The strangest thing about seeing a new part of the world is that moment when you’ve come… The strangest thing about seeing a new part of the world is that moment when you’ve come home and you realize that you’ve actually seen it.

It’s one of those moments that always come at the most obscure times. For four months I drank tea in French patisseries, slept on the floor of English Channel ferries and fell in love with hundreds of British boys on the London Underground. Yet this revelation came to me in, of all places, Lehighton, Pa., at a 24-hour grocery market.

It was Eastern Standard Time. I was in the cereal aisle. Suddenly, through a haze of 6 a.m. jet lag, I could see so clearly that I had actually been somewhere. There were stamps in my passport from exotic places like Ljubljana, Slovenia, and Zaragoza, Spain. I had 53 pence in my pocket. I had eaten beans on toast.

It was overwhelming, really. The revelation, not the trip. To be quite honest, the trip itself was anything but epic. With the exception of an almost-street fight in Madrid, Spain, and an encounter with Christian Slater in Leicester Square, not too many exciting things happened. I spent most of the last semester watching EastEnders with my host family and playing with 8-year-olds at my internship. Which, of course, is OK with me. I love those kinds of things.

Not that it was a boring few months abroad. I did a lot, I saw a lot, I met a lot of people. But coming home, I’ve felt this incredible pressure to be something I’m really not – interesting. When people ask me about my trip I know what kind of stories they expect.

My brother expects stories about massive Hackney clubs full of coy British tarts. My mom wants to hear all about the museums, those important works of art. My female friends expect only innumerable encounters with adorably accented Brits drinking gin and tonics. No matter who is asking, the request is always for stories made for vicarious living.

And sure, I have those stories, but they aren’t the ones I really want to tell.

I want to talk about those rare times that really signified whatever weird, existential change was going on in me during the last few months. Because beside the aforementioned, there is another kind of revelation that a long sojourn brings.

It is the moment when one realizes why they’ve gone on this trip. The real reason, not the study abroad poster reason. I think for a lot of people, and maybe I am generalizing here (but I don’t think so), the reason is that they are searching for something. Dare I say themselves?

Perhaps it is clich’eacute;, but essentially I think that’s what it is.

Even if they say they’re looking for a better sense of fashion or a hot Mediterranean girlfriend or the body of Mary Magdalene buried beneath the Louvre, those are really things that end up defining who they are.

I don’t think I intentionally set out to find myself. I set out to learn Cockney slang, which, incidentally, I did not do. Except for tea leaf – did you know that means “thief?” Neither did I.

When you go away for a while, you never imagine that people go on living as they do. And it’s a great surprise and disappointment when you realize they have. Perhaps it’s the greatest disappointment, finding out that life exists outside yourself.

Or maybe, the greatest is coming home to realize that though you’ve changed, the circumstances of your life haven’t. The carpets in your apartment are still brown, the boy of your dreams still doesn’t know you exist, you’re still in debt. People still expect something from you that you aren’t quite sure how to give.

And I know I’ve changed. But I know that no one will think that I have, and I don’t know how to convince them otherwise.

I want to tell them all about this moment that I think proves it. I was in Eastern Europe, on a bus that smells bad and plays, for some reason I’ll never know, Mexican dance music softly over the loudspeaker.

We were heading toward this picture-perfect lake, but the weather was cold and gray. We passed through fields of corralled horses with steaming breath and little towns made of verandas and laundry lines. We twisted up through these Alpine mountains, and I felt so heavy. I realized that the thing about finding yourself – the one thing no one ever tells you – is that in order to do so, you have to first completely lose yourself. And losing yourself is a slow, lonely process, full of that kind of sadness that sits inside you like a rock.

And that’s what I learned on that bus – that I was lost and being found all at once.

So if you ask me about London, which you should, go ahead and ask about the pub life. And I’ll tell you all about it. But keep in mind that what I’m really talking about when I talk about the fish and chips and ale is that sad day on the bus and those mountains so much bigger than myself.

No. 43 on Cassidy’s to-do list is “start an advice column.” Send her your queries at [email protected].