When you've lost sight of who you are, no where in the world will ever feel like home. I was homesick for the girl I used to be.īecause home isn't really a tangible place. I tucked my frame into the same corner I would seek solace in when life felt too hard to deal with. I spent eons of time drinking tea in the kitchen with my mother, curled up in the same secret spot I used to smoke cigarettes in as an angst-ridden teenager. I immersed myself in everything that usually made feel safe and connected. How could I be feeling so desperately homesick when I was home? Guilt and confusion joined forces and invaded my brain.Īfter all, I was living in my parents' house, sleeping in the bed I grew up in, taking residence in all the familiar smells that shaped the simple, untainted memories of my childhood. ![]() The fourth time I ever felt homesick, I was 25 years old. I kept myself immersed in blankness, but I, somewhere deep down, was aching for the old connections I had with my friends in New York City. I would stare blankly at the wall, numbing myself because I knew if I allowed myself to feel, I would fall into grey vortex of hopelessness. I sifted through the days as if everything was fine and plastered on a stiff smile at work.Ĭome nightfall, I wouldn't cry. The homesickness wasn't intense it was more of an underlying emptiness that followed me everywhere I went - even booze and happy pills couldn't fill the lonely gaps. In this scenario, I carried on as per usual because I was an adult. ![]() The third time I felt homesick, I was living in London, and I was 23. It was a feeling worse than loneliness - it was alienation. I was hell-bent and tethered to a chronic fatigue that hurt. I had acute exhaustion that lived deep in my limbs. This time, the homesickness had manifested itself into a jilted, jarring sensation not dissimilar to heartbreak. The second time I remember feeling really, truly, madly homesick was when I lived in Los Angeles somewhere between the throes of 17 and 19. I remembering feeling like I could dissipate into the thin air and not a soul would notice I was gone. ![]() I cried into my pillow every night for 14 consecutive days. The twin cot with its fleece blanket and cheerfully bright-red, checkered sheets felt impossibly cold. Even the pleasant smells of wood and pine that permeate the summer camps of New England were unrecognizable and grating. I was gone for eight weeks, and for the first two weeks of my journey, I was overcome with an incessant longing for familiarity.Įverything was unknown. The first time I remember feeling homesick was at sleep-away camp when I was an 8-year-old kid. It's one of the most pressingly painful feelings we will ever experience. It's a vacant feeling of being sorely disconnected. It's a lingering feeling of acute isolation that washes over our entire bodies. There is no feeling quite as lonely as feeling homesick.
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