Ugh. That phrase. Yuk. Don’t you just hate it? Brings out the 12-year-old in me. I don’t want to be all needy and sad, it’s tiresome. So I’ve stuck the feeling in a pot, drawn my specs down to the end of my nose and am inspecting it as if it’s one of my son’s little woolly caterpillars from off the path.
This week I am definitely ‘homesick’, but what’s it all about? A bit like that condition Vertigo, which doesn’t necessarily mean you are scared of heights, this homesickness I have is something different to what the name might suggest, something unplaceable (I’m afraid I can’t work out quite what, I’m altogether too homesick to focus).
It’s a misnomer, this business, because I’m not sick, and not ‘sick of home’. And I don’t think I actually want to go home. Well, maybe I do, in fact yes of course I do, but it’s odd because at the same time I very much don’t want to go home just yet – and that’s a good thing, isn’t it? Yes I badly miss my family and friends, almost physically, but what will be at home when I get there? And how would I feel if I landed back there tomorrow, literally in 24 hours? It’s not that. Is it the date? Fifth November, fireworks, bangers, bobby dazzlers on the Heath all scarfed up? Nope. And it’s not that I hate it here, that I loathe every day and want to actually leave. Mostly it is all lovely: my apartment looks like something out of a magazine, I can swim any time I want, I don’t have to wear much so getting dressed is a dream for a lazy dresser like me, and even if it rains my bones are warm. Oh, and there are palm trees outside my window. So it’s nice, this life.
But this week I am homesick to the point that I find it hard to get out of bed, I go to sleep sad and I wake up sad. Food tastes sad, I don’t even want ice cream, so at lunchtime I am sad and by dinnertime I am still sad. It’s got nothing to do with the amount of brilliant people I’ve met since arriving and without whom I would definitely be going home. And it’s got nothing to do with the brilliantly lovely people I’ve left behind.
I’m told it takes six months ‘to settle’, whatever settling involves, and we are three months in so I will just have to hunker down and weather it. Oh boy though – the lights might be on but I am definitely not in.
Hi Mo
A fellow gemini saying hello! Just remember the world is very small and take a day at a time. Read your entry and wanted to say thinking of you – giving you a hug! Take good care all of you. Blighty pretty bleak and grey looking here.
Love Della x
Aw Della. If you only knew how much that sort of message helps. LOADS. Thank you.
Big kiss and love to J.
Xxx
Hi,
Am a fellow writer and will be coming out to Singapore to visit family for two and a half weeks for Christmas. I used to live in Kentish Town so if you want someone to talk to about the joys of the heath etc. I could be your woman! But maybe you are coming back to the UK for Christmas so the only way our paths will meet is in the air??
Let’s see how it goes… Sorry to hear you are homesick.
In the meantime will ‘see’ you on Twitter.
All best,
Vinita
Hey Vinita,
Nice to get your message, and thanks for support. Yes, am from Gospel Oak initially, then Tufnell Park, Hampstead and now Singers. Lovely to meet you if it can be done, got family arriving for the festives but might be able to sort. Where will you be? Drop us a message on Twitter if you like.
All the very best back, nice to meet you!
Morwenna
Hi Mo! I am just dipping in and out of your blog and I’m fascinated! I envy your adventure and would dearly love to come over with the girls but my financial situation is my biggest hinderance. That aside, I was touched by your feelings of homesickness. It is quite the wrong word and there isn’t really one that defines how you feel but I think I know it. Having lived 17 years away from home, family, friends and country…I call it the ‘fish out of water’ feeling. You know you are supposed to be amazed that you are on this incredible new journey but you know you don’t really belong because you don’t really fit in, and it’s the absence of the familiar that has a profound affect on your soul. Take solace and comfort in your very own important bit of ‘familiar’ from home in that lovely husband of yours. That’s something I never had and sincerely wished I’d had. xxxxx
Dearest Liz: that is all absolutely true, just spot on. It is a very complex emotion. And I do indeed find comfort in that lovely cousin of yours, who is rather busy and often absent but very definitely supportive. And I’m sorry for you, and send love – and more wishings that we can get you and the girls out here. Is it really 17 years? Blimey… Lots love as always, and thanks xxx