The Summer I Thought I Had It All
By: Akhila Nagar
Tags: Adventure, Home, Friends, Memories, Travel

The Summer I Thought I Had It All

Photo by Eva Darron on Unsplash

It was many years later that I suddenly realized that 2009 was what I deemed to be the best year of my life. I was 16, I was about to travel to two countries that summer, and most of all, I woke up excited every day, counting down the weeks, the days, and the hours. I thought that I had reached the pinnacle of my life, a life full of adventure and novelties. When I now look at that time of my life, I do get pangs of reminiscence, not of the events during that summer themselves, but of the Feeling of Being that knocked on my room door every day. As the years passed, I could not help but look at that time, without it breaking an extremely small piece of my heart. If that was the summit, then the next move would be the descent. As the years have passed, however, my impression of that time faded, I thought of the events rather than the Feeling of Being like before, and thinking of those events lacked any sentiment on my part. But often, it disturbs me. It disturbs me to know that it’s over. It’s really just remembering what had already passed. When I think of that year, I think of a parchment in a bottle being sent into the sea from an island, knowing that nobody would find it, but keeping up the hope that somebody would.

Two things happened that summer — I went for an exchange program from school to a little village in Germany for about a month, and I then participated in a global conference held in Washington D.C and New York City. At that point in my life, I had barely travelled. I grew excited even at the thought of the airplane ascending. I was also fascinated by the ‘duty free’ section at the airport, and I could not help but look around the whole airport, trying to digest all of it. I was travelling to Germany with about 15 schoolmates (and of course, we caused a great commotion on the plane). Once we reached, we were assigned our exchange partners, the ones with whom we would be staying the rest of our time here. I was excited to meet mine, and she was great. Unfortunately, we never did really hang out with each other. Since we were sitting in on classes at the local school, I saw my classmates each day. We had a really great time — together we would explore various parts of Bavaria. I came back home satiated with my travels.

But that wasn’t the end. I was due to fly to the conference in the US 3 days after! I was overjoyed. When I was on the plane (this time by myself so not so much of a commotion), I kept looking at pictures from my exchange program. I talked about it to anyone who tried to talk to me on the plane. I imagine I was quite a nuisance, but in my defence, I was too excited- the satiation had gone, and I was hungry once again for adventure. This, my first time being to the US, was far better than I had ever imagined. I went to museums, restaurants, and who knows what else. In NYC, we- around 60 of us from different parts of the world- lived in a college’s dorms, to get a fuller experience of young students’ lives there. I think I was most excited to see the dining hall — food, food, food. This also meant endless pizza and hamburgers, not to mention a large variety of desserts (Yes, I love to eat). On the night before we had to leave, we went on an extremely fancy cruise on the Hudson. I couldn’t believe, for a whole minute, the beauty I was seeing all around me. Unfortunately, this too, had to end. I was in tears coming back home, both on the plane, and then at home.

At that time, I felt like the world had become my home. I wanted to travel to every country in the world — it was my sole dream. I even started applying to universities across the world, although finally I did stay in my home country (that’s a story for another day). Looking back at those years now, I feel like I was a lost child with extravagant hopes and dreams; not knowing the path, but moving forward at least. Over time, my dreams have taken on a different character, and I now imagine a life in which I would someday, without any hurry, go to different parts of the world. But those memories stayed with me. Thinking that that was the pinnacle of my life was indeed false (but that is now, not when I was younger). I had many years to do many things. But thinking that my life had metaphorically ended at that age still makes me feel sad, about being the child that I was.