“There is a loneliness about it, the feeling of not being anchored somewhere, of drifting between worlds and never feeling at home in either of them.”
It was always going to be an exciting chapter: college. I pictured it as a time filled with new experiences, new people, and the thrill of independence. Little did I know, since I packed up from my home and landed in a dorm, this weird niggling feeling that wouldn’t go away. Not precisely homesickness; it is a feeling deeper, more complex. And I find myself yearning for something whose name I am unsure of—a home that I am not sure ever really existed.
And everything seemed foreign when I first set foot on campus: the faces, the routines, the buildings—none of them mine. It was like I had been dropped into somebody’s life, into somebody’s story, and I tried to find my place within. The first time I got there, I thought that it was just the adjustment period, that perhaps I would settle in and this feeling would disappear. But weeks turned into months, and this sense of displacement only grew stronger.
I mean, people usually talk about missing their childhood home, family, and old friends when they say that they suffer from homesickness. But that is not what I feel. Yes, I miss my family; and, yes, sometimes you do long for the comfort of your old bed and the familiarity of your hometown. But more than that, I yearn for something I’m not even sure I ever had.
I crave the idea of home—the feeling of being rooted, of belonging somewhere so deeply that it’s a part of you. Of course, I thought I had that back at my parents’ house. But now, at a distance, I realise I probably didn’t. It could just be that I got so used to it, and became comfortable in the routine, in the known. Or perhaps I was so occupied with the life I was leading there—school, people, activities—that I never really stopped to think whether it felt like home or if I just accepted it because that’s all I knew. Now that I am here, in this new place which still feels foreign to me, it is starting to dawn on me that what I really long for is not just a return to my former state. It’s something deeper: the place where I truly belong, where I can be myself and don’t feel like trying to fit in. But the truth is, I’m not sure that place exists, or if it ever did.
And that’s the part that’s hardest to accept.
This feeling has a name, I’ve learned. The Welsh word “hiraeth” describes a yearning for a home that doesn’t exist or one that you can no longer return to. It’s the nostalgia for a life you never lived, a place etched only in your imagination.
“I crave the idea of home—the feeling of being rooted, of belonging somewhere so deeply that it’s a part of you.”
There is a loneliness about it, the feeling of not being anchored somewhere, of drifting between worlds and never feeling at home in either of them. I guess that’s when I feel it most—sitting here in my parents’ house, looking around, feeling so surrounded by things that are mine but don’t really say “me.”
I feel it when I walk across campus now, passing groups of people who seem so at ease, so settled in their lives. It follows me back to my family’s house, where everything is the same but somehow different—now I am a guest in a place that used to be my own.
Sometimes I wonder if I am alone in this, if other people feel this way too or if it’s just me. It’s the strangest thing, missing a place you have never been, being homesick for somewhere you can’t even define. I try to talk about it sometimes, but even if I could explain, I’m not sure that others would get it. I keep it to myself, hoping that someday, somehow, this feeling may go away. But the more time that goes by, the more I realise that it might not. Maybe this is growing up, leaving the familiar behind, and stepping into the unknown. Or perhaps this is about learning how to live with uncertainty, in-between times, and accepting that home is not always a physical place but something within us which we carry around.
Maybe, it could just be that I have not found my place yet and am still searching for that elusive feeling of ‘being home’ in life. And just maybe, that’s all right. For in this search and in this yearning, I find pieces of me that I never knew were amiss. I’m learning what it means to create my own sense of home, even if it’s not tied to a specific place or time. Maybe one day, I’ll look back and realise that this was all part of the journey. But for now, I’m just trying to make sense of it, to live with this peculiar homesickness for a place that might never have been—but that I hope, someday, I’ll find.
“You can never go home again, but the truth is you can never leave home, so it’s all right.”
Maya Angelou, Jeffrey M. Elliot (1989). “Conversations with Maya Angelou”
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