I Didn’t Find Myself When I Studied Abroad And Neither Will You

When I stepped onto to that two-hour delayed, London-bound plane the night of January 6th, 2015, my eyes were tired, my heart was pounding and I had probably never been more excited in my entire life. Since my freshmen year of high school, I had dreamed of studying abroad in the United Kingdom. And now, five and a half years later, here I was, ready to begin the journey of a lifetime.

For Christmas, my mom had purchased for me a softcover copy of Wild by Cheryl Strayed, a memoir about a woman’s three month backpacking trek along the Western Coast. It was a book about love and loss, but ultimately, it was a book about self-discovery.

Picture me, strapped into my seat on that airplane, clutching that new book in my hands, rereading the back cover in excitement before finally cracking the spine and devouring the first chapter, just in time to grab a complementary glass of airplane wine and (attempt to) fall asleep.

With all the traveling, school work, cooking and cleaning over the next four months, it would take me (a devout book worm) the entirety of my spring semester and longer to finish that book. Nearly a month after my plane had touched back down in the United States, I finally turned the last page. I was on the NJ Transit, on another kind of journey. Looking back, its ironic it was on that train ride I finally got around to finishing Strayed’s book. Because it would be exactly a week later that I would begin to think long and hard about the themes of self-discovery peppered throughout its pages. It would be exactly a week later that I would begin to question the whole idea of “finding yourself”.

“Study abroad” and “self-discovery” have come to be almost synonymous. Its why my mom got me Wild, its why books like Eat, Pray, Love and On the Road are on various lists of “Books You Have To Read Before You Go Abroad”.

Now I know, as does anyone who has studied abroad, as will anyone that eventually does study abroad, that going abroad will change you. You will step back onto your home turf a different person than the one who got on that plane a few months prior. You will emerge from baggage claim a more educated, worldly, wiser person. You will be changed.

And, most importantly, if you’re anything like me, you will be confused.

Because you’ll experience things and see places that will make you think thoughts you’ve never thought before and make you feel emotions you didn’t know you had. You’ll say things that will surprise you and you’ll do things you never thought you could do.

You will realize a truly frightening and exciting thing: you really don’t know yourself at all.

One day, while I was in Budapest nearing the end of my semester abroad, I spent a day on my own. I wandered around the Fisherman’s Bastion, stopped where I wanted to stop, shopped where I wanted to shop, saw all of the things I wanted to see and skipped what I didn’t. I ate breakfast on my own, sat by myself at lunch, had ice cream even though it was 30 degrees out.

Right before I was about to head back to our apartment for the weekend, I made the last minute decision to venture into the Labyrinth of Buda Castle. It was a tourist trap, so I didn’t expect much from the eight U.S. dollars I spent to get in. But when I found myself in the series of dark underground tunnels beneath the city, I realized that this was the most alone I had ever been in my entire life.

A little bit on the history of the labyrinth. The labyrinth beneath Buda Castle in its prime functioned as both a prison and as a torture chamber. In the 15th century, its darkest, deepest chambers was inhabited by its most famous resident: Vlad Tepes. Today, we all know Vlad as “Dracula.” The story goes that Dracula was imprisoned in the labyrinth after he went behind the back of his good friend King Matthias of Hungary and married Matthias’ cousin. Dracula’s wife would end up throwing herself off the top of a tower and into the river Arges after her home was invaded by the Turks, claiming she “would rather have her body be eaten by the fish of the Argeş than be captured by the Turks”. A classic tragic love story.

Playing off of this idea of tragic love and betrayal, the labyrinth also depicted the story of Verdi’s opera A Masked Ball. In the opera, a King is conspired against, and is ultimately betrayed by his most trusted friend. Filled with illicit love and murder, the opera was actually banned for a period of time in Italy.

So here’s a mental picture for you. Me, alone, in the damp underground labyrinth/torture chamber. After reading about the horrors endured by the prisoners housed here, learning more about Dracula than I ever thought I would, and after venturing through a part of the maze devoid of light (I had to use a rope to guide my way through the pitch black darkness), I heard opera music echoing down the hallways. I emerge to find prison cells filled with mannequins, dressed in lavish costumes from a performance of Verdi’s opera at the Hungarian Opera. It was one of the creepiest, most beautiful, surreal moments of my life to this date.

You may be wondering why I’m telling you about my day in Fisherman’s Bastion and what any of this has to do with why I have given up on finding myself. And the reason is this:

It’s because that day was the first time I had asked for a table for one. It’s because that day I wandering through the darkest darkness possible all on my own and because that day I learned that, hey, I really do like opera music.

We are filled with endless possibilities; infinite amounts of potential hobbies and likes and dislikes and opinions and fears and triumphs and thoughts and actions. That day in Budapest, I realized how complex we really are. And that very same day I gave up on finding myself. Because I realized that finding myself meant that I had stopped growing and learning and changing. And I hate the idea of stagnantity.

I bought a postcard to commemorate that day, with a beautiful sketch of the Fisherman’s Bastion etched on the front. And on the plane ride home from that trip, I took a Sharpie to the back of it and wrote in big, bold, fearless letters, “You did it on your own.” It was a tiny baby step on the endless road we call life, but in reference to infinity, every step, no matter how large, is insignificant. And that’s not a bad thing. It just means that hopefully, no matter how much we learn about who we are, we’ll never stay the same long enough to find ourselves.

That day in the labyrinth, I stumbled upon a tiny, lonely, dark room occupied by a projector showing film clips from different operas and operettas. I can distinctly remember even now, sitting down on the steps, in the damp, echoing darkness, just living with myself for a while. I ask you to find a place where you can be alone, and sit and listen for a bit. Live with yourself and just know you are an infinity of possibilities. It’s an amazing thing.