Why Am I Here?

England is a lot like America in a lot of ways, and being in England I feel as though I haven’t had to make as many adjustments as other students studying in other areas. I haven’t had to learn another language, I haven’t had to worry about making any serious social slights (as most things that would be considered offensive here are the same things you would expect to be offensive at home), and I haven’t had to adjust to any major climate or altitude changes. I have had many moments of momentary surprise or discomfort both my own fault—I tend to be a bit much when I’m comfortable or excited—and discomfort caused by people here—I’ve gotten into many fights with students here about transgender and other queer identities which they don’t believe exist, although that is more a reflection of these particular people than the country as a whole—but nothing that made me actually frightened. As a result I had a hard time thinking of what I was going to write about for this blog post. After all if you don’t feel unsafe walking alone at night or talking to strangers or leaving your door unlocked a lot of the usual suspects are eliminated. Then I realized that although I haven’t been concerned for my physical safety, there are moments when my emotional safety has been suspect. 

I have anxiety issues, and remembering traumatic events from my past has been known to set me off in full blown panic attacks. Obviously this isn’t something I go and share with everyone I meet (in fact I struggled for a while about whether I wanted to even share this much for the purpose of writing this blog post) and as a result I often have to be on the lookout to make sure that I remove myself from potentially damaging situations. My first few weeks here I was in a frenzy trying to keep myself together. There was the adjustment of being away from my friends, and there was the adjustment of being away from the counseling center at Allegheny.  At Lancaster it is much harder to speak to someone about what you’re feeling and sometimes appointments take weeks to schedule. As a result I felt isolated and alone. If I needed to speak to someone I was in a completely different time zone than the people I trusted the most and although I had met many people here I considered friends, I wasn’t about to knock on their doors and make them deal with my life problems. I don’t like to be a bother! So, for a while, I was a little stuck. 

Then one night one of my flatmates (completely messing around with me) grabbed me from behind and pretended to hit me. Now we had just watched a slasher movie the night before and he was expecting me to scream and then laugh about it. What actually happened was I completely stopped breathing for a moment before breaking down and sobbing on our kitchen floor. Because I am open with my friends at school this is something that never would have happened, but because I had been working so hard on managing everything on my own at Lancaster my flatmate had no idea that what was meant as a joke would trigger a panic attack. I think, for me personally, this was one of the most important teaching moments for me this trip. After this happened I was able to explain to my flatmates that there were certain things that I would appreciate they didn’t do around me. I learned that taking care of myself means that I have to take steps to ensuring my own safety, both physical and emotional, and that it is okay to set boundaries with people early on. Hopefully this is a lesson I will be able to apply to all big adjustments I make in the future.