Ivey Gibbs: My Movie Moment
“We shall not cease from
exploration
And the end of all our
exploring
Will be to arrive where
we started
And know the place for
the first time.”
--T.S. Eliot
Have you ever been in a moment and thought to
yourself “if this were a movie a (insert adjective here) song would be
playing”? I have experienced these moments fleetingly throughout my life; these
moments, however, have been few and far between: my graduation from high
school, the first time my heart was broken, a great week with friends at the
beach. As I spent eight months studying in England, I had amazing experiences
that I knew would be once in a lifetime, I had conversations that would impact
the way I see the world, and I had moments that did not become momentous until
I departed from that place. All of these experiences and emotions hit me the
day I came home.
I spent my last week in England, before coming
home, doing research at the Churchill Archives in Cambridge and I was staying a
gorgeous bed and breakfast. This B&B was a luxury for me and a splurge for
the end of my time abroad and it was worth it. The Rectory Farms was peaceful,
homey, and gorgeous; I found myself wandering around the grounds, interacting
with the animals, and falling in love with the main house. My favorite spot was
a gazebo at the back of the house, from the gazebo I had the most perfect view
of the house with the gardens, the rope swing, and the back porch.
Before leaving for the airport I found myself back
at the
gazebo trying to journal about how I was feeling. I entitled the page “Goodbye
England” and the first line asked a rhetorical question about how I was going
to sum up everything I had done in the past eight months. I had so much going
through my head that I couldn’t figure out how to put it on paper. I kept
thinking that if this moment was part of a movie, all of these memories would
be playing out in front of me while sad music played in the background.
 |
| View of the house from the gazebo |
Fate, God’s will, or just Spotify’s shuffle began
playing “Time of Our Lives ”
by Tyrone Wells. This song made everything in my head stop spinning for just a
moment. The sad melody of the song does not match the lyrics; instead the
lyrics reminded me how lucky I was to have all of the experiences I did. The
song says in part “This is where the chapter ends/A new one now begins/Time has
come for letting go/The hardest part is when you know”. These words were
impactful, because—in fact—a new chapter was just beginning.
I thought that this was a sign that everything was
going to be okay. I had had an amazing experience that enabled me to find the
person I wanted to be. A kinder, less-stressed, and laid back personality is
what I had gained while abroad. I believed that I would go home and everything
would be perfect; I would have all of the answers about my future, that my
experiences would make me cool with my friends, and having survived a year
abroad, I believed my friendships would become stronger. What I did not realize
was that I was riding an eight month high (this would be the time in the movie
where the audience knows what is going to happen and I—the clueless travel-hazed
girl—would have no idea that I was about to fall off the cliff). Before going
abroad I read articles about how re-entry into normal life was hard, but I
thought that I was different. As I came out of my own head I looked down and
realized that I had written two pages and had summed up my experiences quite
well. I looked up to the house and realized that the sun was setting, meaning
that I needed to head on to my bus.
 |
| Sunset on the property |
Fast forward seven months and I am still
re-acclimating to being in the states. I’ve been home almost as long as I was
gone and yet I find myself still yearning to walk down the cobblestone streets
of Winchester and sit in my favorite pub. Certain aspects of my personality
have reverted back to the way I was before I left and I find myself feeling
like I don’t belong here. I’d like to say that every day is a little easier and
that I have found peace in my experiences. But the truth is, I struggle with it
every day…so much so that somedays I think I must be crazy, because no one else
talks about feeling this way. I miss who I was in that place so much that
occasionally my chest aches and as much as I try I can’t seem find that person
here.
This would be the point in the movie where I
return to England and never look back, but what does the real me do? Will I go
back? Absolutely. But I think that the whole point of me feeling this is for me
to not be comfortable in the normality that surrounds me. I changed in England,
because I was doing something abnormal…I pushed against my own comfort zone. That
chest-aching pain that I feel serves as a reminder not to get bogged down in
the mundane. Instead it pushes me to apply for the internship in D.C, apply for
a job I have a low chance of getting, and it pushes me to remember to breathe.
Ivey Gibbs is a senior history major in the Honors
College at Lander University. Ivey is a member of Phi Mu Fraternity and Phi
Alpha Theta (National History Fraternity). Ivey studied abroad at the
University of Winchester in England for the entirety of the 2017-2018 academic
year. Ivey will be interning in Washington, D.C., in the spring of 2019 and
will graduate in May 2019.