Cabin Fever

I've heard people say that when you go off to college, you shouldn't talk with your friends and family from back home for a while. You need to settle in to your new place, meet new people, grow your new roots. Going away is an opportunity to grow in so many ways.

But to go away and really grow, you have to suffer that bit of homesickness. You have to learn to adapt to that new environment. If you don't call back home every five seconds, then you adapt quickly. You learn fast and soon a place that seemed foreign is like another home. That's why traveling is so important. It teaches you how to learn, adapt and grow. It teaches you the things you can't be taught in class.

It's not easy though. Life is short, right? So why give up even a single moment you could share with your loved ones? Because, there's more out there. Because, they want you to be happy, and who could be happy not knowing, when they know there's so much else to know? Because, it's completely and totally worth it.

Home is important. It's absolutely, positively essential to have that place you can go back to and feel safe. There has to be something constant in life and that's what home is. Still, to really grow and learn you have to get away from home. You have to get out of your comfort zone and not waste any time in doing so.

You need to make mistakes, meet strange people, try things you'd never think to try, go places you didn't know existed. You need to have adventures and possibly even some near death experiences. You need to travel, because you'll be better for doing so.

The problem with home and friends and family is that they hold you back. They've given you adventures and fun and happiness, but it's always sort of the same, because they're the same old people. They all get boring. And even though you still love them and it's heartbreaking to think about leaving them, you need to get away from them, because they're holding you back. It's not just them though- it's who you are around them. I speak from experience when I say that you'll do things you never would have done with any of your friends from home around, when you travel.

To give up a year of time at home is heartbreaking. To give up a year in a foreign place is heartbreaking. The trouble is figuring out which is more heartbreaking. The answer is always, to give up a year in a foreign place. Let's be honest. By the time anyone is old enough to travel on their own and are old enough to have a place that's definitely home and has been for many years, we know home well. If life really is short, then it's time to get on living. Wouldn't it be horrible to have people say at your funeral, "She was a nice girl, who stayed at home a lot"? I'd rather be "An adventurous, crazy, slightly impossible girl, who was always wandering off to the strangest places. She knew the world and made many friends."

There's so much more to see. I think when I go off to all those far away places, I'll be sadder to leave than anyone will be to see me go, but I absolutely have to do it. The cabin fever will kill me before homesickness ever will.