20 Adventures from my 20s: #2

My years being 20 and 21 were one big ball of adventure, so prepare for those to come raining down on you in the next few days. But, I would say they would be as proportionate to my 20s as how much it affected and grew me (aka a lot). This adventure would be:

SAYING THE BIGGEST GOODBYE OF MY LIFE.

I applied to study abroad without a second thought. It was like I always knew that I would do it, I was just annoyed having to wait so long, and as soon as I could, I did. I got accepted March 13 (the day before my 20th birthday) and then had to wait until August to leave to start the program.

It didn't hit me until a few weeks before, that I actually had never been away from home for even longer than a month. My college was a 3 hour drive away, and while the central coast was certainly a new land than the Inland Empire, and it all felt very new... I still was driving home at least once a month for school breaks, or for a mental break, or to celebrate something with my friends still in the area. And now I was going to have to say goodbye for almost a YEAR!

I was so excited to go to France, that the excitement was overriding everything. I remember my flight was out of LAX on August 27, 2006, and that I spent the entire night before out with the guy I was seeing, and didn't get home until well into the early hours of morning. When I woke up on the couch with my suitcase only half-packed in front of me, my cat Belle was laying protectively over it. I told myself she didn't want me to leave. I started to get really nervous, but I channeled it into excitement. I still remember the last picture me and my sisters took outside of our house before we all got in the car to head to LAX. All I was, was nerves nerves nerves. [CANNOT FIND COPY - SRY]

I remember Belle went on the lawn and sat with her back towards me. I knew that she knew, and it made me sad. She was old, and I was worried that she would die while I was away (joke was on me - she still lived another 5 years!!) and I couldn't believe I was saying goodbye to her for so long! I think that was the only time in my life that I was able to do that guy mind trick and just file it away instead of feeling the emotions.

I absolutely remember the moment, off the 105 freeway, when I saw the sign that said LAX - NEXT EXIT and that was when my stomach completely dropped, and panic and fear took over. (As a matter of fact, that sign still gives me flashback memories whenever I pass it - I think that's how traumatic it was, that it triggers me like that).

There was nothing to do about it, especially because everyone else was acting melancholy and I couldn't take on their emotions because I had my own, so I started snapping at people. I was really scared. I have never gone somewhere so foreign, for so long, and so alone. It was scary to take the first steps into the security line... and then go through where I couldn't go back anymore.

I've said similar goodbyes since... like when I moved to New York, for instance. The feeling was still sad, but this time it was familiar. I'll probably always compare it to this first goodbye, which is funny now, because a year is nothing, but it was a big deal when I was twenty.

I read a quote years later that was something to the effect of "Saying goodbye is the hardest thing in the world... until it's not anymore." Whatever it was, it was completely true. The hardest thing is to say goodbye... after that, it's over, and the future is all adventure.