I wrote this post back on Monday, when my fear of moving was at its peak. I wasn't sure how to deal with it, so at 2 am I decided to just write about it, hence this post. I think in moving overseas, there is a lot of glamour to it, but I don't think you see the side of fear too often.
While I'm less scared now, I did think it was important to share exactly what I was feeling even if it wasn't the most happy or excited kinds of emotions. I'm excited, don't get me wrong...it's just my fear was clouding that. This is the biggest thing I have ever done in my life, and especially leading up to my leaving, my fear was heightened.
It's going to be incredibly difficult, but I have to do it for myself. It'll be worth it in the end.
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I move to London in 5 days.
My funds have come in, my student visa has been approved, I have a place to live. All of the important things are been sorted out, all of the I’d dotted, and T’s crossed.
And I couldn’t be more terrified.
As the date draws closer, the excitement of moving has ebbed, and the fear has taken over. I’ve been so busy with coming back from South Africa, working and trying to obtain my visa (which was a nightmare) to really give into the fear of what I’m about to do. But now that the date is looming, the fear seems to be the only thing that I’m trying not to give into and it won’t subside.
I absolutely hate change, and I’m making the biggest change of my life so far. I’m trying to come to grips with the fact that in 5 days every single thing around me will be unfamiliar. The bed I wake up in will not be mine. Trading bus lines for tube lines. Pounds instead of dollars. And I will be completely and utterly alone; this being the biggest change of all. Forcing myself from a life of frequent dependance to complete independence by doing the most radical thing I know possible: moving to a new country completely and utterly alone.
I keep running over and over in my head why I am doing this. I want this. It’s been a dream of mine to live in London for 5 years. Maybe, hopefully this will be the first chapter in my story of a life lived abroad. Yet no matter how many times I repeat my many reasons why, it doesn’t negate the fact that it would be so easy to just stay at home. Right now it seems like the easiest thing in the world. Of course moving to London is right, staying at home is easy.
As hard as it is, staying home I know isn’t an option. It seems like the easier option, but in time it would prove to not be. The opportunity of a life in London, a life abroad that slipped away would eat away at me as I fell into a mind numbingly boring routine of a life in some U.S. city.
They say if your dreams don’t scare you, then they aren’t big enough. And I can attest to the fact that this is completely and one hundred percent true. Moving abroad is scary, but staying in my home country is scarier. Even now, with mere days left in the U.S., the fear of moving is prevalent in my daily life but I know I need to get on the plane. Even if it’s one of the hardest thing I’ve ever done.
It’s funny because in past years getting on an airplane was the easiest thing in the world. Getting on that plane meant I was that much closer to starting a new adventure; a new country visited to cross off of my list, only to be put back on my list of places to return to. Now, getting on that plane is like the last step. Once I’m on it, there is no turning back. The plane is the one thing that stands between a life in America and a life in England. I think boarding that plane will be an experience of all different sorts of emotions. A life of traditional routine and other people’s expectations…lost, and left behind. A new life of whatever London has in store for me…almost found and not quite yet discovered.
It’s going to be quite strange leaving the country, not having an idea when I will be back. Once I land in London, a new chapter begins. And I have to hit the ground running, whether I like it or not.
So many people don’t do things out of fear. But it’s important to not listen or give into that fear. While I am positive that fear will be the strongest it as ever been in 5 days time, I can’t give into it.
A life in London is what I wanted, what I’ve waited 5 years for. And now I’m scared shitless for it.
