Moving to a new city alone is one of those things you always say you want to do, but never actually expect to – especially when that city is a 12 hour drive from every person you know and love, and it’s the middle of a pandemic. You tell yourself that it’s a new adventure and this will be good for you, but the moment you’re alone in an apartment for the first time it can be hard to see past what’s right in front of you – heat, bugs, and loneliness. All of the excitement and built-up anticipation from sitting in a car for 12 hours has worn off and now it’s just you and a town you know nothing about.
Being 24 and in grad school, you expect to meet people quickly and have the same social life that you did in your hometown. Unfortunately, it doesn’t always pan out that way, especially during COVID times, when everyone is keeping to themselves. Making friends as an adult and trying to find people who have interests that line up with yours, along with also being in grad school, is hard.
Everything you had imagined is different. And that’s okay.
In those moments of being alone – truly alone – you can actually hear yourself think for the first time. You start to realize things about yourself that were lost in the monotonous life you knew before. You start to realize that you actually like being alone. Or you realize you don’t, but now you have to learn how to put yourself out there and find comfort in not knowing. You start to realize that meeting new people brings out the real you, the one you lost to the expectations of people who have known you for so long. You also start to appreciate everything you had back home even more and what once was a boring hometown becomes a safe space where you have people who are rooting for you, always.
So, yes, moving to a new city that you have never seen and where you don’t know a single person is absolutely terrifying. It’s also exciting. It’s a chance to reinvent yourself and find the person that was buried under the weight of expectations. It’s a chance to truly appreciate friends and family who continue to be there even when you’re not.
Maggie Burke is an intern at North. She is from Chicago, Illinois and is a graduate student studying Social Work at the University of South Carolina. She is passionate about helping others through building community and political activism.
