{"id":45328,"date":"2026-02-13T13:31:39","date_gmt":"2026-02-13T13:31:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/usa\/i-lived-abroad-by-myself-when-i-was-22-i-wish-id-waited-until-i-was-older\/"},"modified":"2026-02-13T13:31:39","modified_gmt":"2026-02-13T13:31:39","slug":"i-lived-abroad-by-myself-when-i-was-22-i-wish-id-waited-until-i-was-older","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/usa\/i-lived-abroad-by-myself-when-i-was-22-i-wish-id-waited-until-i-was-older\/","title":{"rendered":"I lived abroad by myself when I was 22. I wish I&#8217;d waited until I was older."},"content":{"rendered":"<figure><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i.insider.com\/698a2542d3c7faef0ecde969?format=jpeg\" alt=\"The writer posing in front of a building and tiled floor in Morocco.\"\/><figcaption>captionTK<\/p>\n<p>Syeda Khaula Saad<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<ul>\n<li>At 22, I moved to Morocco by myself after spending most of my life within 45 minutes of my hometown.<\/li>\n<li>There were things I loved about the experience, but I felt homesick and couldn&#039;t wait to leave.<\/li>\n<li>Now that I&#039;m 29, I wish I had the opportunity to live abroad in a new place.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Elizabeth Gilbert was 33 years old when she began her &quot;Eat, Pray, Love&quot; journey.<\/p>\n<p>Frances Mayes is 35 when she buys her villa in &quot;Under the Tuscan Sun.&quot; Even Emily of &quot;Emily in Paris&quot; is in her late 20s when she ventures to Paris for the marketing opportunity of a lifetime.<\/p>\n<p>I was a measly 22-year-old who had never lived more than 45 minutes from home when I haphazardly decided to take an internship in Ifrane, Morocco, and move away from my family, friends, and everything else that gave me the notion of comfort and security.<\/p>\n<p>Although the seven months I spent in Morocco changed my life, I&#039;ll admit that now, at 29, I understand that there is a reason these women were older when they began their self-realization journeys abroad.<\/p>\n<p>Before I get into anything else, I find it important to note that this idea of having to travel internationally to achieve self-discovery is a very privileged idea. Not everyone can rely on moving their lives to another country to do some soul-searching.<\/p>\n<p>Because I had the opportunity, though, I seized it. Carpe diem, and whatnot.<\/p>\n<h2><strong>It was a once-in-a-lifetime experience, but I found myself missing home<\/strong><\/h2>\n<figure><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i.insider.com\/698a28b6a645d1188188fa79?format=jpeg\" alt=\"The writer standing in front of a monument in Ifrane, Morocco.\"\/><figcaption>captiontk<\/p>\n<p>Syeda Khaula Saad<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Like Elizabeth and Frances, my trek into North Africa was catalyzed by heartbreak. I was going through what felt like the millionth breakup with a boyfriend who unexpectedly told me that he would be moving to China to pursue a scholarship.<\/p>\n<p>Because the thought of wallowing at home while my ex was gallivanting across Beijing was too much for me, I decided that I absolutely needed to go somewhere \u2014 anywhere. Thanks to an international internship program, that &quot;somewhere&quot; became Morocco.<\/p>\n<p>The internship itself was underwhelming, though. Most of my time was spent sitting idly at a desk, jittery from a third cup of mint tea.<\/p>\n<p>To stay busy, I kept a part-time, remote writing job back home, which led to me working an all-day internship, then going home to another seven-hour shift. Unsurprisingly, I started to feel burned out.<\/p>\n<figure><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i.insider.com\/698a2c6aa645d1188188fb1c?format=jpeg\" alt=\"A sunrise over a desert in Morocco.\"\/><figcaption>captiontk<\/p>\n<p>Syeda Khaula Saad<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>I still managed to see a lot of Morocco. I took surfing classes on the beaches of Rabat, bartered with merchants in Fez souks, and slept under the stars in the Sahara Desert. Yet, I felt myself rejecting so much of the experience.<\/p>\n<p>I called home every day \u2014 sometimes twice a day. I told my best friends I missed them much too often, all while keeping the friends I was making in Morocco at arm&#039;s length because they &quot;didn&#039;t get me&quot; like my friends back home.<\/p>\n<p>I even FaceTimed my mom to walk me through recipes of my favorite meals, even though I was surrounded by some of the best flavors in the world.<\/p>\n<p>Despite being in a different country, I longed for the normality of life events happening back home on my Instagram feed: first jobs, new apartments, and reunions between my closest friends.<\/p>\n<p>Even though I was actively living one of the objectively coolest experiences of my life, I had fervent FOMO.<\/p>\n<p>I eventually quit the internship, moved from the university&#039;s dorms into a small apartment in Ifrane by myself, and spent my days longing to go home.<\/p>\n<h2><strong>Looking back, I wasn&#039;t ready to live abroad yet<\/strong><\/h2>\n<figure><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i.insider.com\/698a2d3aa645d1188188fb3f?format=jpeg\" alt=\"The writer sitting on a sandy desert hill in Morocco.\"\/><figcaption>captionTK<\/p>\n<p>Syeda Khaula Saad<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>At 22, I didn&#039;t know much about anything, let alone myself. I had spent my entire life in New Jersey until that point.<\/p>\n<p>I was eager to run away to &quot;find myself,&quot; but didn&#039;t realize that adventure can only meet you as far as you let it \u2014 and though I literally traveled thousands of miles, metaphorically, I wasn&#039;t very willing to budge.<\/p>\n<p>Some people are ready for this kind of adventure at 22. However, as someone who had a 6 p.m. curfew until age 18, I likely could&#039;ve benefited much more from just moving out of my parents&#039; house \u2014 or even starting therapy.<\/p>\n<p>This isn&#039;t to deter anyone from seeing the world at a young age \u2014 in fact, I <em>wish<\/em> this were an option for more people \u2014 but I learned that travel shouldn&#039;t be a bandaid for heartbreak, or a stand-in for introspection.<\/p>\n<p>I&#039;ve lived alone for six years now and, though I have a long way to go, I&#039;ve grown much more into the person I&#039;m meant to be. I&#039;ve learned to love being on my own, left behind bad relationship cycles, and matured out of FOMO.<\/p>\n<p>I&#039;ve also reached the phase of adulthood that I always thought would come later in life: friends moving away, getting married, and starting families.<\/p>\n<p>As I prepare to close out my 20s, I can&#039;t help but feel that if there were any time to have the experience I did at 22, it&#039;s now \u2014 when I&#039;m open and ready for something new.<\/p>\n<p>Read the original article on Business Insider<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>captionTK Syeda Khaula Saad At 22, I moved to Morocco by myself after spending most of my life within 45 minutes of my hometown. There were things I loved about the experience, but I felt homesick and couldn&#039;t wait to leave. Now that I&#039;m 29, I wish I had the opportunity to live abroad in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-45328","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-usa"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45328","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45328"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45328\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45328"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45328"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45328"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}