Arriving at the end of your secondary education, with a modest eighteen years behind you, you have to decide where to continue your studies. Will you stay in Macedonia, or perhaps decide to go somewhere abroad (as I decided to continue my education in Slovenia)? Surely the same questions that troubled me are spinning in your head too: "How will I fit into a new environment when I do not know the language?"; "Will I manage to find friends?"; "What will I do without my closest people?".
I am here to tell you that what you are going through is completely normal, but that does not mean it should discourage you from taking your life into your own hands. I am not here to tell you what the situation in Macedonia is like or whether it is good to leave your home (that would be intruding on your privacy), but if you ask me, you deserve to see another system so that you can decide for yourself which one you prefer. For example, leaving home made me love our Skopje and our Macedonia so much more.
Let us return to the topic and hypothetically imagine that you have decided to study abroad. I will be honest and I will not lie to you: the first few months are the hardest. They are filled with many tears, with a feeling of loneliness, and nostalgia and melancholy will prevail within you. But as they say, after the rain comes the sun. Of course you can overcome these states. I would like to tell you that there is some formula you can apply to adapt to a new environment, but unfortunately that is not the case.
I can only tell you what helped me. I arrived in Maribor and felt lonely and sad. I simply did not know what to do with my emotions. I am not an artistic soul, but I began to pour my states and inner unrest into poetry. Those poems of mine helped me to face and accept my reality. I started to share them with my closest people and those around me, and that is how I realised that I am not alone (remember, you are never alone — there is always someone going through the same thing as you).
Of course, that was not enough. My everyday life was monotonous and consisted of going to lectures and studying. I missed those charming Skopje events. So I decided to get to know Maribor's culture and I found my own cultural corner. At those events I met my people (we all have our own type of people, and you will always find a place where you find your type) and many new artists I had never heard of. By meeting new people I also improved my Slovene, which I still do not speak clearly and grammatically correctly — but that is only motivation for me to improve it.
In my teenage life I was not a person who actively did sports. But out of hardship I even started exercising. I run and work out every day. I do not know why, but it gave me a different perspective on life and made me mentally stronger to cope with my loneliness. Evidently there was something to the words: "a healthy body, a healthy spirit."
There are many more little things that helped me start to feel at home in Maribor, but I still believe the most important thing is to stay persistent and brave. Do not give up at the first obstacle, because the world is much more beautiful when you look at it from the arduously-climbed mountain of challenges.