Finding My Way Back Home After Studying Abroad

The Feelings

Returning from my time abroad has been a complicated tangle of emotions I’m still trying to sort through. It’s amazing how transformative a few months can be, how they can etch themselves so deeply into your life and make everything familiar feel... unfamiliar. The whole experience changed me, and I want to share every detail of it with everyone around me. But how do you explain that feeling, that longing, without feeling like you’re trying to relive a past that no one else was there for? 

I catch myself wanting to bring up stories and memories constantly—small moments that defined my day-to-day life while I was away. Those late nights laughing with friends who understood me without needing to try or the mundane daily routines that became comforting in a strange new place. It feels like these memories are right at the surface, begging to spill out, but I hold them back. I don’t want to be “that person” who seems like they’re always stuck in the past. I don’t want people to think I’m ungrateful to be home, but part of me aches for the life I built abroad, the friends who became my family, and the independence I found. 

It’s harder than I imagined it would be, coming back to a life that’s moved on. Everyone else’s world kept turning while mine felt like it paused in this bittersweet time capsule. There are days I’m bursting to talk about my friends from abroad, the inside jokes that made sense only to us, the struggles we helped each other through. There’s something irreplaceable about the bond we created over there, and now, they’re thousands of miles away. It’s like they’re the only ones who truly get this version of me, and suddenly, I’m separated from the only people who understand this huge part of who I am now. I know they’ve moved on too, in their own way, but there’s a kind of understanding that’s hard to find outside of that experience.

As strange as it sounds, I sometimes feel angry. Not at anyone specifically, but at how jarring it feels to re-enter a life that no longer seems like mine. I’m frustrated with myself for not being able to “just move on.” I know everyone expects me to be back to normal, to be the same person who left, but I don’t feel like that person anymore. I don’t want pity or for people to feel bad for me, but I just wish people knew how deeply this experience affected me, how hard it is to reintegrate, to pick up where I left off as if I haven’t changed. 

Sometimes, I wonder if these feelings will fade if the longing to “be back” will ease over time. Maybe it will. Maybe it won’t. But honestly, I wouldn’t trade the memories or the growth for anything. The people I met and the life I created over there have left a permanent mark on me, and even if it’s painful now, I wouldn’t take it back. 

For now, I’m trying to take it one day at a time, to find peace in holding my memories close, even if others don’t fully understand. Because maybe one day, I’ll find a balance—a way to move forward without leaving that part of me behind.