it isn't perfect, but it's so good.

I meant - genuinely - to blog about being abroad. 

And here we are in March.  Clearly I haven't followed through. I have plenty of reasons for the absence, but the biggest one has tumbling around in my brain for a long time and I'm only now finding ways of explaining it with words. 

Everything about being here instead of home is different. Clearly, that was the entire point of doing this. It's exciting. It's cool. The environment that I live in here in London is incredibly different, and I enjoy it. It took adjusting at first, but the British culture is simple where it should be (like with fresh, unprocessed food, Cadbury is cheap, there is easy and frequent public transit, proper social spaces) and complicated in charming ways ("cheese salad" sandwiches, having to navigate bikers nearly as often as cars, dogs without leashes, and a severe lack of late night food.) 

But my family isn't nearby. My professors are not the same. When I go to sleep at night, it's not my bed. I know, personally, only about 60 people in this entire country, if you count my internship placement folk and the program members. 

Some days, I love this. It makes me feel like a blank slate. It makes me feel like I can be anything I want.

Other days, I don't love this at all. 

As it turns out, the anxiety that I dealt with heavily as a young adult and thought I was fully adapted to isn't quite as dormant as I believed it was. This is fairly normal. I have spent the past 8 years navigating the coming and going of anxiety in waves, that get pulled like a gradually changing tide. As with anything, some days (or weeks or months or even years) are infinitely better than others.

But you would be amazed at how uncomfortable it can be to undergo an anxiety attack under the circumstances of being abroad. Being here means that I'm forced out of my shell every day, which is wonderful and so enlightening to my soul. It also means I feel slightly disconnected from myself, which makes dealing with this weird new bout of anxiety attacks even harder. I usually rely on myself to take care of them and keep them at bay. Here, I feel less like myself that I think I ever have. And while I love the exploration and self reflection, it at times makes overcoming the anxiety harder. I can't look within myself to pull through, because I am less certain of exactly who I am in each moment. 

I don't mean that I doubt who I am, at my core. I know who I am - I'm Paige. I'm smart, sometimes funny, afraid of snakes and heights and rejection, all-or-nothing, over committed, outgoing, usually a little sleepy, and typically always some form of hungry.

I like giving things to others, I like reading books without stopping, I don't really like the heat but I especially love the rain, I have a low tolerance for milk and spice, and I have a beautiful family (both blood relatives and soul relatives). At the moment, I'm in love in more senses than romantic, although that is also the case. I am in love with places and views and memories. 

But I do feel less grounded. I'm glad this is the case. It means that I am a true traveler, at the moment. It means that I'm not growing roots, but rather planting seeds all over the places that I get a day or three or ten to visit with. This feeling excites me. It makes me realize that I can travel forever if I want to. It shows me where I want to go in life and where I have already been. In fact, it's a bit like looking at a map of the world. Countries beam with light where I have seen the soil, and others glow dimmer because I now know where I want to go, even if I don't get to for a while. 

I feel less grounded, and that makes it hard to cope when I get anxious. It makes it even harder to realize that there sometimes is not a trigger for these moments - they just happen.

For a while, I haven't written about my time because I sometimes feel bitter about it. There are days that I feel like I have wasted, completely lost, doing nothing but trying to get my heart to stop racing. There are times when I feel like I didn't put my full self into appreciating where I was or what I was doing because I was anxious, or recovering from anxiety, or dreading it. There are moments that I may have taken for granted. I feel bad about those. 

I had a picture of what going abroad would be, and I was wrong about it. I thought that it would be void of hardship. How wrong could I have been? Of course it will be hard. Life doesn't stop just because you fly to another place and set up shop. Life doesn't wait for anyone or anything. It will always have highs and lows. In some cases, those peaks and valleys will even be extreme. I have felt the most pure forms of joy, love, and light here. I have also felt loneliness and despair. I have had the yin and yang - good and bad. At first I resented this, because I wanted this experience to be perfect. But that isn't real, and it especially isn't rewarding. I am thankful for every hardship and happiness I have felt here. Because it is real, and it is alive. 

Every day, I am learning. 

I am learning how to see life with a lens of gratitude, because even the worst days also come with some of the best displays of love and care (thank you to those who have given me unconditional love while I've been here, and my whole life). I am learning about myself. I am learning about others, and how to live in a new environment. I'm learning how to travel and how to take everything with a grain of salt. I am learning how to go with the flow more, and how to be a pushover less. I am learning.

I am learning about love - about true love. About what it means to feel something bigger than yourself, and how to bottle that up and use it to be the best version of myself I can be. 

I am learning about what it means to grow.

Today was a great day. 

I woke up, I got dressed, and I took a long bus ride to a park that I had never been to. I watched dogs and I hiked up some trails in shoes that definitely weren't meant to be hiked in. I got a delicious sandwich because I wanted to. I got my nails and my toes painted, because a real life angel thought I could use it. I ate a chocolate treat and got Ramen noodles at a restaurant, not from an 89 cent package. I loved myself a little more than usual, and it felt really great.

What I'm saying is, I'm fine. I'm always going to be fine! I'm not wasting any time here, not even when I'm anxious, because those times are helping me become a better person. They're teaching me about life.

And I am seeing the world, too. 

And that's amazing.

So I'm going to write more openly and honestly about being here - because I have so many small, joyful, and beautiful experiences to share that triumph over any tough moment. And I want to remember them, as they happen, and share them. And now that I've gotten all of this out and into words I feel like I can. 

Thank you for all of the love!

Talk soon, 

Paige.