Travel is addicting – there’s a reason it’s so easy to develop wanderlust. Once you get a taste of adventure, it seems impossible to return to business-as-usual. Coming home from a semester abroad or returning from an epic vacation can be discouraging and even depressing. How do you enjoy your classes when all you can think about is the time you went bungee jumping in New Zealand? After such an amazing experience, how can everyday life ever be good enough?

Sometimes it feels like you’ll never be satisfied until you travel again. You go through the motions of life back home, but you don’t value these times like you used to. Even when the reverse culture shock settles down, you find yourself longing for the times when your only worry was whether you could catch the next train from Prague to Berlin. There’s nothing wrong with treasuring the fact that you had an amazing experience, and you should find joy in remembering the mountain-top moments of life. But something I’ve learned over the past few years is that the high points only come as a result of the “normal” days in-between – and during those days we often experience our hardest times. It’s easy to find yourself in a stressful place back home dealing with exams, relationship drama and family issues. These moments make you wish you were back at your study abroad destination where your problems seemed to disappear. After all, that travel blogger you follow really seems to have it all together! People tend to worship “wanderlust” and glorify adventure, and if you believed that life consisted only of Instagram moments, then you may be tempted to feel dissatisfied with your life at home.

But in reality, the stress and tension you experience back home come from the deep relationships you’ve built. If there’s tension in your family or stress in your work, it’s because you care so much about these things that you’re fighting to hold them together -- and they truly are worth fighting for. So don’t be discouraged if you find that returning home from an extended trip seems difficult because life wasn’t meant to be lived in escapism. While you grew in confidence during your travels and found so much joy in meeting people overseas, every moment was training you to be a better version of yourself throughout the rest of your life -- wherever that may take you. You have been placed where you are for a reason, and you are developing new aspects of character and new areas of strength every day. Even if you feel like you’d rather escape on another Europe trip than deal with the problems facing you today, just remember that these are the times that truly determine who you are. There is more joy in your future than you could imagine, but there will also be unexpected pain. The journey of your life is a beautiful combination of adventures and struggles, so remember that both are important and never lose hope.