I’m in a Glass Cage of Emotion!

Mairead Kelly is a student at Emmanuel College and a regular contributor to our Tumblr blog. Mairead is studying abroad with API in London, England. 

As a new contributor halfway through my yearlong abroad experience, I tried fabricating a post describing the feeling of leaving back in August and failed. While I can recall a whole mess of emotion sitting in that Logan terminal, to conjure the sentiment of such a slice of time almost six months ago would be to cheat you, dear reader. That and I really don’t want to detail the full on panic attack I experienced. There was a lot of heavy breathing.

I have to say that I never expressed the “I’m abroad!!!!! I love life!!!!!!” notion others have been so vocal of. There have been so many times I’ve thought myself to be living abroad wrong, which evolves into the idea that I’m plainly living wrong. And that can get an existentialist really, really down.

It’s tough living away from your support system. There were countless autumn days I allowed myself to wallow in longing for familiarity. I would be up before the sun to ask myself, just what was I thinking coming here? I thrived on focusing every particle in my being on the people and things farthest from me. Was London exciting? Yes! Was I enjoying myself? Most of the time. Still I found that no matter how far and away I tried to take my mind, it wouldn’t match the place of my body.

Are you shaking your head at the computer screen? Here is a girl with an amazing opportunity, blowing it all on an English pity party for one. Or do you find yourself identifying, thinking you’d also be an overly emotional, teary eyed mess 3,500 miles from home? Well, if you see from either view or the in-between, I do have something to stress. These spots of anxiety have become distant over time.

Before arriving in London I carried the notion that something amazing was waiting for me here. Working full time and taking classes in Boston this past summer, I often pushed daydreams of England to the forefront of my conscious when dealing with the stress of a packed schedule. A montage-esque reel of fabulous British imagery played in my mind when feeling most mundane. Running around London at night, seeing fantastic concerts, discovering hidden gems of the city. 

While some scenes of said montage have played out in reality, the triumph of the everyday has hit with harder weight. Since last semester, things have changed in diminutive ways to add up to a mountain of difference. I know the streets of my neighborhood well- a feat for a girl lacking any sense of direction. I can navigate the tube as well as my Boston MBTA. I’ve given countless amounts of directions to those lost on city streets. You see, daydreams never play out for a reason. They are much too perfect and much too fallacious, often forgotten when experiencing the true event of their essence. My triumph comes not from creating a splash in English waters, but blending in and staying conscious. To become part of a city I once felt wanted nothing to do with me. To become a part of something and to become myself again.