Just like that, it’s over.

I’ve been avoiding this.

I’ve been avoiding writing anything about the events of the past week because that means trying to figure out all the complex feelings that I have about my situation. I also did not want to offend anyone who has been very supportive of me coming home so I gave myself a few days.

Thursday, my parents called me to inform me that The United States had declared all global travel at a Level 4, or a Do Not Travel order. All citizens abroad should come home or prepare to be abroad for an indefinite period of time. Flights were going to start disappearing and international travel was going to slow down to all but nothing.

The decision was made that I was going to go home. I say a decision was made because I don’t think anyone involved really felt they had a choice. Obviously there was a choice, but I didn’t feel like I could stay, even though I wanted to. I felt safe, I was planning on staying there until end of June anyway, so I was comfortable staying there. I didn’t want to leave behind my new way of life. I didn’t want to leave my friends behind. I wanted to stay because yes, this experience had changed drastically, but it was still my study abroad experience. It didn’t scare me to stay. I wasn’t scared to live through COVID-19 in another country. I thought it would be interesting to document, honestly.

But, ultimately, it would have been selfish of me to stay. My family was worried. Me staying in the Netherlands through this pandemic scared them. And I understand that. Would I want my kid halfway across the world during a pandemic? Hell no. But that didn’t make it any easier for me to accept the fact that I had to come home.

The hardest pill to swallow for me was that this wasn’t about me anymore. It wasn’t about what I wanted, or whether I thought I was safe where I was. It was about my family and not worrying them sick about if I was OK or not. And those are valid factors to me.

It seems childish to say that that I wanted the situation to be about me, but this experience was completely self-driven. I had been planning it since my freshman year. I literally arranged my course load around this trip so all my credits would fit in four years and I would graduate on time. I took on a third job in the fall to save up money for the trip. I took time researching train passes and trying to plan out costs ahead of time. I dreamt of all the places I wanted to see. This was the first time I had really traveled in my whole life.

This whole experience got to be about me. For maybe the first time in my college career, I got to spend an entire semester having…fun? What’s that? I busted my you know what my entire college career to this point. Yes, obviously I hung out with friends and did fun stuff, but homework and writing for the paper consumed most of my free time. And I loved it, I did. I didn’t mind being busy, but I was looking forward to a semester of experiences of a lifetime and being jobless for the first time in six years. It was like I was going to live a dream.

To be honest, it also scared me shitless. There were days in the fall I was so stressed out with my work schedule I wondered if it was worth it. There were breakdowns about leaving my friends and family for five months. There was fear of knowing absolutely nothing of what to expect. I had little free time to research the city I was going to live in. I was basically jumping in the deep end blindfolded. And that excited me as much as it scared me.

So I pressed on and eventually, the time came to fly across the Atlantic to my new home.

Once I got there…it was everything I dreamed it would be. I had no specific expectations for my exchange semester, yet during my time there, it exceeded them all. I remember saying to my friend Karen that I felt like I was living in a dream and I couldn’t believe that it was my life. It became a home in the month and a half I was there. People tell you that you’ll make friends that last a lifetime on your exchange, and I did in the short time I was there. But there are so many more people I met that I wish I had time to know better. And now? I may never see them again besides on Instagram. My heart aches for the people I didn’t get to know better and the experience I won’t have.

Coming home has brought a lot of peace to my family, and I am glad for that. I am, really. I’m still working on that inner peace about it, though.

I am going to preface this next paragraph by saying I am grateful for the circle of support I have and I love all of you who have reached out to me since coming home.

Every time someone said the words “I’m so glad you’re home” to me, it made me want to scream. Every “you have your whole life to travel” made me want to cry. Because life is short and unpredictable. You don’t know that I have my whole life to travel. I know you’re glad I’m home, but I’m not. It’s taken me this whole week to become a little at peace with this situation. Every time someone said something like that, it was trivializing my experience and that hurt more than anything. No one seemed to understand the hurt I was going through or the fact that I basically just gave up my life as it was to come home.

I don’t hold anything against my family–please do not take that away from that. I could never be upset with them for how they feel, just as I hope they aren’t upset with me for how I feel. In the end, everything that is meant to be will be and I’ll always love my family in the end no matter what happens.

I’m not going to lie, I struggled a lot coming home. The possibility of going back shrinks every day. I’m in quarantine by myself. I watched two seasons of Brooklyn Nine-Nine in two days just to distract myself from the hot mess that is now my life. But I know that pretty much everyone else is having a shit time, too. So this will be the only time you hear me complain. I only did it because I think it’s important to acknowledge the way you feel and express it somehow. Lucky for you–or not–my form of expression is writing. Even if it means being vulnerable and much more open than I am used to.

Hope everyone is healthy, safe and staying tf home.

Cheers.