The feeling of loneliness doesn’t surprise me. It sort of comes with living on your own and moving abroad. It happens. Some days you feel it creep in beneath you and some days you are elated that you’re alone. It’s a mix bag of feelings that you tend to ride as life ebbs and flows, and I guess I’m just here to say that I know. I know what it feels like when you are completely and utterly alone in a new place, where you literally know nobody, where you don’t know the language or its culture and more frighteningly, you don’t know how you’re going to get through it all.
I know what it’s like to arrive and immediately feel as though you want to leave. I know what it’s like to miss someone so completely that you feel enraged at yourself for ever leaving. I know that it hurts you, that it pains you, that it paralyses you from all the loss that you feel, that you are so undeniably alone that the tears practically dry themselves.
But the fact that you are on your own is in itself a beauty. You are with your-self essentially, your whole self, which can be some form of rude awakening as you get to know yourself truly, without cultural influences, without family, when it’s just you and your own experiences, you begin to form into your honest self. You may or may not like this person but you will learn to love that self, for all its mistakes and all of its mishaps
– you’ll learn how to forgive your self and how to move on, to move forward. You will teach your self how to tread on new streets, how to read a new script and how to interact in a new culture. And so you will learn how to connect with its people.
Photography by Gesant Abed
