you don't have to worry about it. Now I'm worrying about it. Moving away from the comfort of going to and from class, working short hours, and seeing people with flexible time schedules exacts a huge strain on even the closest of relationships, and part of leaving is also facing the idea that some of that strain already existed, it just wasn't brought up, because college life reduces its importance. There is tension constricting the amount of socialization I can bring myself to do and which others can bear to put up with, knowing as we all do that at some point I'll be on another continent and unable to communicate and build connections with the same ease, grace, and thoughtfulness as naturally occurs in person. I'm forced to consider my place in an intimate relationship. This process of bursting the bubble of college life to move onto other pursuits is a solemn note in accepting that when you're putting yourself out there, you really are on your own doing so.
When I stop and think about it, things are going the way they should be. But tell that to the gray hair that popped up in my eyebrow.
Those are the words that come almost verbatim out of the mouths of almost anyone I describe leaving for Portugal to, at least anyone who isn't in my immediate circle of close friends. When I go on to express that I have mixed feelings about it, and that I'm still trying to just get through the bureaucratic process of graduating before it will sink in, I'm met with ambivalence or surprise that I'm not
I wrote about this before, but the point of this post is that I can be forgiven for a downtime in my pursuits of interests while I'm in the middle of a sobering reality check that involves all aspects of life, from finances to relationships. At the same time that I've reconciled my relationship to my own country with my desire to get out in the world, I've become aware that, despite my youthful years, time is not as abundant as it seems to be; instead of thinking about figuring out what I'm doing with myself, it must simply be done. The amount of things that need to go right and align themselves for what I intend to do in Portugal is staggering, and yet, it's not a degree of magnitude worse than what I had previously gone through to spend a significantly shorter period of time there. Anything I have to do after I've actually arrived in the country seems the easy part.
The world of undergraduate studies is a cozy bubble, which I find coddles the friendships and contacts you build and makes it easy to live in a world of the temporary—a space in time where you know things will, for the most part, not last, but where the day of reckoning is far enough away that you don't have to worry about it. Now I'm worrying about it. Moving away from the comfort of going to and from class, working short hours, and seeing people with flexible time schedules exacts a huge strain on even the closest of relationships, and part of leaving is also facing the idea that some of that strain already existed, it just wasn't brought up, because college life reduces its importance. There is tension constricting the amount of socialization I can bring myself to do and which others can bear to put up with, knowing as we all do that at some point I'll be on another continent and unable to communicate and build connections with the same ease, grace, and thoughtfulness as naturally occurs in person. I'm forced to consider my place in an intimate relationship. This process of bursting the bubble of college life to move onto other pursuits is a solemn note in accepting that when you're putting yourself out there, you really are on your own doing so.
When I stop and think about it, things are going the way they should be. But tell that to the gray hair that popped up in my eyebrow.
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