It's funny how I've been feeling lately, how the Northern English air keeps hitting me the way it did when I first arrived in September. When I walk through the flat it's half empty, just like it was in the first week when I arrived, and my groceries are very limited, but simply because I'm packing up instead of unpacking. Taking the bus through town is a little bittersweet now, all the buildings I've come to know so well will soon by reduced to illustrations in my future day dreams so I'm trying to take it all in. Nights are filled with Netflix and tacos and friendly laughs and those will soon be replaced by being back home and doing the same exact thing with my family, and it's the way that it's different and the same that makes it so difficult to grasp.

It's strange how the things that were once so familiar or ordinary are becoming slightly foreign again, and I think that's the thing that makes saying goodbye so difficult. When you study abroad you learn to say goodbye a few different ways.

First, you say goodbye to your home. You pack up two suitcases and fly to another country with so many expectations in your heart. You hug your parents or your friends (and most definitely your pets) goodbye, and board the plane thinking, 'I hope I make them happy', 'I hope I have an amazing time', 'I hope I'll be happy now', 'I hope I see as much as possible', 'I hope I fall in love, somehow', I hope, I hope, and I hope. In the first goodbye you say hello to fears and expectations and hopes.

Then you (hopefully) say goodbye to those fears and pressured expectations. You learn to let go of the way you treated yourself in the past. You learn to let go of the hurt others did to you and the ways you thought before you began to explore the world, because now you know how big the planet is and how amazing people can be and there's no time to hate yourself or to be so small-minded. You watch ancient city skylines in the sunset and forgive the people that never said sorry. You touch ruins that you read about in books and think about what kind of mark you'll leave behind. You talk to strangers and realize that not everyone needs to be feared. Most of all, you learn to live for yourself and no one else.

After a few adventures: walking tours in the rain, bands performing in the parks, hikes up mountains, or boat rides on lakes, it's time to say goodbye again. Goodbye to the new country you've come so accustomed to. Goodbye to the new friends you've made, and the restaurants you've come to love, and the bed that once felt so wrong but now feels so right.

Saying goodbye is strange, but it's a part of life. The sooner we learn to say goodbye, the easier life becomes. It's the bitterness of the whole situation that makes it all the more sweet, and the tears from your eyes that make the smile all the more meaningful.

Goodbye to the old me. Goodbye bye to my new home. Goodbye to undesired expectations.

Hello to finally living.