We’ve talked about how to fight homesickness, but as the summer approaches, it is important to talk about how to work through the dwelling emotions that come with returning to your hometown.
Coming home from college for a lot of people is a relief. Maybe you get to see your family pet, or your parents or siblings, or whoever at home that you miss. However, I don’t think it’s talked about enough, the struggle with coming home.
I went home last weekend for a family event. The weather was oddly warm, the first semi-warm day of the year. In high school, this would have made me overly happy. Track practice would’ve been held outside, and I could drive home from school with a window cracked- WDW (windows down weather) is what my friends called it. Contrary to those memories, I am now a sophomore in college. I haven’t been that high school girl in a long time. I got an overwhelming feeling of sadness during this weekend at home, and it took me a long time to understand why. Once I did, it became very important to me to share what I learned.
The first step to being happier is acknowledging what is making you sad. For me, I missed team sports and the simplicity of high school. I grieved the naive version of myself before college and began to miss my high school boyfriend and friend group. It was a hurricane of emotions. And it’s hard to fight it. It’s hard to drive by places in your town where you made memories with people who may not be in your life anymore. For me, college was an escape from these memories. But I know now it is coming to its yearly close, so I actively began to find ways to help it stop hurting.
The best way I know how to take the pain away from old memories is to make new ones. So, that will be my goal this summer. One by one, I will go to the places that have begun to feel painful to see, and I will find something beautiful about them. I will make new memories there. I will alter the image and perception of them in my brain. It’s like exposure therapy. Throwing myself in these painful positions is the only way that I know how to cope with the discomfort of your opinion of “home” changing.
I also think there is a way to grieve the past in a way that is less detrimental to the present. I will most likely always think of those memories from time to time, but I think overtime the sting of them will lessen, and I will find the beauty in them. So, if you can relate to this, I challenge you to try to make new memories, and trust that peace is coming.