Moving away

Hello! Could you please advise me on how I could ease my state right now? I’m 17, and soon—in September—I’ll be moving to Poland to study. For the past three years, this has been my goal. I’ve been studying English intensely, passed the C1 exam in March, aced all my school exams, and even got a red diploma. Everything was to get in. I’m certain this is what I want.

For the last two years, I’ve been living in a village with my parents, sister, and dog, surrounded only by forests and rivers. There are no people around—I haven’t gone to school in years, just stayed home the whole time. I have no social life at all. I’ve been suffering through this entire time.

Now that it’s all so close, yesterday my mom was in the kitchen making jam. There was so much of it that she said, "We’ll be eating this jam all winter." Then she remembered I was leaving and burst into tears. She rarely cries or shows her emotions, and I honestly thought she wasn’t that upset about me going. We talked about it for about three hours. For the first time, I realized how much pain this is causing her. I’m not her first child—I’m the first one who made her a "mom." She’s sending me into the unknown, and in a couple of years, she’ll have to do the same with my sister. She’s facing this kind of pain for the first time. I’ve never been away from them for more than two weeks, and overall, I’ve always been a homebody, I’d say. But these past few years, I’ve felt myself growing up, and it frustrated and angered me—everything they did. I wanted to live on my own.

But last night and this morning, I can’t pull myself together. I’ve been crying as if everyone’s already dead. There’s this pain inside me. It’s incredibly hard to let go of my mom. I haven’t even been accepted yet—I still have to pay for this in a few months. And I’m terrified of the pain and longing I’m already feeling just at the thought of it. I rarely cry, but now I’ve completely broken down.

Because of my emotions, I’ve started doubting whether I should go. How will I manage without my mom, without their voices in the kitchen, without fights with my sister, without my dog? I’m going somewhere I’ll be nobody, just some silly foreigner. I know this all sounds very cliché, everyone goes through this, and it seems like whining, but that’s the problem—I don’t usually behave like this, I don’t suffer over people like this. But now I feel like I’ve woken up. And I don’t know what to do.

I’m 100% sure I want to leave. There’s nothing for me here except my family—I have nothing to hold onto. This house we live in isn’t even ours; it belongs to friends of ours. I feel like a guest here.

But when I imagine myself alone in a dorm in another country, when I picture saying goodbye to my mom as she leaves, my heart aches. It feels unbearable. I haven’t been in a social environment in so long that I don’t even remember how to socialize or make friends. I crave it, but the fear is overwhelming. I’m not sure what I’m capable of in that sense. I don’t know what to expect from myself.

How do I stop giving in to my emotions? I won’t forgive myself if I miss this chance to fulfill my dream. The perfect moment is here, but it hurts so much... And I don’t even know how to stop crying. I’m still at home, and I already feel like I’m saying goodbye.