Nynke van de Nadort

The distance makes it easier to reflect on your life during your time away from home. Also, in your new place you’re like a pig moving into a chicken farm. Everybody immediately picks you out of the crowd and asks themselves how you ended up there. You want to adapt to the chicken’s way of living, but you’re not used to the diet and you look weird sleeping on a stick. You feel like you can’t keep up with them no matter how hard you try. Like a fresh lil’ piggy lining up for the slaughter house wondering where your mommy is.

The thought of being home makes me sick in multiple ways. I don’t want to be back home (yet?), but on the flip side all I want to be is home. Sometimes I can’t help but long for the simpleness I had.

Being homesick: experiencing a longing for one's home during a period of absence from it.

While on my bike with my groceries in front I get a call from my mom: “don’t forget family lunch this weekend.” Annoyed I answer that “of course I remembered”, but between you and me: I forgot. “Love you, bye” and I continue biking home. The sound of my keychains will alert my neighbour that I’m home and walking inside I smell the ginger from the juice I made this morning. My phone tells me I have two hours left until I have leave for work.

Romanticising your life in your hometown is something I heard many travellers do.

I miss my mom. I miss the comfort she can give me. Whenever things get hard, I miss her the most. Just like my dear friends. They are like a warm blanket on a cold winter night. I get homesick just thinking about them. From wanting them by my side during the most fantastic adventures to longing for their support when you’re staring into the water with tears rolling down your cheeks.

Romanticising your life in your hometown is something I heard many travellers do. It’s the comfort of the rose tinted memory you get while telling it to others. The sugar-coated ugly parts that you forgot you crystalized in the first place. I’m not going to lie: I loved my life before I left my town. Important is that that love only started to grow as soon as I decided to leave. I took the ugly parts and thought by myself “it doesn’t matter, I’m getting out of here soon enough”. The “is this it?”-feeling went away and I didn’t feel stuck anymore, but I know as soon as I’m back that feeling will give me company again.

I'm thankfull I have something to be homesick about.