For a long time I never understood homesickness. I had spent entire summers away from home and experienced no such aches for the cool blue comfort of my bedroom or the familiar salty taste of my mother’s black beans and rice. Of course I loved my family, but I suppose I never felt the need to miss them when I always knew that at the end of the summer I would return to my white house with its red door. As a result upon arriving at the hill this fall I expected to breeze through my first college semester and easily embrace my new life, and, in part, I did. I went to class and parties, did homework, met new people, and braved the overall whirlwind of freshman year. However as the days wore on I began to feel a kind of emptiness. A persistent gnawing in my stomach that eventually became impossible to ignore despite all my best efforts. I yearned to sit in the office of my favorite teacher and talk about Shakespeare, to drive around town with the windows down listening to music with my friends, and to eat dinner at my family’s small kitchen table with my dog at my feet.
At first I recognized this sentiment as homesickness. The way my heart would grow tender when I closed my eyes and pictured the glowing smiles of my high school friends or conjured the sound of their bubbling laughter. I soon realized that the pangs in my chest were merely a form of homesickness, a desire to return to another time rather than a place. Going home would not mend the void within me, for I longed for something that no longer existed. The simplicity of a life lived within the confines of a small town. The ease of time spent with people who know you better than you know yourself. If I were to return home I would only find that, like me, all my friends have left and gone, and what is a place if not the people that inhabit it?
So what have I made of this grief? The mourning that comes with the knowledge that my life will never quite be the way it was again. Sometimes I am horrified at the nomad I have become. Home is simply a place I visit and not one I occupy. While I am often tempted to consider my life a tragedy of lost moments, I am continuously reminded of all the love I have had and will have again. There will always be new songs to hear, foods to eat, hands to hold, and people to love. Yes there are parts of my life that are gone, but all those people and places still live within my memories. Perhaps there is a joy to be found in every season of life, afterall there are things I have now that I could not have had then.
I no longer forbid myself from feeling the loss of the life I once led, it’s normal to miss something I once held so tightly in my hands. Like the melancholy that comes with the sunset on a balmy August day as the sun’s warmth leeches from my skin, I can be both sad to see its light go and excited for the forthcoming night and cool morning. Forever grateful for all the love in my life, both past and present.