As Tina Fey and Amy Poehler reminded us in the movie Sisters, home isn’t a place-- it’s a feeling. Home can be a house where you grew up in, or it can be a group of people you are comfortable with and share life experiences with. I didn’t truly understand this until recently, when I really experienced homesickness for the first time.
When I started university, I moved from suburban Staten Island to an apartment dorm in Manhattan. It really wasn’t a drastic move because home was an hour away by express bus. I never got homesick while I was attending school in Manhattan because I always knew I had the option of going home if I really needed to, unlike some of my peers who need to take a plane to get home. Because I never got homesick, I never went home unless it was a holiday.
But what I gradually began to notice was that when I did go home to Staten Island on breaks, it didn’t feel right. There was a dining table I didn’t recognize, new schedules I wasn’t a part of. It didn’t register when I moved out that when I left, time wouldn’t stop at home. I began to feel more comfortable in my dorm in Manhattan, where I spent most of my time during the year.
Now, I am studying abroad in Florence, Italy for a semester, and it is my first time being so far away from home for so long. I experienced real homesickness in the beginning of my second week here, when the anticipation of studying abroad faded and it hit me that this is not a short vacation, and that I can’t hop on a bus to go home whenever I miss my mother’s cooking. I miss my home in Staten Island, and I miss living in noisy Manhattan.
But as I am settling into a routine here in Florence and becoming more familiar with the city, the homesickness is fading into excitement. The business that comes with classes and the long, tiring walks around the city make me eager to come back to the apartment that has become a part of my everyday life. In my texts to my roommate in Florence, instead of writing “I’m at the apartment” to her, I became more comfortable writing, “I’m at home.”
