Home is Where the Heart Is

For someone who’s never really been homesick, there’s something really awful about being homesick.

I’ve never been the type of person to go away (summer camp, weekend trips, etc.) and wish that I was at home. That’s not my family’s fault, really. We just didn’t do lots of things. I love my parents and my siblings a lot, like a super lot, but the idea of being away from them was never something that made me sad. I knew that they’d still be there when I got back. I knew that I’d be having a better time if I was out adventuring or doing something new.

When I first applied to colleges, I only applied to out of state schools. Pennsylvania, but still. Not in Maryland. I wanted to go far away, do something new. I ended up at Towson because Casey, my roommate and best friend, convinced me. I literally applied on the last day possible. The last. Day. Possible. This is not an exaggeration.

I loved Towson, but it was still close to where I grew up. People I graduated with from high school were around literally every corner. It got to the point where I couldn't even sit in the lobby of my building without someone I didn't want to see walking in.

I spent all of my summers at Mar-Lu-Ridge. It was about two hours away from home, farther than camp, and I never really wished to be at home. I made the mountain my home. I preferred nights sleeping on the floor surrounded by my best friends than my small room at home, alone.

Again, this isn’t because of my family. It was just, there was more things somewhere else.

Now I’m in California. It is significantly farther away from home than I have ever been in my entire life.

(Six hours by plane, remember?)

And still, I’m not really homesick for a place. I lived with my dad and he moved to a new house a few years of me into school, but because I was either at school or at camp I never really was home. I didn’t get to really make his new place my own. The walls are this bright orange color that even glows when the lights are off. And when I stopped going to my mom’s on a regular basis, they got rid of my bed, so I normally sleep on the couch when I’m there.

Maybe I'm a little homesick for camp, but who isn’t homesick for camp?

Still, going home this past weekend was… really weird for me. I’ve said it before, but now that about a week has passed it’s a lot weirder.

When I was there, there were so many people. I got to see my parents, my brother. I got to see Karl and Ginny and Claire and Charlie, all of these people that I love. I got to dance and spend time with them and it wasn’t a constant battle of learning these new things about them, they just were and I just was and we existed together as we always had.

It’s a lot easier to be homesick for people.

(Easy in the sense that when you love a person, it loves you back. Not like a room, or a bed, or place. Easy in the sense that when you realize how much you miss them, it makes your toes feel like anchors that keep you weighted to your spot. Easy that it's like the wind, always there without even having to think about it. Easy in the sense that it's so, so hard.)

It’s not that my roommates here aren’t great. They teased me the other day about my blog, this blog, wondering if any of them had been mentioned by name.

Danielle, the girl I share a room with, has the best sense of humor and we can go back and forth for hours. We groan in the morning when our alarms go off and complain about work. We’ve lined our windows with succulents that we call our children. She teaches me how to cook when I really have no idea what I’m doing. She made her delicious, Spanish tortillas again because I talked about how much I loved them.

Carly, the girl who works on the other end of the office with me, makes me nervous because she likes to wait until the last minute to leave for the bus. (Today we had to run to catch it.) We talk about social justice issues and sexuality and how much we hate Trump all the time. Last night she ducked her head into my room and asked me if I wanted some tea because she was making some (and then proceeded to even pour it into a mug and bring it to me).

Amanda, Christine, Maggie, Alexander, they’re all great. They’re wonderful people and I’m seriously, seriously lucky that we ended up in this group together. I mean, seriously. There aren’t any dietary restrictions, y’all. We can eat meat and gluten and cheese. I’m living the life.

But I only just met them, what, a month ago? And while there’s still time for those really deep bonds to form, that’s hard. God, I’m so fucking tired all the time. Staying up and talking about XYZ after a long day at work where you missed the bus by two minutes so you have to wait another twenty, and then someone has to cook, and then it’s time for a house meeting, and then you have to shower, and then it’s bed time--like, where is the time? There's no time! I’m so tired, man.

And the people at work, Hannah and Ray and Virginia and all the great people I look up to there, they’re work people. They’re not people that you hang out with on the weekends. They’re old.

(Older than me, anyway. Spritely and wonderful and really not like, old, but you know what I mean.)

Literally this past week I Googled “how to make friends as an adult” because--what the fuck it’s so hard to do. You’re at work or you’re at home and the in between things are exhausting.

(Back to being an in-betweener, it seems.)

And again, it’s not that my housemates aren’t my friends. Or that my co-workers aren’t my friends. But they’re not the type of people (not yet) that you find yourself sitting on the big pleather green couch in your living room missing. I’m not homesick for them. And even if I were, they’re literally right here. I don’t need to be missing them. They’re here.

It’s like I’m at school again and my house is just 45 minutes away when it comes to those people.

But friends, friends, friends. Sitting on wet wooden benches watching the sunset over the Potomac friends. Stretch out on your futon and make fun of your messy room friends. Share a bottle of wine and watch Harry Potter friends. I miss them.

I miss them so much that I can feel it in my chest, like a brick that’s really old has started crumbling, both dust and solid pieces all at once.

Tonight’s a lonely night.

There’s something about everyone piling onto the smallest couch in the top of cabin 6, tired and exhausted, hands in each other’s hair and laughter in our mouths, that you just want. No matter where you go.

I just haven’t found that yet.