I am filled with anticipation, excitement and a dreadful thrill as I prepare to leave. I have come to realise that this experience is not so much about six months on exchange, six months in Europe, or six glorious months travelling and not studying, as it is about six months alone. The reality that I will have no known family and friends to rely on for support for the next six months is beginning to hit home. A semester living and studying abroad is all fun and good and is what I signed up for, but I think I will remember it for life as the semester I was alone.
I made preparations alone, and have extensive plans to travel alone, but am I really ready and happy to arrive alone on a cold winter night in a city where I know no one (and don't even have permanent accommodation)? Rationally, this is for the better, because I must leave my comfortable shell to meet new people and experience a new life, and also because one learns much more about oneself and about life alone. Yet fear and dread loom heavily in my heart.
They really shouldn't. I concluded while in JC that friends are a weakness and a form of attachment we should try to overcome - a somewhat Buddhist view of things. I still think so, but have over the years grown more indulgent of this weakness. Nevertheless, I then began to spend more time alone and build up emotional strength in times of solitude, starting by forbidding myself from fiddling with and pretending to use my mobile phone when alone. Soon I regularly ate alone and walked around Orchard alone, helped by my circumstance in a class with mostly different subject combinations from mine.
This continued during NS when I was posted to a small vocation with a small branch on an offshore island, where there was often no one else from the branch in camp. Night shift work was the zenith of this "solitude training", where for all of four months I hardly interacted with a fellow human being beyond the checkout counter. By university I found that I often preferred to be alone than with company, a realisation that was confirmed when I travelled alone for short periods.
Is living, studying and travelling alone for six months the same? I am ready to find out.
