The Thing About Homesickness …
The thing about homesickness is, it’s sneaky. It’s sneaky and slippery and doesn’t let you know it’s coming until it has wrapped its tentacles around you, pulling you back towards a time, a place, a people. And then it just sits there, like an unwanted acquaintance, the slightly Machiavellian kid who wants to play with you but who you really don’t want to play with because they’re draining and depressing and they don’t make you feel good.
Another thing about homesickness is that, like the guest who wears out their welcome (the guest who wasn’t ever really welcome in the first place, but is a known inevitability) it needs to stay a while. Bed down in your abode, share your coffee, catch the bus with you, come to parties. It likes to make itself comfortable. Impose itself on your new life. Check out the nooks and crannies of your new home (it’s doing this so when you move on from this home, it can visit your next one and whisper, ‘but don’t you misssss drinking wine in your bright little kitchen and having thossssse fabuloussss discusssionssss with your marvelousssss flatmate?’)
It also strikes at inopportune times, its little tentacles tightening their grip during moments in which it knows you don’t have the luxury of bursting into irrational tears in private. Like, for example, at dinner parties, or someone’s birthday celebration. When everybody else around you is in fine form, revelling in good cheer, laughing uproariously because they are surrounded by loved ones, yourself included, you sit there like a dolt, eyes glazed, blinking furiously and trying not to think about how much that person laughs like your Mum.
The other thing, perhaps the most confusing thing, about homesickness is that it can co-exist with happiness. It can actually snuggle in alongside relative contentment. Just because it’s there, smiling sleepily at you when you wake, waving idly as you enjoy a glass of wine in pleasant company, breathing down your neck at dinner parties, doesn’t mean you want to give up. Doesn’t mean you hate your new home. It doesn’t mean you wish you were anywhere but where you are. Not at all. To complain of homesickness isn’t to wave the white flag and pull up stumps.
It’s just to feel a little sick for your home. A little world-worn and weary. A little like you want to crawl under the covers of your old bed and have your Mum bring you a cup of tea. A little like you want to spend a Saturday night on the couch with your best friends and pizza. A little like you want to bask in the warmth of the old familiar for a little while.
It’s no big deal. It passes. Soon, it packs its little bag and waves goodbye, promises to be back (and it will) and disappears. You move on, keep doing what you’re doing, keep loving and living where you are.
Because, the final thing about homesickness, is it isn’t all bad. When it has loosened its grip, and slithered back to where it came from, when tears no longer well in public because someone on a billboard looks like your Dad, you understand what it really does. Homesickness reminds you, in case you had forgotten, as you galivant around the world, how lucky you are to have had what you did. And, if it is there waiting for you, patient and warm and familiar as ever, that you are truly blessed.
Natalia
13 June, 2011 at 2:08 pmI really, really loved this… and I adore your writing style. 🙂 I just followed one of your tags and found your post, and I’m sure glad I did! I look forward to visiting back to read more!
admin
13 June, 2011 at 3:28 pmThank you so much Natalia
with2nsdesigns
13 June, 2011 at 2:12 pmI couldn’t agree more. You just described my homesickness so perfectly. That is exactly what it feels like. Thank you for writing it so well.
admin
14 June, 2011 at 7:38 amYou are so welcome – it gets to all of us x
2011 « A Big Life
27 December, 2011 at 11:39 pm[…] Have been more homesick than I ever believed possible. […]
On Writing Therapy & Living Abroad « A Big Life
1 June, 2012 at 7:25 am[…] The Thing About Homesickness […]
winterlust
2 June, 2012 at 10:15 amI wish someone had told me homesickness can co-exist with happiness a few years ago. So many times, I’ve thought that my homesickness means I’m unhappy & that things aren’t as good as my previous hometown.
All I know is, 5 years on, that homesick feeling hasn’t gone away, I’ve only learnt how to manage it (only just!).
Great post!
Liv
3 June, 2012 at 6:26 amIt is a weird thing, isn’t it, homesickness. But it doesn’t mean things aren’t as good where you are, it just means you miss your home and that’s okay!
Thank You « A Big Life
24 July, 2012 at 11:45 am[…] how much I struggled with homesickness? Those times it would hit, suddenly, like a cold or a stomach cramp, then crawl away, back to where […]
-thew
3 March, 2013 at 6:53 amAwesome post – next time it hits me up I’ll have to come back to this entry.
amo
12 December, 2013 at 1:01 amAwesome!!!! And so true 🙂 I’m from Germany and live at the moment in the US. I have exactly the same experience with homesickness..
Love your blog!
Liv
12 December, 2013 at 6:21 pmUgh, isn’t it the worst. But you can beat it (you just need a bit of Skype and time spent feeling sorry for yourself!)
Lauren
8 January, 2014 at 6:59 pmYou have described my homesickness perfectly! It comes and goes, I feed it with Peter Allen and John Williamson songs, cry a lot and then feel better for another few months. But it always comes back, despite the fact that I have made my life permanently here in Germany (and don’t regret this decision for one second). I find my biggest challenge is home-food-sickness. Sometimes I wish I could pop down to Aldi and pick up a jar of Vegemite and a bag of Twisties!
Liv
10 January, 2014 at 10:02 amI hit food walls too! Sometimes I just want Bega cheese (or at least a harder, sharper tasty.) I want good, cheap sushi. Big burgers. A sausage sizzle. Decent Thai. Aussie wine! A mango! And once I start wanting the food, I start thinking about other things, and that generally leads to a little slide into HS. I think I am going to be putting a few things in my suitcase this time round.