For the past few weeks, I have lived in one of the biggest and most exciting cities in the world; Hong Kong. For months I planned everything for these six months of studying abroad. I talked about it every day to my friends and did everything I could to be accepted in the university.
Two weeks before I got here, I got a weird feeling in my stomach saying something was wrong. I shrugged it off and told myself it was the nervousness and I couldn’t be more excited to be spending another half a year traveling.
Now I’ve been here for five weeks and everyday I make more sense of the feeling I got before I arrived: it was my body telling me a too familiar issue was returning: my old enemy depression. I hage suffered from depression twice already, so I know what getting a relapse feels like. I haven’t been able to enjoy everything as much as I want to and I’d rather not be socially involved with the other exchange students.
I feel empty. I feel sad. I miss my familiar surroundings and my friends and family to help me back on track. Studying abroad isn’t all sunshines and laughter, it can be damn hard to handle as well as you can see. I don’t want to give up on my once-in-a-lifetime experience, but I feel like I have to in order to get myself together.
No, this is not homesickness. But still, I am willing to fight for the thing I have prepared myself a year for; and I am going home with those 30 credits and the experience I gained here. I started this, now I want to finish it.
IK by Isabelle 