Many people go abroad to experience an entirely new culture with entirely new people. We leave the familiarity of D.C. behind in pursuit of foreign flings and legal drinking, all artfully designed to make us forget about AU. But as the semester comes to a close, why is it that we begin to find the foreign not quite as exciting any more and wish only for the comfort of the familiar?
To really get to the heart of the issue, I have to go back not just to the beginning of the semester but to the very beginning of college. We left our homes to begin our education in a new city, with new people and many, many new experiences. It is the springboard into adulthood, a genesis for maturation that can only be achieved by removing ourselves from the comforts of ultimate familiarity: our family.
As freshman year begins, we revel in the parties, the classes and our new friends, roommates and lovers. But by the time that first fall break rolls around, homesickness develops, and many of us flee to the airport and return home to our infinitely more comfortable beds, meals that aren't served from massive trays and maybe our old lovers. As exciting and rewarding we find our new lives at college, there is a necessity for the pleasures of home.
When I left for college, I was single and (please forgive me) "ready to mingle." There was a whole buffet of co-eds (or in my case just Eds) available, and I delighted in meeting and getting to know many of them. When I went home for fall break, I slept in, ate at my favorite restaurants and slept with my summer fling. He took it as a sign that college hadn't changed "what we had" and that he should visit me more often. I left the next day and forgot to call him over Thanksgiving.
Several of my friends have also fallen into the trap of exes and former flings when they went home, only to remember why they wanted to leave for college in the first place. Even my friends who repeatedly hook up with old lovers when they're home still consider it the past and D.C. their present. As easy and fun as it is to reminisce, it has a habit of tying us to a time we wanted to
forget.
So why go back? If we're single at school, an ex is like a security blanket, and just being home evokes so many memories that it feels right to revisit our sexual past.
But there comes a point when we must ask ourselves what this does to our relationships in D.C. as college speeds closer to termination. What is it doing to our future? As the trips home become less frequent and the relationships at school become more serious, we must let go of our hometown hook-ups. It's true that there are rare cases when they may be the ones we're meant to be with, but unless we can be with them on a regular basis, we deny ourselves the opportunity of developing a mature relationship based on who we are now, as opposed to who we were in high school.
So now my semester abroad is coming to an end, and I find myself only interested in the relationships I put on hold when I left. It's hard to say if my former flames will reignite or if I'll want to snuff them out. Going back to the familiar can be scary. You are afraid the feelings you had before won't be the same when you return or that one of you will have changed. Should we take comfort in the fact that someone may still care about us in D.C. or prepare ourselves for something new?
Going back to your high school sweetheart may be a delightful trip down memory lane, but the lane may lead you away from whom you're meant to be with. A semester abroad can certainly put an obstacle in the path of a relationship, but there is the chance that you can go around it and move on when you return. The best we can hope for is that with a familiar face we can move on to somewhere new and exciting, or that someone new will make us never want to reminisce. If the sex doesn't get better than our first boyfriend or girlfriend, college sure would be a disappointment, but if foreigners can't change our hearts, maybe the familiar is what we have desired all along.
