Homesickness

To feel homesickness one must have a home. Surely. Or maybe not.

I have met people with homes who have travelled and felt crippling homesickness when they were away. They felt a real sense of the distance between them and what they know, and more importantly in most cases, who they love. Whether it is a parent, a grandparent, a friend, a pet, etc. They found the mix of distance, discomfort, and unfamiliarity very disconcerting and very difficult to deal with.

For some people it is really acute. For others, it builds as a slow background colour.

If the person in question is also feeling ill (one’s digestive system often takes time to adjust to the food) then this can make the homesickness harder to bear. If the physical environment is difficult (cold, hot, dry, humid, wet, dirty, barren, at altitude, poor air quality, etc) then that can also make the homesickness feel worse. If the work or the people or the community or the lack of privacy or the facilities are uncomfortably unfamiliar, then that can also make for a stronger yearning for home.

There are different things you can do to help. In some cases, reaching out regularly to people at home can really help, you don’t feel so isolated then. In other cases, really focussing on being present and not being connected is more beneficial – don’t read the news from home, don’t scroll through all the Instagram feeds for all the people back home, don’t call and text every day. Being aware of what you are doing and why can be really helpful – if the here and now is valuable, interesting, rewarding then that helps answer the “why am I doing this?” question.

For some of us who travel a lot (often without well-defined return dates) the pull to go home can be a gentle hum. Sometimes it’s hard to even notice it and the joy and wonder of travel can overpower it.

And for those of us without a home, or with several homes, or with a non-traditional sense of home, or with a home in structure only then it can be quite a confusing feeling. What am I feeling sick for? What do I miss? Is it my family home, or rather the home my Dad now lives in that I visit occasionally? Is it a cup of Yorkshire tea made with Cambridge water (for that extra limescale scum) with the right amount of semi-skimmed milk, and served in my favourite mug (the one from George Heriot’s school that changes colour when you put hot liquid in it and shows a picture of the amazing turrets of the school with a surprisingly blue Edinburgh sky). Is it a hug from one of my friends? Is it the peeling paint on the front door? Is it the tree in the front garden that you can see as soon as you turn the corner into the street? Is it the pothole on the corner of the driveway that has been there forever and is likely to be there forever more? Is it the smell of the pillow and the freshly laundered pillow case on the bed in ‘my’ room? Or is it something more general than that? Is it the really familiar bus ride into town? The group of students in the queue for the club who change faces ever so slightly from year to year but who are effectively the same? Is it the punts on the river? Or is it my wider community: being back on a dancefloor dancing Viennese Waltzes with my favourite dance partners; being back in the gym giggling over my concentrating front squat face?

Sometimes it really is the house. I miss that carpet (the colour, the thickness). I miss the fact that I can walk from the bed to the door, down the hallway, to the bathroom and back again without turning on a light. I miss that kitchen with that rice cooker and that toaster that if you set it to 4 will perfectly toast that brand of bread. I miss the shortcut home through that park, walking under that tree.

Sometimes it is the people. I miss curling up on a sofa with those friends eating Ben and Jerry’s Phish Food ice cream having those same amazing conversations about all that is wrong and all that is right with the world. I miss the shared history and the in-jokes and the slang.

Sometimes it is the broader culture. I miss going into a coffee shop and knowing how it works, knowing that I need to go to the counter to order, knowing what all the things are, knowing that they’ll have everything on the menu, knowing what is vegetarian, knowing that the tables will have power sockets that work, knowing where the toilets are and that they’ll be clean and have toilet paper and a hand basin and soap, knowing that they’ll play pleasant and reasonably quiet music. I miss going to Tesco and getting olive sourdough and Bol lunch pots and Tony’s Chocoloney chocolate bars and tofu and soap that doesn’t try to lighten my skin and deodorant with no aluminium. I miss queueing. I miss the shared looks of quiet British disapproval when someone in the quiet carriage realises they have forgotten to put their phone on silent. I miss being on a train when someone who gets this train every day gets on and asks “does this train go to Cambridge?” and another person already on the train who gets this train every day and knows full well that it goes to Cambridge (it says so on the sign on the platform and on the electronic information board in the train itself) says “well I certainly hope so since that’s where I’m going” with a warm and encouraging smile. I miss chatting to a South Korean friend and an Austrian friend whilst being served Spanish tapas by an Indian waiter in a restaurant in South London.

And yet, when I get to wherever home is, my feet start getting itchy (despite the comfortable carpet). I miss the chaos of travelling. I miss the price of a coffee in Asia. I miss the chow mein. I miss the bumbling around. I miss the confusion. I miss the overnight trains and the dusty buses and the manic three wheelers and the utterly terrifying motorcycle taxis.

I feel out of place at ‘home’. I feel disjointed. After living three lifetimes over 6 months, I come back to a community that has perfected routine and status quo (despite the variation within that). I feel interested in stories of local road closures and the new people who have just taken over the local pub, but I don’t feel grounded in those stories. And my friends are interested in my stories of Himalayan trekking and concrete pouring and learning Nepali dancing. But they don’t feel grounded in those stories. We love each other dearly and find the other stories genuinely interesting because we care deeply about the other person, but the stories talk of alien worlds and unfamiliar priorities and strange experiences.

I needed to come home. I needed a break from that chaos for a while. But only temporarily. Now a different kind of homesickness is creeping up on me – I’m a global citizen with friends and homes around the world, and the ache for them is getting stronger.