8 months….what was I thinking?

So I am about six days from my departure to Spain and I am terrified… Yes terrified… like puking, calling my friends at 5 a.m. crying, begging them to reassure me that I’m doing the right thing, terrified. (I can’t believe I just admitted that but we’re all friends now so here goes…)

I know that you all are probably thinking the same thing that everyone has been telling me since the terrified set in about two days ago: What is there to be terrified about? This is a once in a lifetime experience, a new chapter, new start, new________ (fill in our favorite adjective); but that “new” is exactly what scares me.

For the last couple of years I’ve been hopping in my car, getting on planes and traveling where ever my old, beat up suitcases would take me. This time it all feels different. This time, I’m not just a passive traveler sight seeing my way around the country until my money runs out. For eight months, I will be a transplant in the Spanish society. That means that as a transplant, I will (for the first time) be immersed in the culture: taking in the smells, the moments, the faces and not just passively saying hello.

I want you to, just for a second, think about what this REALLY means. In a literal sense, when someone has something transplanted into their body, it’s usually a foreign object that (in most cases) is meant to save their lives. Once that thing is transplanted into the host body (whether it be a new heart, a kidney, etc.) one of two things can happen: either the ‘new’ part can take effect and mold into the body or the body can reject it and the organ is removed.

In a figurative sense, I will (for 8 months) become a part of the culture, the food the dancing, the people, the good and the bad. More importantly, for 8 months Spain will become a part of me. I will no longer be the 10 year old girl vowing to visit that far away land. I will, for all purposes, be a temporary resident in a new country starting over. Like a literal transplant I will never be able to remove this experience and it could, very well save my life or at least change it from now on. Whatever happens, whether good or bad, I will never be able to take this moment back. I know that sounds really weighty and dramatic but

for the last four months I have fallen in love with this country that I’ve never been to; a place that I have dreamt of my whole life and with that comes a WHOLE LOT of expectation.

In all honesty, I think thing that scares me most isn’t that I’m going to go there and hate it and never want to go back. I mean its Europe, millions of people travel there every year so there has to be SOMETHING good about the country. No, my fear is that I will fall head-over-heels with Spain (as all of my friends and family have already predicted) and not want to come back. If I may continue to be honest, that is exactly where the terror comes from: What if I get there, love it and become one of those people that never comes back? What if this becomes more than just a onetime experience? And worse yet, what if I come back, live my life in Texas (as I did before) but continually yearn for that 8 months I spent in Spain? Then what?

Yes I know I am making this all more complicated than it has to be. The simple fix would be to stop thinking about the things and just take in the experience for what it is. Yes that would be the simple fix but is life really that simple?