I think most international students will relate to my pain.

Coming from a small city in Western Kazakhstan, I have been very honored and privileged to go to college internationally in Qatar and do an exchange semester in Evanston. I’ve traveled to places I once only saw in photos. I’ve seen parts of the world that still don’t feel entirely real to me.

And there is more to come.

For that, I am eternally grateful to my parents. They made sure I received the education they didn’t have because they wanted me to have opportunities they didn’t.

But no one talks enough about the guilt.

It creeps in when you’re boarding a plane, when you’re walking through a new city, even when you’re eating the most ordinary lunch alone in your dorm room.

I just wish I could share these moments with them.

Being an international student means saying “happy birthday” to your grandmother over FaceTime and seeing her tear up. It means watching your favorite cousin, the one you used to be inseparable from as a kid, get married through blurry livestream footage. It means going home for two weeks and arguing with your brother over the last slice of pizza, trying to compress a year of lost siblinghood into 14 days.

It means missing your niece’s first days, seeing her crawl during one visit just to see her speak in full sentences during the next. I just hope she doesn’t forget me in between.

It means my parents are cheering for my achievements through a screen. 

I imagine them sitting at the kitchen table, watching my projects and feeling proud. There have been so many moments when I thought: ‘If only they could taste this food with me in bustling Tbilisi. If only they could be beside me to see what I see.’

The guilt is hard to describe, because even though I feel like I’m building a bigger life for myself, it’s all at the expense of being further from those I love.

That’s why it meant everything to have them visit me in Qatar, showing them my favorite views. Ordering the dishes I always get. Watching them experience a world they had only heard me describe in voice notes. For once, my two worlds overlapped.

And then there’s the other ache: choosing where to live next.

I want to be close to home. I want the option of weekend visits. I want to share life updates over dinner instead of FaceTime for once. This is hard to admit, but my parents are not getting any younger. Thinking about it brings me to tears. My dad was 35 and my mom was 26 when they got married. They had me five years later. You do the math.

The pursuit of opportunity often pulls you away from the very people who sacrificed theirs so you could chase yours. You leave home to build the life they dreamt for you, and sometimes it feels like you’re paying for that dream with time you can’t get back.

Some days, beneath all the ambition and independence, I just want to be a little girl again. To fall asleep on the living room couch and pretend I’m still asleep so my dad will carry me to bed.

I don’t mean to make anyone sad. It’s just that no one really prepares you for this part of studying abroad. Life keeps moving without you back home, and you keep moving without them, and somehow, you’re expected to be grateful and okay with both.

Aizere Yessenkul is a NU-Q Communication senior and author of “Yes-sentials.” She can be contacted at [email protected]. If you would like to respond publicly to this op-ed, send a Letter to the Editor to [email protected]. The views expressed in this piece do not necessarily reflect the views of all staff members of The Daily Northwestern.