By Mika Lynch-Lee
Edited by Amy Li and Liam Mason

In three months, I step into an unfamiliar world. The greenest city in Europe, with more museums than rainy days, Berlin will be my new home. 

College has been a much-anticipated eventuality for me. It feels unfortunately humorous that after months of determined essay-writing and compulsive email checking, I ended up choosing the last school I applied to. Berlin was an afterthought; I hadn’t even considered going abroad for college. College was always a small liberal arts school in the New England area whenever anyone asked. My application to the international school was due to the same spontaneity that backed most of my other applications. This spontaneity drove my excitement to go abroad.

The decision process was uninviting, from the way colleges built anticipation to the way they destroyed my hopes with impersonal rejections. I hated receiving rejection after rejection from the schools I dreamed of attending and saying goodbye to the memories of countless tours and invested research that now seem like a waste of time. Why had I bothered spending hours on my essays and getting excited over interviews, just for it all to be over in one email? The emails were the worst part, each one delivering a deep blow to my self-perception. 

Maybe I’m not good enough. 

Maybe everyone who made backhanded comments about my choices was right. 

Maybe I’m not meant to go somewhere I’m passionate about. 

I am still disappointed. Even now that I have committed, there is a sense of embarrassment surrounding my ambition. I question if others have a better understanding of me and my abilities than I do. I hope that once college starts, the doubt will be one of the many things I can leave behind. Part of me is excited by the fact that I will be leaving so much behind: the stress of school (nothing makes me happier than the prospect of being done with AP Physics), the teachers who seem to enjoy wasting my time, and the handful of students who need their egos humbled severely. But another part of me worries about what leaving will mean.

I have dreamed of moving for years. However, now I realize the anxiety in  leaving everything familiar behind. The only thing that will remain the same is myself, and I am reluctant to leave all the things that keep me grounded at home. But college has already ruined those things. I can’t look at my dog anymore without thinking about having to leave her. My best friend can more effectively convince me to do things with her because soon, I won’t be here. I feel forced to make the most of the “lasts” I am experiencing. There are so many little things that I will lose as well. I will not order my favorite take-out, the oven won’t bake my cookies every weekend, and my bed will sit still for months. The artifacts that now collage my bedroom walls will no longer cocoon me. My posters for Rocktoberfest, Surf Curse, and Debbie Harry will be hanging on the wall without anyone to watch over. Who will Debbie contemplate from morning to night without me there to shed my emotions? The tapestries on my ceiling will be disappointedly awaiting the stray dreams that will no longer drift up from my bed. And the plants on my windowsill will only remain alive thanks to the caring hands of my mom. How will I communicate to all the new people I meet that they are seeing only a fraction of me? It will be me without my Debbie poster, my star and moon-shaped garlands, and my horde of stuffed animals. The me that others will meet in Berlin will be a distorted reconstruction, made from copies of all the things that comprise me at home. While I may try to explain who I am at home, copies of best friends and dogs and beds will all come together to play a counterfeit facsimile of me. 

I am me when I am living with my dog and laughing with my best friend and eating my favorite food and baking cookies and curled up in my own bed. How will anyone in Berlin truly know me without these crucial elements? I am much more worried about the other students understanding me than me understanding German. 

In Berlin, any aspects of familiarity will be up to me. What clothes will I bring to give me comfort? What shoes will help me wear familiar paths? What perfumes will stir my memories of home? I will bring my drug rug, my blue monkey pants, and my tie-dye shirt. And I can bring my Adidas, my Onitsuka Tigers, and my camo crocs. And I will have to decide which stuffed animals will be my companions. What does it mean to try and be yourself when you’re surrounded by nothing that you know? It means trying to look the same in hopes you will be understood the same. I feel like the subject of the teleportation paradox, a paradox that asks if someone is still the same person after being sent through a teleportation machine from Earth to Mars. A machine which recreates their atoms on the other planet. Will I still be the same person after I’ve been sent across the world? Even with all my memories and physical tokens of home, if nothing else in my environment is the same, am I? I am having trouble understanding what my future will be. How will I translate my stories across the Atlantic Ocean and a six-hour time difference? 

On the flight to admitted students day, I rewatched Interstellar. Hans Zimmer scored my and Cooper’s journeys through space and time as we approached our respective futures. My future is moving to a new country, Cooper’s was moving to a new planet. I was watching a man, as insignificant as a grain of sand compared to the dark, endless reaches of space, travel away from everything familiar. But, everything turned out okay for his future. So the movie provided not only the comfort of a familiar story but also the comfort of a predictable future. By finding solace in this rewatch of a familiar movie, I was cementing myself into the idea that familiarity is what’s comfortable.

I felt as if my best hope for comfort, then, would be to continue all my familiar routines and trick myself into believing I am the same person. As a creature of habit, I find comfort in the repetition of everyday things. I chronically rewatch the same shows, listen to the same podcast episodes, and replay the same songs. I have a strong and instinctive connection with the things that I choose to repeat. Predictability has been my privilege. In Berlin, I will have the option of creating that environment of predictability for myself or else branching out to new life. But looking back, maybe Cooper was trying to tell me that new life can become comfortable. 

On the flight home, I watched a film I had never seen, Boyhood. Boyhood ends with Mason moving into his college dorm. He immediately meets three new people and decides to go on an adventure with them instead of attending orientation. The scene of Mason and his new friends walking alone through the mountainous desert made me calm. Even after all the shit that happened throughout the movie, Richard Linklater left me with a resolution. I know now that Mason was on his own from the beginning, it just became more obvious to me as the movie went on and he got older. When he goes to college, he is not the same kid he was. He has brought his change with him and is clearly not afraid of experiencing more. I am realizing that my ability to adapt and develop, while still holding onto the elements that make up the core of my being, is what will serve me in college. I define my being by my love of connection, my willingness to try new things, my determination to problem solve, and my goal to be a genuine person. Finding comfort around new people isn’t about remaining the same for the sake of being understood, it is about expressing myself so others may understand me. 

Looking back, it’s almost as if confronting an unknown future made me feel more okay with watching a new film. Something about admitted students day made my future of moving abroad substantive. I was more excited than ever, having discovered so many things to love about my new home. I tried three new types of kombucha, explored many neighborhoods, and tasted incredible foods. I spent my time on the U-Bahn and S-Bahn, pretending I was on a weekend ride from campus into the city. Each new sight out the window provided another reason for excitement. The incredible architecture of the Oberbaumbrüke bridge and the colorful storefronts flashing by made the cloudy days unnoticeable. I realized that there are equally as many things I will be gaining from my move as I will leaving behind. Giving up my ability to drive for access to every corner of Berlin, leaving the comfort of my bed for a new apartment to call home, and saying goodbye to my best friends for the new ones I will meet at school. There is no true equivalency for those former things, but there are some hopeful alternatives. 

Still, I anticipate the end. In less than three months, I will release the anchors of familiarity that remind me of who I am. I will be saying “Goodbye.” to my poster of Debbie Harry. The large red and blue print of the singer with yellow Korean text hangs next to my bed and guards me in her commanding stance. Her stare suggests wise confidence, and her casual look exudes authenticity. Although I added her to my room only a year ago, her presence next to my bed has become a familiar comfort. Each morning, I see Debbie next to me and I know I’m home. It is a consistency I only notice in its absence. I hope I can channel my sentiment for the poster when I move, even with her an ocean away. Letting myself be that familiar presence. That by looking at myself in the mirror, I can know I am home.