When I received that letter confirming my place at UCL a few years ago, my eyes just couldn’t believe it. How did that happen? It was just a silly idea at first, dreams of a teenager willing to challenge herself and get out of her comfort zone once and for all. But it happened really quickly and suddenly I found myself saying goodbye to my parents at the airport, without a return ticket. Everything was uncertain, but quite exciting.
I wondered what my room was going to look like, it was my new home after all. I realised that if I opened the door, my sister wouldn’t be in her room, and my parents wouldn’t be talking in the kitchen. For the first time, it was actually just me.
Time passed quickly and I got used to all of it in the blink of an eye. I came to love being independent and being completely in charge of my decisions. My new room soon became my safe place to come back after a tiring day and relax. But I also felt that London was turning into something more than the city of my university.
Maybe it was that feeling I got when walking in a crowd of strangers, while looking at the lights at Oxford Street. In that moment I felt that, even if I was surrounded by thousands of other people, the world was making space for me. I rediscovered my individuality and it made me question all the certainties I had.
When I return to my home country to spend some days with my family, I feel different feelings. I can finally spend some time with my loved ones and that is always thrilling. I know I’m home when the plane lands at my home airport, but it doesn’t feel 100% like that any longer. I feel that if I stay too much, I’ll go back to a different version of me that is not who I am anymore.
I still ask myself where I belong. I can’t really answer that. After some time though, I realised that home can be a lot of things. Home can be your family, or a city, or a couple of friends you made 5 months ago and would spend every day with. In the end, home is wherever you’re happy.