The unexpected enemy

 

When you move to another country, everybody warns you and tries to warn you of the dangers you might encounter, be careful not to get robbed, be careful with the friends you make, be careful not to go home alone at night, be careful not to get lost... but almost nobody will warn you of what will probably be your worst and most unexpected enemy at some point: loneliness.

When you see pictures of other people who have moved to other countries, or accounts on social media about traveling, everyone seems to be living their best life, amazing countries, beautiful landscapes, new friends, new experiences, new cafes... however I think it is a universal experience for almost everyone who has moved away from home for a long time, to feel lonely at some point. And it seems funny how this feeling appears at the beginning, even if you are meeting new and wonderful people and even if everything is really going as you had planned, it is inevitable that in some moments this feeling will come over you. I think this is part of a process where you have left your family and friends, who know you so well, with whom you normally have infinite trust, and suddenly you find yourself with new people and in a new place where you again have to make an effort to get to know them, to open up with them, and often you connect with people through shared experiences, and for these experiences to happen it takes time. It's an uncomfortable feeling to go from feeling so secure in people you know to having to start all over again, it takes a lot of effort to leave that comfort.

However, I believe that this "enemy" is not always an enemy, as it forces you out of your comfort zone and leads you to do incredible things that you would never have done if you had stayed in that safe zone. Suddenly, you will be meeting people with totally different backgrounds from your own, with whom you will possibly grow and learn things that you might never have learned otherwise. It also gives you a space in which you can reinvent yourself and explore parts of your personality that may be dormant but seem to flourish in these new situations. Perhaps also meeting such different people will take you to uncomfortable but necessary places where you will question things that you have always assumed, and perhaps realize that they are not so true for you, or that they don't really resonate with who you are and your values.

This is not to say that when this feeling comes it will be easy or that it will feel good, but rather that it should be assumed as part of the process instead of hiding it in a thousand pictures of sunsets, in a thousand pictures of parties. I think it is important that this feeling can be shared, as I think, that possibly when one person starts sharing about this, many others could open up about how they are experiencing similar situations, and I really believe that what is not hidden does not hurt so much.