“You’ll get over it,” they say.
“It will pass.”
“How can you be homesick for a city you only called home for four months?”
“You’re home now.”
There were times when I too thought it might pass. Maybe, I would wake up one day settled into the dull acceptance that this was my life, again.
Or I would move on to some other place I would fall in love with. It’s true that at times I could picture a life for myself nearly anywhere but here.
But I’ve sat on a tiled floor, drunk on cheap Italian wine and laugh/cried for home, in a small Veronese apartment.
In the moment I’d said,
“I want to go home”
I wasn’t talking about my mother’s house that sit’s on a hill next to a farm, or even my queen-sized bed in the room my father had selflessly given up for me in his apartment.
When I’d said it, I heard the squeaky sands of East Coast Australia’s beaches and felt it cushion my cobblestone battered feet.
I saw my cozy twin bed, In Broadbeach, with crisp white hotel linens and a mess of dishes and wine bottles in the kitchenette after a night in with friends.
I felt again, that need to belong in this new unknown city and culture and the happiness I’d felt when I was beginning to do just that.
No matter how painful it can be at times, I was relieved not to have lost that longing.
How can I hope to call a place home, if I’ve forgotten what it feels like to be there?
I began wondering what the true meaning of “home” was. What does it really mean after all and how do you find it?
I’ve come to the conclusion that home isn’t where you’ve lived the longest or the address you’ve had the most mail sent to.
It’s probably not even where you were born or where the people you love most choose to reside.
Because maybe home is somewhere you have to go alone to get lost and piece your life back together with new people.
Maybe it’s the place you’ve learned the most about love and hate and what your limits are.
The place that teaches you that you are capable of so much more than your hometown would ever ask of you.
When I left Australia, I left with the realization of two major things.
One was that I was going to miss all the things I hadn't even had a chance to do, and all the people I hadn't had the chance to meet.
The other was that in a foreign country I'd found a place that made me feel more at home than anywhere else. I didn't feel trapped there like I had in my hometown and in other places, here I was free to learn and grow on my own.
In the end, I decided that home is anywhere you know you can continue to grow even if there’s a chance that someday you’ll outgrow this place too.
