There are only two weeks left now, and I still can’t understand how something so big can end so quietly, while starting to feel like something that you have been doing for your entire life.
Soon, I’ll go back to Mongolia and continue the life I once left behind. I’ll graduate as a senior with the same class I spent almost my whole life with. Everything is going back to the way it used to be, or maybe it was supposed to be. The life that paused will start moving again.
But I don’t think it will feel the same anymore.
Because now there is a part of me that longs for the life that I created here and a version of me that stayed here.
I think that’s the hardest part of being an exchange student. You leave one life to another, and by the time you finally belong in the new one, it’s time to leave.
At first, this school was just hallways, strangers, different schedules, and different faces. Then, somehow, those strangers became the people I looked for every morning. The hallways became familiar. And without realizing it, this stopped feeling like an experience and started feeling like actual life. Everything just becomes normal until the normal is the very thing you are saying goodbye to.
Maybe the most precious parts of life are never the loud ones.
They’re the quiet, ordinary moments you don’t know that you are holding until your hands are empty.
Now, every small thing feels heavier because I know there is the word “last“ attached to it all of a sudden. Last lunch period. Last classroom. Last random conversation after school. Last time hearing people say “see you tomorrow” when they probably won’t.
The saddest part is that life here will continue normally after I leave. The bell will still ring. Everyone will still walk these hallways. People will still laugh in the same classroom. It’s strange realizing a place can mean everything to you while continuing perfectly fine without you in it.
I’m excited for my future. But at the same time, I’m terrified of becoming someone who just used to be here.
For me, it was not a year in life, but life in a year.
Thank you all for giving me a place I’ll miss forever.
